For the umpteenth time, an article has appeared in The Guardian claiming that people on the Work Experience scheme are “unpaid”.
Far as I’m aware people on this scheme invariably ARE PAID. They are paid the same as they’d have got on benefits. The pay might be inadequate, but that’s a different point. The central point is that they ARE PAID.
The official government site explaining this scheme says, “Young people undertaking a Work Experience placement will continue to receive their benefit…”.
So either the government is telling fibs, or Guardian journalists are. My guess is it’s the latter.
Moreover, the pay of the less skilled when in work is often little different to what they get on benefits, especially when they have two or more children. Perhaps the Guardian will start wittering on about all these people being “unpaid” as well.
The only real surprise in this article is that it does not include references to “slave labour”.
Certainly the author of the above Guardian article, for all the ink, paper and forest consumed, is vague on the question as to exactly he means by the word “unpaid”. So I assume he is into propaganda and deception rather than informing readers. But that wouldn’t be a first for our supposedly intelligent broadsheet newpapers.
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"The central point is that they ARE PAID."
ReplyDeleteThat's straight out of Tory central office.
And of course there are hundreds and hundreds of interns out there who aren't paid in all senses of the word.
Prisoners on chain gangs get their board and lodgings covered. Are we now to include them in the gainfully employed?
People on these jobs get no more resources available to them than if they don't. That means they are unpaid for their efforts.
Splitting hairs on terminology doesn't help.
Spending benefit money increases production, and working increases production some more. The rewards should reflect that.
The companies involved are still getting free labour out of the deal, though, aren't they? What's to stop them sacking a bunch of their more menial employees, leading to more people on the dole who'd end up having to do the same job they got a regular wage from in order to receive their benefits, at no cost to the company?
ReplyDeleteMc Fad,
ReplyDeleteThe extent to which those on Work Experience type schemes displace regular employees is a complicated issue. I think these sort of schemes CAN BE structured so as to minimise this displacement, though the design of the WE scheme isn’t too brilliant in this respect, in my view.
If you really want to do your brain in trying to get to grips with the problems here, you could look at this article of mine:
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19094/
I’m also currently involved in an argument on this topic here:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-job-guarantee
But there is loads of other literature on this topic.