Poundland 'forced labour' ruling is common sense

[Gavin78]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/j...on-sense.html#

The unpaid work experience row that erupted at Tesco earlier this year – and which has led to scores of employers needlessly abandoning offering good quality placement schemes to young people – has at last been given some rational perspective.

The High Court today rejected claims from Cait Reilly, a 23 year-old unemployed graduate, that taking part in a government-backed work experience scheme at her local Poundland amounted to “slave labour�.

Mr Justice Foskett, sitting at the High Court in London, rejected her and 40 year-old Jamieson Wilson’s claims that the initiative was comparable to modern slavery.

Neither the Government’s Work Academy Scheme nor the Community Action Programme breached human rights laws on slavery, he said.

Of course they don’t. Anyone can see that encouraging the jobless young to take part in some good-quality work experience, teaching them the basics in communication, team work, customer service and budget taking skills, can only be a good thing.

---------- Post added at 19:29 ---------- Previous post was at 19:25 ----------

Not sure what anyone thinks about this I remember a thread not long ago talking about the start of this case.

The discussion was that the "general" public could not get employment due to the taking on of the JSA public.

But young people out of work or should I say never worked maybe I could understand but for someone who has years of working finding themselves unemployed dont really need "basic" communication skills or work experience unless it leads to a job at the end?

[Chris]

The judge had sympathy with the essence of what many CFers argued, way back in the original thread (doubtless someone will dig it out soon enough) - that the DWP was not making it at all clear that people had to volunteer for this, and only if they did so, would they potentially lose benefit by walking away from the placement before it finished.

However he quite rightly poured a bucket of scorn on the idea that this amounted to any kind of slavery.

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by Gavin78

The High Court today rejected claims from Cait Reilly, a 23 year-old unemployed graduate, that taking part in a government-backed work experience scheme at her local Poundland amounted to “slave labour�.

As you said, some common sense at last.

[Gavin78]

The problem with the DWP is that they are trying to force people into retail or customer service.

These are one of the hard hit areas for unemployment trying to force someone into these areas wont work especially for someone who has years of working before hand.

I graduated from Uni about 14 years ago "manufacturing and business management" only a foundation degree wasn't a full degree I worked as a butcher but they went under in fact the whole industry pretty much went under to supermarkets. I came out of that game after having kids working on bandsaws wasn't a good thing to poeple losing fingers.

I also worked for Burtons 5 years in the warehouse as a loader for the wagons and did some searchline and quality control work then onto a year at GE capital on there IT side I worked with the public in all these jobs.

Now I work for the NHS and happy with this job...I would be insulted by the DWP to send me on a course where they think I need customer service skills, work experience or retail skills.

Young people who have never worked I can understand or the long term unemployed. I remember being unemployed for a short while out of 5 jobs I applied for all of them I got interviews for 3 of them said I was too over qualified 1 was an internal candidate that got the job and the last one said I was too young.

I finally started working for the NHS...there has to be some balance but the DWP treat everyone the same.