Interns are banned but forced labour is DWP policy

The fashion industry, media, political, and legal professions are well-known for using unpaid interns. Highly prized professions such as these attract many graduates desperate for a leg-up, experience and a good reference to achieve their ambitions.  It goes without saying you need to have good family support to be able to afford to work unpaid: skinny as fashionistas might be, those egg-white omelettes don’t pay for themselves.  The HMRC has now decided that this practise is no longer legal and are sending in undercover hit squads, called a ‘dynamic response unit’ (yeah, made me laugh too) to weed out companies exploiting unpaid interns under its responsibility to enforce payment of the minimum wage.

Meanwhile over at the House of Jobcentre Plus, young people are being forced to work up to 8 weeks for no pay in major supermarkets and face losing their benefits if they decline.  As well as the government’s work experience programme relieving employers from the nuisance of having to pay young people, it doesn’t even ask for there to be a job actually available or to offer any sort of accreditation or qualification at the end of the 8 weeks’ slavery.  It’s simply free labour for multi-nationals and, with youth unemployment at well over a million, that’s a lot of free work for a long time to come.

What I find disturbing is that the HMRC are so concerned about well-heeled young people voluntarily working for nothing that they’ve called in the civil service branch of the SAS to seek and destroy any employer exploiting the intern system – at the same time the government is actively shoving oiks off the dole to do forced labour in Poundland and Asda.  There seems to be no recognition of the contradiction, to put it politely, or the blatant discrimination between rich and poor, if we want to give it its real name.

Even a verbal acknowledgement of interest in the work experience programme from a young person means they can have their benefits taken away for not attending.  You can imagine the scenario…

JCP staff: Interested in some work experience?
Naïve young person: Oh, what does it entail?
JCP: Aha!  It’s off to the salt mines for you!  Or if you prefer there’s a chimney sweep looking for a non-claustrophobic assistant with a sense of adventure. Whichever you choose don’t come bothering me for the next eight weeks or I’ll chop off your JSA; now sod off.

Astonishingly the DWP claims to have no idea how many young people are on the work experience programme, but reports suggest that some large stores take on many young people at a time to carry out exactly the same work as waged staff, with no hope of a real job at the end of the period.  It must be very handy for Tesco and Sainsbury’s having all this free labour in the run up to Christmas and it would be interesting to know if the Christmas temp position numbers (a lifeline for many low income families at this most expensive time of year) have fallen with the introduction of the scheme.

Real work experience, shadowing an employee or receiving training in a skill could be just what a young person needs to make them more attractive to an employer, but having them stack shelves and do cleaning in place of a waged person is simple slavery. While the taxpayer subsidises the labour costs of multinationals in this way, there will be no reason for them to create real jobs for the 2.62 million out there looking for real work.

Why does the government regard graduates seeking a leg-up in a potentially lucrative career worthy of at least the minimum wage, whilst other young people are being forcibly shoved into slavery? Could it be something about recognising themselves in those lucky enough to be in a position to seek highly prized positions in life? And conversely regarding the rest of this generation of young people as nothing more than workshy benefit scroungers?

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