Example;
Cait Reilly was forced to work for Poundland stacking shelves, she will have only been given her benefits of £56.25 a week plus expenses. So say she gets the bus everyday at £3.00 return? Altogether she will have been earning £68.25 a week for a 30 hour week. Someone on the payroll, lets say they were the same age will have been earning £6.19 an hour for the pleasure of restocking the shelves in Poundland, a thirty hour week will have seen her taken home more than DOUBLE what Cait will have, £185.70 to be exact. That amount won't have been taxed either because it falls under the bracket, so lucky lucky!
Before I started my intern ship I was doing some sort of 'back to work' scheme, but mine was called 'work experience' instead to avoid placing in the same category as Cait Reilly as her fight against DWP was making some big headlines. I'm not going to badmouth where I was on experience because the people I worked for were great, and gave me time and their energy to gain some more experience.
My issue with this scheme is that the government is paying for a business to have a worker doing work that they're basically not prepared to do themselves. Cait Reilly was forced to stack shelves for a discount store when she was volunteering at a local gallery, something which interested her and gave her experience of all kinds. But because she was claiming JSA she was forced to stack shelves to fit in with her 'contract' under the DWP.
A lot of the businesses that involve themselves in the 'back to work' scheme are there to get free labour for the work they can't be bothered to do themselves, with the 'potential' for a job at the end, most of them don't have a job for you at the end. Where I was did have the opportunity for it in the end because I knew they were looking for someone to do tele-marketing from their website before I went there, but I was there with another guy who was also hoping for a job at the end. There will have only been one job - and both of us fighting for it despite us both doing the same amount of work, it's too ruthless for me. I knew I had my intern ship starting in January so leaving after six weeks felt like the right decision. I was going to some other work experience but it fell through with it being so close to Christmas.
The government is being taken for a ride with these schemes because they're having to continue to pay someone their benefits and expenses whilst businesses get free labour. Whereas, if they allowed people to volunteer their time with a cause they felt they could help, they would be paying an expenses themselves.
What a surprise, the coalition are wasting money, yet again. I haven't heard of anyone having any luck with the scheme and I've known quite a few people take that route out of sheer boredom of job hunting. Most have come back and said "an utter waste of money, my time and theirs".
Cannot argue with that, can you?
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