Commenting on reports of poor working conditions faced by unpaid stewards of the Diamond Jubilee, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:
‘The appalling treatment of staff working for free over the Diamond Jubilee weekend highlights the damage that unpaid work experience risks causing people who are desperate to get back into proper employment, as well as the exploitative treatment that they can face.
‘The fact that unpaid job seekers were working alongside fully paid employees also suggests that government programmes may be displacing proper jobs that pay at least the minimum wage.
‘The main experience gained by staff appears to have been poor working conditions and exploitation. Worse still, the government is encouraging more employers to treat staff poorly at work by stepping up its attacks on basic employment rights.
‘This case has attracted attention because of its link to the Diamond Jubilee. Sadly low-paid vulnerable employment such as this occurs on a daily basis throughout the country. The number of involuntary temporary workers is at a record high. These are not the jobs that will take Britain out of recession and improve people’s living standards.’
I have provided a number of workstart placements in the local authority I work for and some of the people placed have gone on to secure permanent paid contracts after working hard and proving their worth as potential employees. If they had not had the opportunity to do this most would still be applying for jobs. Any deliberate exploitation of people is shameful but this should not be confused with genuinely trying to give people a chance by providing placements which help prepare indivduals for work. Wishing there were enough better paid quality jobs to go around for everyone is not going to help.
The whole situation stinks, from everyone’s perspective.
I’m staggered that Companies House didn’t pick up the warning signs about the Director’s personal information and business track record.
I assume a CRB check has to be done on anyone applying for a licence to run a security business – so why did the Director’s criminal conviction go unnoticed?
Why didn’t DWP, Prospects and TomorrowsPeople check the accounts of Close Protection UK to see that it was a financially viable, ethical business?
Why didn’t Tomorrow’sPeople and Prospects monitor more closely how their trainees were trained, supervised and looked after on the programmes? Any questions they had asked would have been likely to throw up signs of trouble.
It’s obvious, for example, DWP funding per trainee isn’t sufficiently generous to meet the costs of good basic hotel accommodation and food in London so it would have been rational for these bodies to investigate how trainees were to be looked after. Similarly, at a potentially high risk event, these barely trained novices would need close supervision (also costly) – so what arrangements were made to provide it?
I hope DWP will provide ex gratia payments to the victims for the wrongs done to them.
it seems to me there’s a clear distinction between decent employers and workplace providers (eg Gareth Jones’ local authority) and those which self-evidently are not.
It worries me that the obvious questions reasonable employees (of Companies House, DWP, TomorrowsPeople and Prospects) should have asked were not asked.