Poundland Girl Wins Forced Labour Ruling

v0n said:
Aren't they though?

I had my pick of excellent jobs in the last 20 years of working and currently I am exactly where I wanted to be in my life, right in the industry that interest me, but in my entire lifetime I never claimed a penny, never been on JSA, don't know what social worker, jobcenter or cheque from government looks like. But inbetween the good jobs I was a bus boy, waiter, weekend server/butler at weddings, handy man, done temp jobs, even drove across country and slept in cheap hotels few nights a week to pick up some short term contracts in "dry seasons". Openings available to anyone.

It is very much "black and white" as you put it. It angers me when people say there are no jobs available. There are always jobs available. I walked 500 yards during my lunchbreak and saw two job adverts. One for driver in flower shop. One for a morning shift cook in a greasy spoon. Both are nowhere near in my salary expectations and not in a line of work I prefer, but if I lost my job tomorrow, heck - worse case scenario, it will pay my mortgage. And I can drive a flower van and I would flip burgers at dawn, if needed. Or stand at the till in a shop. Or fill shelves at Tesco. Anyone can. These ARE openings available to anyone. If Romanian straight from the boat can do it, so can anyone, at any age. Especially young people. But because there is taxpayer sponsored alternative (watch Jeremy Kyle and play PS3), most of folk think it's beneath them.
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Good for you, make sure you don't get a nose bleed up that high. You must feel great that you've never been on JSA, look at all those dirty plebs that have.

It's not very much "black and white", while there are always jobs available it doesn't mean you are guaranteed to get a job. I'd gladly take a job in McDonalds, Tesco, Asda, Generic Pound shop, I apply at least once a week to each of these and lo and behold a few days later I get the "Sorry we cannot offer you a position at this time, thanks for applying" letters.

I'm not 'above' any job, or person as you seem to be, I've been a public toilet cleaner before now.

The last interview I went for I was one of the few picked for a second interview, the guy told me that he got 375 applications for that one position alone, not sure how you expect to just walk into a job you see advertised when hundreds of people are applying the same time as you.

Just because you've got a great job and found it easy to walk into other jobs doesn't mean that everyone can.

As for your Jeremy Kyle/PS3 nonsense you should stop reading the Daily Mail. Most of my day is spent photocopying my CV and walking in the bitter cold/snow handing my CV in to local companies who by now are probably sick of seeing me in their reception and probably binning my CV as soon as I walk out the door.

Get VERY bored of people like yourself who think you are above job seekers and tar them all with the same brush and spare me the "you might not be a dosser but a lot are" reply.

You don't "pay for me" any more than you pay the wages of the police, do you go up to the police when they stop you for whatever reason and go "omg I pay your wages".
 
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GAC said:
yes yes the poor tax payer, well sorry dolph but iv worked since i was 16 (now 35) and apart from two long stints on the dole, this being the 2nd iv always paid taxes. so where does that leave me ??

should i be carted off to workfare and encouraged to work for £2 an hour at poundland for the vast experience of stacking shelves for a few weeks ?



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well if you are unemployed and claiming benefits for a long time I dont see a reson you should not work a full week(ish) week for your money...

I will not comment on the exact nature of the work im not sure if its good or bad being free labour...

still I cannot see how anyone can argue (unless disabled or sick) that someone on benefits should not be out 4 days a week cleaning streets tidying parks etc etc...
 
edscdk said:
still I cannot see how anyone can argue (unless disabled or sick) that someone on benefits should not be out 4 days a week cleaning streets tidying parks etc etc...
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I agree, job seekers should be locked up in compounds like cattle and only fed bread and water, then forced to do hard labour 6 days a week and one day set aside for looking for a job.

Why should someone who has paid taxes into the system be forced to do jobs that criminals on community service do just to please people like you?
 
edscdk said:
well if you are unemployed and claiming benefits for a long time I dont see a reson you should not work a full week(ish) week for your money...

I will not comment on the exact nature of the work im not sure if its good or bad being free labour...

still I cannot see how anyone can argue (unless disabled or sick) that someone on benefits should not be out 4 days a week cleaning streets tidying parks etc etc...
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as you missed the part about the min wage i guess you think anyone out of work shouldnt get it ? its funny how that keeps getting missed.

people will work, as long as they get paid the LEGAL min wage, as for tidying parks and the like id do that but ONLY for my local community. as in a mile or two of where i live. i wouldnt be dragging myself down to the town i sign on.

the thing with this subject people seem to have blind spots when it comes to the money side of things, all they see is lazy benefits scroungers not wanting to work, and not the fact the wage is illegal which they would be paid.
 
GAC said:
as you missed the part about the min wage i guess you think anyone out of work shouldnt get it ? its funny how that keeps getting missed.

people will work, as long as they get paid the LEGAL min wage, as for tidying parks and the like id do that but ONLY for my local community. as in a mile or two of where i live. i wouldnt be dragging myself down to the town i sign on.

the thing with this subject people seem to have blind spots when it comes to the money side of things, all they see is lazy benefits scroungers not wanting to work, and not the fact the wage is illegal which they would be paid.
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You would not be employed, so no laws have been broken.

This is why I oppose the current benefits system and approach altogether. we need a system that treats everyone equally, rather than one that pits people against each other.
 
Dolph said:
You would not be employed, so no laws have been broken.

This is why I oppose the current benefits system and approach altogether. we need a system that treats everyone equally, rather than one that pits people against each other.
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thats the wonderful legal farce thats going on at the mo though, because its not a job and work exp it seems to be in a giant loop hole hiding from min wage. although watching qt last night no one even mentioned it.

the current system will never be changed enough as no one has the spine to do it or the brains it seem's. all we have is IDS who to be honest is turning in to some sort of 18th century panto villain who makes up wild schemes and then causes aggro with idiotic speech's.
 
Eeeeeethan said:
No one is "paying" for him. You pay your taxes and the government spends them on lots of things.
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Actually, I get my taxes taken from me, I do not pay them.

And anyone who is a net recipient of state support is being paid for by the taxpayer. the state has no money of its own, it all comes from current taxpayers, or future taxpayers via borrowing.

The fact that some people don't know this scares me, and the fact that some people try to deny or hide this suggests s fundamental lack of honesty.
 
By the taxpayer yes, not by you individually. You talk like you literally put bank notes into someones hand.

Maybe if you dropped your condescending tone people wouldn't try and deny or hide anything, I am well aware where the money comes from.

I don't smoke, drink, or do drugs, I would prefer if money spent on NHS would go to people who actually need it, that doesn't mean I want to force everyone who has an addiction to whatever into rehab just because "I pay" for their treatment.
 
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Dolph said:
Actually, I get my taxes taken from me, I do not pay them.

And anyone who is a net recipient of state support is being paid for by the taxpayer. the state has no money of its own, it all comes from current taxpayers, or future taxpayers via borrowing.

The fact that some people don't know this scares me, and the fact that some people try to deny or hide this suggests s fundamental lack of honesty.
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I would imagine, in the grand scheme of things, there are very few people who are not net recipients of state support.
 
Skillmister said:
What are you on about. So you don't believe minimum wage should apply? Seems fair......
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Where did he ever say that? :confused:

In any case, what makes minimum wage inherently fair?

Personally at least, for the sake of experience, I would be more than happy to take an upaid/lowly paid job at a place I really wanted to work. I would value that experience a lot more than whatever small amount I was paid.

That being said, I do realise that I am in the fortunate position to be able to do that.
 
Sudden said:
Where did he ever say that? :confused:

In any case, what makes minimum wage inherently fair?

Personally at least, for the sake of experience, I would be more than happy to take an upaid/lowly paid job at a place I really wanted to work. I would value that experience a lot more than whatever small amount I was paid.

That being said, I do realise that I am in the fortunate position to be able to do that.
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many of us would take a lower wage to get exp in a specific field, problem being thats not whats on offer, stacking shelves isnt exactly the greatest skill out there.

on the min wage thing, it should be paid but thanks to it not being a paid position but a supposed voluntary one it falls outside of the min wage.
 
He said it doesn't matter whether you work 9 hours or 30 hours for the same amount of money (in my case £56). In one of those situations minimum wage does not apply.

I'd take a lowly payed job at somewhere I want to work too. Stacking shelves in a supermarket isn't one of those places. Besides, other than leaving less hours for actual employees what benefit would working an extra 21 hours a week shelf stacking actually give? I'd imagine all the experience you're going to get would be done in about 1 shift anyway.

Calling the exact same job as the next guy "work experience" doesn't mean it's fair to pay peanuts for it.
 
GAC said:
many of us would take a lower wage to get exp in a specific field, problem being thats not whats on offer, stacking shelves isnt exactly the greatest skill out there.

on the min wage thing, it should be paid but thanks to it not being a paid position but a supposed voluntary one it falls outside of the min wage.
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Agreed, unles you are one of those people who is looking to get into the retail sector in which case, it is still helpful as you could say in an application for instance - 'when working here doing x, I noticed these things that could be better improved'. As someone pointed out earlier though, that is not applicable to everyone. I do think they should match it a little bit better.

The statement I made was in response to Skillmister's comment about minimum wage. It was a bit off topic as I was responding to minimum wage generally, not in relation to this particular scheme.

I don't like the terminology used in that calling it voluntary if it isn't completely voluntary and that should be changed. Making it necessarily a paid position however, I don't agree with.
 
id be a bit cautious as to how much use 3 weeks of work in a poundland would be on someones cv as lets be honest now as soon as anyone see's it they will know that person couldnt find a job for a year and had to be nudged in to doing it.

not saying everyone would see it that way, but having watched agencies and hr departments first hand work there magic when splitting up cv's i wouldnt be surprised if a lot of people who have no other experience or qualifications besides poundland would end up with their cv in the bin.

when i worked as an assistant manager in retail and we needed 2 part time sales assistants we ended up using a agency (care of head office and hr) and all they sent us where graduates cv's. when we asked why only graduates they said "well you dont want dummys do you" got to love attitudes like this.
 
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