Richard Littlejohn refers to her as a "dopey bird" in his ridiculous column this week.
Well, apart from the inherent sexism in that comment, you can hardly call a Geology graduate dopey. And for those of us who have read her story it is obvious that she does not think Poundland is beneath her.
The point is that although she had already set herself up some voluntary work in a field relevant to her studies and chosen career path, the government decided that to keep her jobseeker's allowance she shoul dbe made to do work experience elsewhere. And stacking shelves at Poundland for free was hardly relevant or helpful to her. The only people to benefit from the placement in fact was Poundland. Who got free labour.
There are advantages to unpaid work experience, when it is to gain experience. For school children it is a great insight into the workplace, when they are allowed to participate in interesting projects for a couple of weeks.
But the attitude that Ms Reilly just didn't want to slum it is a lazy one, taking the attention away from a ridiculous scheme which only benefits the businesses taking on the interns.
And free internships for any reasonable length of time can't be considered to be reasonable. They may in some cases provide good experience - the work she had set up for herself would have been a good experience. But companies are taking on far too many interns just to get free help. I consider it in many cases to be little short of slavery.
Graduates, or non graduates, are being asked to do the work of full time employees, often with responsibility, for free.
I wonder how many of the employers who
Free internships take paid jobs away from people who need them, and give no sense of self worth to the interns who have to work for nothing, often learning nothing in the process.
It is abhorrent that this government sponsored working for nothing is deemed acceptable. By all means, encourage people to get work experience. But don't take them away from relevant work experience to provide free labour for companies that will only abuse the intern.
It just isn't right, and it's not fair. If someone works for a company they should get paid. And retaining Jobseeker's allowance for the privelige of stacking shelves is not honest pay for an honest day's work.
Good point, well made. Keep ranting.
ReplyDeleteBTW, do you send your rants to No.10?
BW,
Lesley.
Thanks ! I doubt they would be interested in what I have to say... They aren't interested in what most people have to say after all...
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you! I have recently been on the receiving end of someone taking on an intern, and it costing me a client account. My rates are exceptionally reasonable, especially considering my 20+ years of experience in my field, yet said client preferred to take on someone with no experience and no contacts....at no financial cost to themselves of course.
ReplyDeleteWhat's perhaps worse, is that the intern will receive no training because the job they are 'hired' to do is completely outside the remit of the client...which is why they hired me in the first place! I do have to wonder how many interns they'll go through.
As for that whole Poundland thing, a cynical person might almost think this is indicative of the government's determination to hinder people's progress. It certainly doesn't appear that people are seen as anything but statistics. And surely there are enough folk on benefits who genuinely have few career prospects who could do those sorts of jobs (apologies if that sounds a bit fascist-like!)? I find it hard to believe that there are no places where a geology graduate could intern (Natural History Museum is one place which springs to mind).
Furthermore, why not, instead of offering those kinds of shelf-stacking internships, give the benefit money to the company which can then use it to pay the 'intern'? Suddenly that person is in employment, the company is incentivised to not use free labour, and the national unemployment figures go down. Or is that too much like common-sense?
"The tabloids have picked this up and are ranting about her, giving the false impression that she believes stacking shelves and cleaning floors in a shop is beneath her."
ReplyDeleteAs someone who worked three years in retail and spent most of those three years being verbally abused, I never react well to people who look down their noses at retail workers.
And accusing Cait Reilly of being one of those people is absolutely ridiculous. She didn't turn down paid work, in favour of the placement she'd sorted out for herself. In my opinion, she didn't turn down a placement that had any reasonable chance of turning into paid work. She didn't turn down a placement that was going to give her any new experience. Had she done any one of those things, I would have no sympathy with her. But she didn't.
She was forced to work a placement that was of no benefit to her. And that wasn't because it was a retail placement, or that it wasn't in line with her dream job. It was because it gave her no new experience or training and it was highly unlikely to lead to paid work. I simply don't see how that amounts to snobbery or laziness. You can spot a graduate with a sense of entitlement a mile off and Cait Reilly just isn't fitting that profile. It's not that she believes nothing but the best graduate jobs are good enough for her, she simply objects to her time being wasted. Who wouldn't object to that?
Of course, any headline containing both the words "graduate" and "sue" was never going to attract much sympathy, and I have to admit that I think she's doing something very risky. In the long run, I think she'll only damage herself. But I have a lot of sympathy with her.