Knee-jerk reactions to work placement initiatives are not helpful

I can’t help but feel sorry for Tesco and the other big retailers who find themselves on the receiving end of some recent outlandish claims of worker exploitation through the Work Programme. Four week work experience placements while you’re on benefits are hardly intended to be full-time jobs since those jobs didn’t exist in the first place.

The bullying of Tesco into taking on young people for four weeks on full pay is, I think, unjustified. Not least due to the associated bureaucracy of taking the participants off benefits; and then if the placement doesn’t work out, having to reapply for said benefits, with the Job Centre asking: 'but you had a job, how come you lost it? Since you had a job you’re not entitled… blah blah blah'.

Knee-jerk reactions such as we’ve seen recently to initiatives designed to help young people find permanent work do absolutely nothing to help the young. In order for Tesco to fulfil its guarantee of a full-time job after a four week successful placement, you can be sure the numbers involved will be minimal.

If they had those jobs already they would be advertising them. What I see happening time and time again is that yet more opportunities for the young to improve their chances of landing a job are denied them.

First the debacle over unpaid internships, now work placements. The next thing you know ‘volunteering’ will be targeted. As an advocate for the young reaching their potential I understand absolutely the difference between opportunity and exploitation and I know exactly where I stand on both.

It‘s in nobody’s interests for employers to withdraw from a scheme designed to provide youth opportunity. I wonder whose interests are being served here - it certainly isn’t the interests of the young unemployed.