Abso-fucking-lutely outrageous:
Britain's young unemployed are being sent to work for supermarkets and budget stores for up to two months for no pay and no guarantee of a job, the Guardian can reveal.
Under the government's work experience programme young jobseekers are exempted from national minimum wage laws for up to eight weeks and are being offered placements in Tesco, Poundland, Argos, Sainsbury's and a multitude of other big name businesses.
The Department for Work and Pensions says that if jobseekers "express an interest" in an offer of work experience they must continue to work without pay, after a one-week cooling-off period, or face having their [unemployment] benefits docked.
Young people have told the Guardian that they are doing up to 30 hours a week of unpaid labour and have to be available from 9am to 10pm.
emphasis mine
So, if you're a young unemployed Brit, and say recently out of university thousands of pounds in debt (especially with the new fees coming), this is the future you're looking at. You may get to work for free for the UK's equivalents of Wal-Mart, being available for 13 hours of the day, and you better not even think about quitting lest you lose your meager benefits.
Kind of a formal, don't-even-bother-pulling-the-wool-over-their-eyes version of what young people here in the US, and elsewhere, are facing.
[21 year-old James] Rayburn, who was also told by his jobcentre he would lose his benefits if he did not work without pay, said he spent almost two months stacking and cleaning shelves and doing night shifts on occasion.
"They said [my JSA] would be cut off if I didn't do it."
Asked if he thought he should have been paid he said: "I reckon they should have paid me … I was basically doing what a normal member of staff does for Tesco. I had the uniform and I was in the staff canteen. I obviously got access to the food and drinks in the staff canteen … that's what they let you do … but I got nothing else apart from that.
"I was there doing it as if I walked into the store and said, 'Look I'll help.'"
In April, Tesco filed pre-tax profits of £3.5bn.
Works out quite well for the 1%, doesn't it? And some people wonder why we're in the streets.