Taking advantage of people’s desire to find work is a particularly touchy subject at present, with millions unemployed and seeking opportunities – so you’d think huge national brands would be very careful with public messages about recruitment.
Leading supermarket Tesco has waded into a furore by advertising a job for a night shift worker… with no paid wages. The company stated that it would pay Jobseekers Allowance, plus expenses – presumably meaning the worker in question would be paid for the honour of travelling to the store and back, plus something to eat while there.
After an extremely angry reaction on Twitter, Tesco has been quick to amend its advert, claiming that it was actually intended to be for someone seeking ‘work experience’.
In my view, this isn’t really much more palatable. True, many people need to get more work experience in order to find paid work – but this kind of role is not really a huge amount of use in that respect, when compared to more skilled trades. A hugely wealthy company such as Tesco can easily afford to pay all its workers – and one might argue that those working antisocial hours deserve a wage which reflects such a role’s inconvenience.
There is a guaranteed job interview at the end of the work experience period, as part of a government scheme – but many companies offer this kind of incentive at the end of a temporary paid contract, and there are no guarantees of a real opportunity in Tesco’s case. In short, it is rather distasteful.
All organisations, large and small, need to be extremely careful they are not blurring the line between teaching valuable skills and exploiting free labour.
Comments are closed.