Where I have a problem is large companies using unpaid labour to carry out functions essential to their operations as a way of cost-cutting. All this does is increase the profits for their shareholders on the back of unpaid workers. If a large company needs the work done, they should employ people to do it. Given the choice of a free worker or one they have to pay, which one do you think they will choose?
I have no problem with work experience being carried out in charities and voluntary organisations or with councils etc. However, we also have a major problem with people who have been chucked of Incapacity Benefit, landing them on the heap of unemployed, yet they are unfit for work. For example, what work can you send an agoraphobic to do when they can't even get out their front door? Therehave been cases of people instructed to walk a certain distance at their medical examinations who have had to be taken to hospital because they collapsed while trying, yet have subsequently declared "fit" for work.There's even been a case where the building used for medical examinations has no disabled access, resulting in people failing to turn up because they can't get in and so declared fit, or they have got out of wheelchairs and used crutches to negotiate the entrance while their helper bumps the wheelchair up the steps. Unbeknownst, they have been observed doing this as part of their medical and declared able to walk and fit for work.
Did you know that the medics who carry out these medicals are paid a bonus for every person they get off disability and on toJobseekers' Allowance? A friend was forced off disability because his stammer wasn't bad enough, according to the medic who examined him. The problem is that my friend's disability had absolutely nothing to do with a stammer - he'd never stammered in his life! It took him a year to sort that out, meanwhile he couldn't claim Jobseekers because the Job Centre and his GP considered him unfit for work. By the time he won his appeal he had lost his home and of course he was never reimbursed for all of the money he should have received.
If the big multinationals were forced to employ people to do work, rather than offered slave labour, we might see a drop in the unemployment figures. Instead, they just move on from one slave to the next, with very few obtaining a job at the end of their placement, since it benefits the employer to get another work experience person in their place.
Sorry if this is partially off-topic, but there is a link between current policy on disability and the number of unemployed.
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