Fas work placement or legalised free labour?

97i9y3941

Right i see more of this crap being posted on the fas website,shops and businesses offering loads of hours and all sorts of jobs whilst you get out of bed and go in and do work for free whilst getting the dole,and yes i know some people find this benefit and most find it an exploit of free labour,anyways i love the way the FF maestros must had a word in the ear from the industry for a nice donation and support to bring this free labour scheme in,so the question i ask,is the wpp serving purpose or is it just free use of labour in order to force people to work for less?

RichardAnd

This has come up here before.

My opinion of the WPP is that it is something that will work for some people but in general, will be misused to hire "free staff".

TO be honest, I'm dubious of pretty much everything FAS do. A friend of mine did a course of theirs on the Java programming language and whilst it did teach him a little bit, in my opinion he could have learned more about computer programming by typing "Java tutorial" into Google and doing it himself.

Tipp Man

Everybody should be made "work" for the dole IMO

Why give people free money when others have to work to earn their crust??

Drake66

People doing these schemes are looking for experience ffs. What is wrong with that? In the U.S there is no problem with people working to get experience but here you get all of the bureaucratic red-hat union lunatics jumping up and down.

munstergirl

Free money, or being on the dole can be very depressing,
Job hunting + not even getting a reply.
Wpp maybe for charity shop or some good cause might be a good idea.
Working in supervalue or other companies who hire wpp for 0.00 is not helping anyone or the economy.
It just make less paying jobs available even min wage. It does not take people of the dole,
There are plenty of unemployed people in ireland with enough work experience, they just want a job that pays.

Drake66

And what if you can't get a job that pays because firms can't pay people? There is no blooming conspiracy against the working man/woman. What there is, is a massive economic depression.

munstergirl

While the leaders of ireland continue to get paid more than obama, politicians like willy o'dea get 100k pension, bankers gets bonus, i could go on.
I would never work for 0.00. I would not even apply for a wpp job.

20Cent

The taxpayer subsidising industry once again.
Never hear about the corporate welfare scroungers in the media.

SeaFields

I saw a job advertised the other day. Ticked every box for me...the degrees i had, the skills, the interests i hold. Final line in the advertisement was "this is an unpaid internship for a period of 12 months."

What the fcuk do i live on? i have a part time job in a shop at the mo (two days a week) that pays the bills.

Even if it was at minimum wage at least i could feed myself and pay back the loans i took out to pay for university.

danbohan

munstergirl wrote: »

While the leaders of ireland continue to get paid more than obama, politicians like willy o'dea get 100k pension, bankers gets bonus, i could go on.
I would never work for 0.00. I would not even apply for a wpp job.

the leaders of this country are overpaid , our public service are overpaid , our unemployed are overpaid,
you should not be given a choice , do a wpp job or starve . why should anybody support you , thats whats wrong with this country , it should be like USA , 5 years benefits max and /or food stamps
a lot self employed and small business are now earning less than unemployment benefit provides!

RichardAnd

The least time this was discussed, the term "Celtic Club" came up an awful lot. What it refereed to was younger people who can't get jobs but who don't want to do the WPP.

I don't have any great love to the young people of ireland as they have been spoiled for the last 10 years when the country was awash with money and I am not a socialist. However, some one who works 40 hours a week deserves a wage. Wanting to get paid is not a "celtic club" attitude, wanting to get paid 50k+ a year is.

As an above poster already pointed out, the WPP is being abused by businesses who want people to clean their floors for free. This keeps people on the dole, inhibits the creation of jobs and is not going to help. There is alot to be said for making people on the dole work for their keep but at the same time, allowing employers to offer jobs with no salary is not a good solution.

And for the record, I am not unemployed so I have nothing to loose or gain from the WPP. As I said earlier, I have a low opinion of FAS and with the WPP, they have not done anything to make me think otherwise.

munstergirl

Work for wpp or starve OUCH!
I.ll tell you what when our politicans, work 9 months for 0.00 + survive i.ll do the same.
Luckily i saved for a rainy day so cut off my dole,
Thankfully i didn't buy an overpriced celtic tiger house either.

Flamed Diving

Fred83 wrote: »

do work for free whilst getting the dole

The dole is some means of non-payment? Zero gain transfer? Is the dole some type of loss?

Please explain.

97i9y3941

Flamed Diving wrote: »

The dole is some means of non-payment? Zero gain transfer? Is the dole some type of loss?

Please explain.

i think people be more interested to work then if it paid more than the dole,theres been accounts here of not much work being actually created through the wpp..

Flamed Diving

Fred83 wrote: »

i think people be more interested to work then if it paid more than the dole,theres been accounts here of not much work being actually created through the wpp..

Ok, so it's not really work for free though, is it? I reckon it is a decent opportunity for recent graduates/youths, considering that the unemployment rate amongst that group is 30% and rising. We cannot wave a magic wand and have jobs appear overnight, and all through this process, one-third of our nations youth has a giant black hole of work experience in their lives.

It seems you would prefer this?

max 73

i agree, some business/companies are taking advantage of this

how about the business/company pay the equivelant of the dole to workers.....

example:

person on dole of €196/week applies and secures a wpp or possibly full-time work, the business that employed them pays the same €196/week (which works out just below a €5/hr - a decent rate to pay if you're an employer!!)

this gives the person €392/week with the amount from the wpp being taxable, this would solve some of the issues in the short term, with tax being paid by the wpp person and once it can be demonstrated that the employer can reasonably keep this person in employment after 12 months, the person comes off the dole and is paid the €392/week by the employer

short term pain for possible long term gain

ROTTING CHRIST

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Ok, so it's not really work for free though, is it? I reckon it is a decent opportunity for recent graduates/youths, considering that the unemployment rate amongst that group is 30% and rising. We cannot wave a magic wand and have jobs appear overnight, and all through this process, one-third of our nations youth has a giant black hole of work experience in their lives.

It seems you would prefer this?

What is the point of these graduates gaining experience if there's no jobs available for them (partly because of this scheme itself!) to apply for?

The truth is, this scheme is being widely abused by companies and the flow of money is moving into private company directors pockets and out of the state.

When a company genuinely needs a new staff member, why would they pay them €20000/year when they can pay them €0/year through this scheme? When that staff member finishes their 9 months, what's to stop the company hiring another €0/year staff member? All the while the state continues losing money in 2 ways, 1. Paying the dole recipients, and 2. Lack of PAYE coming in from a genuine staff member being employed.

Flamed Diving

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

What is the point of these graduates gaining experience if there's no jobs available for them (partly because of this scheme itself!) to apply for?

Fine, let them rot. How much did it cost the state to educate these people? And for nothing. Shame.

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

The truth is, this scheme is being widely abused by companies and the flow of money is moving into private company directors pockets and out of the state.

What money?

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

When a company genuinely needs a new staff member, why would they pay them €20000/year when they can pay them €0/year through this scheme? When that staff member finishes their 9 months, what's to stop the company hiring another €0/year staff member? All the while the state continues losing money in 2 ways, 1. Paying the dole recipients, and 2. Lack of PAYE coming in from a genuine staff member being employed.

I don't think the companies need the staff. Aggregate demand has collapsed. They are just giving young people work experience, like internships.

CoalBucket

If a charity have people working for them under a wpp then the person doing the work should only be getting the same rate as the JSB or JSA. However If a company are taking people on for the benefit of the company i.e. making profits, they should contribute some renumeration for their staff even if they are there under a wpp.

Whilst some work experience can be beneficial to the person on the wpp, the companies "employing" them are getting the greater benefit.

If a company cannot afford to pay staff they should not be in business. Lots of companies are abusing the wpp system in order to get "free" staff and therefore managing to get their work done while still maintaining the unemployment figures.

IMHO.

ROTTING CHRIST

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Fine, let them rot. How much did it cost the state to educate these people? And for nothing. Shame.



What money?

On your first point: It probably cost the state in the region of the €20k-30k to educate those people at 3rd level. I'm not sure if you quite understand how this scheme works but now, through this scheme, it is costing the state an additional €10k/year in jobseekers allowance payments rather than the graduate paying the state back through PAYE/PRSI by working in a proper job.

On your second point: The money that the company owners are saving by not having to pay staff! The money that this bankrupt state is giving the graduate in jobseekers payments! At the end of the day, staff help make profits for companies. If they didn't then companies wouldn't have any staff. That money is going into company owners pockets while the jobseekers payments continue to come out of the states pockets. It doesn't make sense for a bankrupt state to participate in this sort of activity.

And on your last point: I don't believe they are all aggregate positions at all. In fact I'd say only a tiny minority are. The evidence is there in that a lot of low paid IT positions that existed before this scheme have disappeared, and a huge number of entry-level IT positions now exist on this scheme. There was another thread on this subject where lots of jobs which required very specific experience (e.g. CCNA, N+, etc qualified) was required! E.g.

Junior Security Engineer/IT Security (WPP1)

Job Reference: JB520042 Description:
Areas of Activity:Telephone support for firewall products training provided. Elements of Experience:IT Security, firewall troubleshooting, checkpoint training, juniper training. Person Specification:CCNA(ICN01/ICN02) course graduate. Excellent customer service skills. Good TCP/IP core knowledge. Fluent English, Flexible to work shifts.


Working shifts? TCP/IP knowledge? CCNA certified? That isn't some kind-hearted gesture by the company to offer graduates experience, that's someone looking for free staff. There's plenty more examples of these (over 1000 in fact) on fas.ie

Think about it logically yourself, if you were a company owner and could get skilled people to work for free, or alternatively give them €20000 for a years work, which would you choose? Which would make your company more profitable?

Flamed Diving

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

On your first point: It probably cost the state in the region of the €20k-30k to educate those people at 3rd level. I'm not sure if you quite understand how this scheme works but now, through this scheme, it is costing the state an additional €10k/year in jobseekers allowance payments rather than the graduate paying the state back through PAYE/PRSI by working in a proper job.

What proper job? So let's scrap the scheme, the state now doesn't pay these unemployed people money? Tell me how this all works.

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

On your second point: The money that the company owners are saving by not having to pay staff! The money that this bankrupt state is giving the graduate in jobseekers payments! At the end of the day, staff help make profits for companies. If they didn't then companies wouldn't have any staff. That money is going into company owners pockets while the jobseekers payments continue to come out of the states pockets. It doesn't make sense for a bankrupt state to participate in this sort of activity.

Ok, how is it leaving the country? Repatriated profits? Aside from the tax we pull in from this, why is it a bad thing for companies to be making extra profit, even if it means unemployed people are allowed to work for them, cost free, for a finite period? These people are going to be unemployed anyway. Otherwise this whole recession thing wouldn't be real. Do you get it? Let me break it down:

• The state will pay the unemployed, regardless
• The unemployed youth (30% and rising) require work experience
• The company, which weren't seeking staff, give this youth the experience

Easy.

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

And on your last point: I don't believe they are all aggregate positions at all.

Aggregate Demand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregate_demand

Translation. People ain't buying stuff, so firms ain't hiring.

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

Think about it logically yourself, if you were a company owner and could get skilled people to work for free, or alternatively give them €20000 for a years work, which would you choose? Which would make your company more profitable?

Well, I am only advocating this on the basis that it is offered to young people. Graduates. Under-23s, and that. No skilled people (apart from what they learn at college).

It has no use for skilled people, IMO.

Tipp Man

Tipp Man wrote: »

Everybody should be made "work" for the dole IMO

Why give people free money when others have to work to earn their crust??

Ive no problem with that. I do take issue with who you work for.

State pays you - you should work for the state
Work for a business and the business should pay you.


We are running out of money, and what are gonna do now? Have the state pay private sector wages too?

Madness

Tipp Man

Deleted User wrote: »

Ive no problem with that. I do take issue with who you work for.

State pays you - you should work for the state
Work for a business and the business should pay you.


We are running out of money, and what are gonna do now? Have the state pay private sector wages too?

Madness

Well i agree, I don't want to see the state pay for somebody to stack shelves down in centra or whereever

But there is plenty of community work that needs to be done that simply isn't being done, get people out there and put them to work

RichardAnd

ROTTING CHRIST wrote: »

Junior Security Engineer/IT Security (WPP1)

Job Reference: JB520042 Description:
Areas of Activity:Telephone support for firewall products training provided. Elements of Experience:IT Security, firewall troubleshooting, checkpoint training, juniper training. Person Specification:CCNA(ICN01/ICN02) course graduate. Excellent customer service skills. Good TCP/IP core knowledge. Fluent English, Flexible to work shifts.


Working shifts? TCP/IP knowledge? CCNA certified? That isn't some kind-hearted gesture by the company to offer graduates experience, that's someone looking for free staff. There's plenty more examples of these (over 1000 in fact) on fas.ie

Think about it logically yourself, if you were a company owner and could get skilled people to work for free, or alternatively give them €20000 for a years work, which would you choose? Which would make your company more profitable?

Good find Rotting Christ. My job isn't a million miles away from this but my boss has the decency to pay me for my service. People can call this experience and call people lazy for not doing it but this is looking to fill a gap for free.

danman

RichardAnd wrote: »

Good find Rotting Christ. My job isn't a million miles away from this but my boss has the decency to pay me for my service. People can call this experience and call people lazy for not doing it but this is looking to fill a gap for free.

Let me ask a question.

Did you have any experiance prior to getting this job?
If not, did you get this job in the past 2 years, since the start of the downturn?

If you got this job before the downturn, you do realise we had almost full employment. Employers were desperate for employees.

Not so now.

An employer will always choose the best, most qualified and most experianced candidate.

If 5 candidates apply for a job, all of them have the same qualifications, but one of them has experiance.
Which candidate will the employer choose?

This isn't rocket science.
We want to attract overseas companies to set up here again. We say that our biggest selling point is the amount of well qualified candidates.
Yet, if none of them have experience, why would the company invest here.

If you don't want to take up work experiance opportunities, good luck to you. I wish you all well in your careers.

If you do take up work experiance, I hope it stands you well. I know it stood me well when I did a years experiance nearly 20 years ago. I've been lucky to have had continous employment ever since. Built on the foundation of the experiance I received.

97i9y3941

danman wrote: »

If you don't want to take up work experiance opportunities, good luck to you. I wish you all well in your careers.

If you do take up work experiance, I hope it stands you well. I know it stood me well when I did a years experiance nearly 20 years ago. I've been lucky to have had continous employment ever since. Built on the foundation of the experiance I received.

but isnt that a double edge sword,instance,you might have experience but might be passed over in interview because lack of paperwork in education ?

alias141282

Drake66 wrote: »

People doing these schemes are looking for experience ffs. What is wrong with that? In the U.S there is no problem with people working to get experience but here you get all of the bureaucratic red-hat union lunatics jumping up and down.

Well one problem with it is that it goes against the merit principle. Not everyone can afford to work for nothing. Those from wealthy backgrounds can afford to do all kinds of internships and work experience to buff up their CV while those who have loans to pay after coming out of college cannot.

alias141282

danman wrote: »

If you do take up work experiance, I hope it stands you well. I know it stood me well when I did a years experiance nearly 20 years ago. I've been lucky to have had continous employment ever since. Built on the foundation of the experiance I received.

Yeah work experience is good in general. The problem is that companies are now hiring people to do work on "work experience programmes", where 2 or 3 years ago they would have paid someone for this work. They are taking advantage of the situation, and who could blame them you might say? However, this does set a precident and it is obviously open to abuse. Someone could work for 12 months with no gaurantee of a job. Or even two years.

When you go to another company looking for a job they won't rate your "experience" very highly when they find out this was unpaid work. It shows your previous employer didn't value whatever it was you were doing very highly if he felt he could get someone to do the job for nothing.

danman

alias141282 wrote: »

When you go to another company looking for a job they won't rate your "experience" very highly when they find out this was unpaid work. It shows your previous employer didn't value whatever it was you were doing very highly if he felt he could get someone to do the job for nothing.

I would dissagree with that.

Again if I use the 5 candidate scenario.

5 candidates, 4 were out of work for 1 year on Job seekers.
1 of the four worked for the same money on an experiance scheme.

Which would the employer give the job to?

The 4 that sat and waited or the 1 that got out and made use of his/her time?

I'm going to stay out of this thread, the previous one started to get ridiculous.
There will be companies trying it on, but the majority will be offering good experiance that cannot be gained on job seekers.

Flamed Diving

alias141282 wrote: »

Yeah work experience is good in general. The problem is that companies are now hiring people to do work on "work experience programmes", where 2 or 3 years ago they would have paid someone for this work. They are taking advantage of the situation, and who could blame them you might say? However, this does set a precident and it is obviously open to abuse. Someone could work for 12 months with no gaurantee of a job. Or even two years.

When you go to another company looking for a job they won't rate your "experience" very highly when they find out this was unpaid work. It shows your previous employer didn't value whatever it was you were doing very highly if he felt he could get someone to do the job for nothing.

You contradicted yourself slightly here. Can you see where?

Anyway, I'm not sure what reference you are pulling these scenarios from, but you aren't making any sense with the reality I have experienced, that much I can say. Just because you put experience in ironic inverted commas does not mean that it is not experience, and your assertion that employers would not find the experience gained by a graduate useful, simply because they were not paid for it, as if this somehow reduces any of the skills obtained during this time, not only doesn't make any sense, but also renders internships a complete waste of time. Judging by how my college peers fared in seeking employment, I can tell you that it was those that were in summer internships that got the best jobs.

But yet, in your world, this scenario plays out:

Employer: ' Hello there Mr. Diving, I see you graduated a year ago and have spent the last six months on a work placement programme with a trading company, working with quantitative analysts. You got first-hand experience of running various autoregressive models and expanded your abilities with database software and programming languages. However, since you were not paid for it, all these extra skills gained were for nothing, since your employer clearly didn't value your work, by not paying you a salary, even though this was the agreed term of your work placement. You will not be getting the job, and I will instead give it to one of the members of your graduating class, who simply spent the last year gaining no further skills, and doesn't seem to recall much of what he learned during your MA. Good day'

Right...

alias141282

danman wrote: »

I would dissagree with that.

Again if I use the 5 candidate scenario.

5 candidates, 4 were out of work for 1 year on Job seekers.
1 of the four worked for the same money on an experiance scheme.

Which would the employer give the job to?

The 4 that sat and waited or the 1 that got out and made use of his/her time?

I'm going to stay out of this thread, the previous one started to get ridiculous.
There will be companies trying it on, but the majority will be offering good experiance that cannot be gained on job seekers.

Yes but it will now become standard that people have to work for a year or two for nothing to gain experience. Its yet another transfer of wealth away from workers to employers.

maninasia

They don't work for nothing, what's worse is the government actually pays for it.

Communist state.

RichardAnd

My solution to this would be that the employer doesn't get the staff for free, rather, they have to pay the equivalent of what the person was getting before they started working for them.

For example, I'm on the dole and I get a WPP job with company ABC. Well the 200 a week I was getting from the state would instead be paid by mr ABC. This would take someone off the dole, give them the experience they probably need and it would have the added bonus of driving down the minimum wage.

Granted, this would be abused too but the employer wouldn't be getting staff for free, they would be getting staff for a reduced rate of pay which would discourage alot of the spongers.

Ultimately though, I don't see the WPP as a good thing. I agree fully with other posters that working is better than sitting on the dole for a year and I know a few people who should be sent out working for their keep but, it is being abused as it is. Honestly, if I wanted an unpaid internship, I wouldn't find it too hard to get one by contacting a few companies.

maninasia

This is exactly what most countries do to get new graduates working, employer must provide some funds. FAS are corrupt and useless and so is the party behind them.

Flamed Diving

RichardAnd wrote: »

Honestly, if I wanted an unpaid internship, I wouldn't find it too hard to get one by contacting a few companies.

What of recent graduates?

RichardAnd

Flamed Diving wrote: »

What of recent graduates?

They could probably do the same. It's unpaid, so the company are not losing anything by taking the person on. Providing the graduate is not a total toon and can be trusted, then many companies might say yes to such a request. In the united states, this is a common practice and I've been an intern myself (though my employer did pay me).

Flamed Diving

RichardAnd wrote: »

They could probably do the same.

Unfortunately not. Many companies have cancelled their internship programmes for the foreseeable future. Paid and unpaid. This seems to have occurred across most fields. Times have changed.

RichardAnd wrote: »

It's unpaid, so the company are not losing anything by taking the person on. Providing the graduate is not a total toon and can be trusted, then many companies might say yes to such a request. In the united states, this is a common practice and I've been an intern myself (though my employer did pay me).

I assume you were an intern during the good days. As I said, times have changed. Youth unemployment is currently 30%, and a whole new wave of graduates is about to join them on the dole queue and in despondency.

RichardAnd

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Unfortunately not. Many companies have cancelled their internship programmes for the foreseeable future. Paid and unpaid. This seems to have occurred across most fields. Times have changed.



I assume you were an intern during the good days. As I said, times have changed. Youth unemployment is currently 30%, and a whole new wave of graduates is about to join them on the dole queue and in despondency.

Assume away but you're wrong. I was a paid intern for 6 months in 2009, right before I graduated and got a job. Granted, I graduated in the Software Engineering field which is very much alive.

You are right though, it's hard for graduates to get a job and many people coming out of colleges with degrees are facing long term unemployment.

jank

As with everything in the country we do things arseways.
Work experience always has merit. Especially when graduates don't have experience in their field. However, the horse seems to have bolted on this one. There are loads of companies out there taking advantage of this. I have heard of jobs being offered whose salary has been cut in half or even down to nothing to get passed on a WPP scheme. These said jobs wanted people with experience AND IT certs. Meanwhile those how have 10+ years experience are now trying to compete on paper at least with those willing to work for nothing or next to nothing. The market is totally distorted thus because of this.

As I said work experience is good and always has merit but this is Ireland where things are always fcuked up and done arseways.

FAS should be disbanded and replaced.

RichardAnd

jank wrote: »

As with everything in the country we do things arseways.
Work experience always has merit. Especially when graduates don't have experience in their field. However, the horse seems to have bolted on this one. There are loads of companies out there taking advantage of this. I have heard of jobs being offered whose salary has been cut in half or even down to nothing to get passed on a WPP scheme. These said jobs wanted people with experience AND IT certs. Meanwhile those how have 10+ years experience are now trying to compete on paper at least with those willing to work for nothing or next to nothing. The market is totally distorted thus because of this.

As I said work experience is good and always has merit but this is Ireland where things are always fcuked up and done arseways.

FAS should be disbanded and replaced.

Words of wisdom. And I agree with you, FAS is a joke.