Jobbridge organised so employer doesn't have to train,pay or hire intern(See contract

sweettooth14

I am a graduate doing an internship in a company who spends the working day doing data entry in a supposed technical role. When I asked my boss about training to develop my skills he said he did not have to provide training and told me to read the Jobbridge contract.

This is the same contract that cleaning interns, management interns, legal and accountancy interns sign. The employer is under no obligation to provide any training. I have enclosed the Jobbridge Standard Agreement in the link below that every intern signs. It never mentions training once. I mentioned the lack of training to the woman from Jobbridge that does ‘checks’ on the internship and she said internships are about work experience not on the job training or developing skills. So, I spend my days doing data entry for free. The website www.jobbridge.ie never mentions ‘on the job’ training ‘. Even if interns tell this to Jobbridge, Jobbridge tell you that you can leave if you want to. They don’t want to know. For Jobbridge Contract all interns sign see link:
http://deadbeatdolehead.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/jobbridge-standard-agreement.pdf

Also, interns seem to make up a large amount of the workforce in many departments. In my department we have 3 interns and 3 staff members. Also, none of the interns seem to have been hired by the company- though one intern did manage to get a couple of days paid work while they were waiting for the next intern to start. FAS and the Department of Labour are just turning a blind eye. The scheme is set up so as the employer does not have to pay, develop your skills or hire the intern.

sligoface

Yep. Job bridge is probably the worst answer to an unemployment crisis that any one could ever come up with. Replace paid jobs with free workers, replace the unemployed's job seeking time with full time hours of doing menial tasks for a host company, then put them back on the dole when they are not offered a job by the host company and can't get one anywhere else because they have not acquired any skills from the host company, can only do menial tasks which,in most cases would still get them a low paid job but not any more because companies can avail of interns to fill those positions. Only in Ireland could this be a solution to unemployment, seriously, such a boneheaded government we have here.

hawkeye_bmr

I totally agree with your answer, sligoface.

3 years of job hunting after my degree, countless amounts of C.V.s send out and numerous applications for work on job bridge. All for nothing.

I got fed up wasting time applying for this unpaid, unappreciated work to headed off to Australia. 3 days in the country and I had my white card, next day I had a job laboring, 3 days later I had a job doing vinyl graphics, 3 days after that I had a job on a feedlot doing my 3 months regional work, 1 day after that I got my current job as an engineering draughtsman where I'm in the process of sponsorship.

All in all, the only time I haven't worked since arriving in Oz are the few days I spent adjusting to the timezone and a few weeks holidays I had off over Christmas!