Is work experience exploitation?

When you are a child, complex issues are often greeted with the phrase: "Don't worry, you’ll understand when you’re older."

But even when you become an adult matters remain confusing. Especially if you are young and trying to get a job.

There are now more than a million young people unemployed in Britain – with more than 20% of 16-24 year olds not in employment or education.

That means when you leave school or university you’re not just fighting with people in your year for the few jobs available, you’re fighting with people in the year above you, and the year above them and the other 2.67million people looking for jobs in Britain at the moment.

Which in desperate times leads to desperate measures.

Student Hugh Chadwick resorted to clutching a cardboard sign at a busy road junction in Birmingham for days on end before finding out this week he had clinched a position with an engineering company.

For the 20-year-old it was important to work. And for society to function it is important for the young to be able to go out and get a job.

[Related story: Record high in youth unemployment]

Not only does it give us money with which to buy goods and services but it also binds us to an ethic which will provide for us throughout our lives.

And it is against this backdrop that a variety of initiatives have been put forward by Government ministers.

So it is right that they should do all they can to avoid the energy and ideas of a generation being drained away by an economy that doesn’t work for them, even when they’re willing to work for it.

But the Coalition’s Work Experience scheme has been mired in controversy.
The scheme enables young jobseekers to work for a number of large companies in administrative, retail and technical jobs. As part of this they continue to earn their job-seekers' allowance by putting in 30 hours a week.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, writing in the Mail explained: “The thinking behind the initiative is the recognition that when considering whether to take a young person on, employers will highly value any relevant work experience.”

[Related story: Student bags job after desperate roadside placard-waving plea]

But in asking young (often highly educated) people to work for large companies for free, ministers are putting young people in a curious quandary.

Yes, they want to work but no, they don't want to feel as if they are being taken advantage of.

These types of work experience schemes used to be solely for competitive and desirable industries. Not jobs to give you the taste of doing a job.

But you have to start somewhere, right? Too many people believe in the myth of overnight success on display in shows like X Factor.

But what those same dreamers fail to understand is that even those who succeed there have put in years of hard work and practice before being 'discovered'.

No one succeeds in the long term without putting in the effort and we must build a base for industry where these temporary positions lead to well paid and meaningful jobs.

But if there is a responsibility on the young to take these positions, there is an ever greater responsibility on the companies that employ them to ensure they do not take advantage of the dire economic straits we find ourselves in.