New ‘Work Placement Experience Programme’ Set To Be JobBridge 2.0
People Before Profit have criticised the government’s proposed new ‘Work Placement Experience Programme’, dubbing it ‘JobBridge 2.0’.
PBP Employment Rights and Social Protection spokesperson, Paul Murphy TD, said it amounts to a ‘free labour scheme’ and where workers will be getting ‘less than the PUP’ and ‘living below the poverty line’.
At a press conference today the Government announced the new Work Placement Experience Programme will see the state pay those taking part €306 a week, which is €103 above Jobseekers Allowance but €44 less than the maximum PUP payment.
Employers will not pay the workers anything, but the workers will be expected to work 30 hours a week, meaning the extra top up amounts to under €3.50 an hour from the Department for six months.
There are currently no extra details about what companies will be able to qualify for the scheme or if there will be any protections to ensure jobs are not being displaced.
In a statement Paul Murphy TD, who founded the successful ScamBridge campaign against JobBridge in 2012, said:
“With Covid the government was forced to accept that people need at least €350 a week to get by.
Now they are proposing to push people to work for even less than that.
They are expecting people to work for less than €3.50 an hour, without even a guarantee of a job at the end of it.
Worse still, this scheme actually discourages companies from creating real jobs.
Why would they create a real job, when they could get someone in on this at no cost to the company whatsoever?
There is no reference to any quality check on the type of placements which employers can advertise - will we see the return of work experience placements such as sandwich artists or forecourt attendants?
In fact there is a complete lack of detail in the announcement today about how this scheme will be monitored, and what will happen to companies found to be abusing it.
The government's own review of JobBridge found that one major problem was that companies could easily displace existing jobs with these exploitation schemes.
The Indecon report they commissioned criticised the scheme for imposing no cost on those companies taking part.
Yet the government is ignoring all that, and pushing ahead with a new JobBridge 2.0 scheme.
Instead of this exploitation scam what we need is a real jobs programme, creating thousands of Green jobs and genuine apprenticeships.”
