So whats it all about (returning to the earlier stuff about the 'work-experience' rip-off); why would a govornment (or indeed sucessive govornments irrespective of thier 'flavour') introduce a scheme that was so flawed in it's desighn, so (apparently) ill thought out in it's method of implementation that it could not but do fundamental damage to the very ideal of 'a fair days wage for a fair days work' that underpins our entire society.

Well the answer is that it wasn't always that way and there are some who would that it were not that way now.

Lets look at what this 'scheme' (and scheme is the right word here!) will do. As a quick aside can I just say that my employers have decided to employ as a work experience employee an 18yo lad who has worked for them on a casual basis for the past three years. He currently recieves £5.25 per hour (minimum wage for an 18yo) and does on average 30 hours a week. He is to be 'laid off'and then re-employed for 40 hours per week at £3 per hour having sighned on for 'job-seekers allowance'. He will recieve less money for more hours of work, the Job Centre, local college (who will 'asses' him as he performs the menial task he has been doing since he was fifteen) and my employers have all been complicit in 'aranging' this for him, and after a year of this indentured servitude he may be kept on in a full time roll. When I asked what he thought about the fact that he was being payed less money for more work his face looked troubled for a moment, but then brightened, "But I've got guarenteed hours each week" he beamed at me. I didn't have the heart to explain it to him.

Anyway - so we have a situation where any employer can replace existing workers as they leave, with work-experience workers at one third of the rate of the national minimum wage. They do not have to employ those workers at full wages at the end of thier work expperience term, nor is their any limit to the number they may employ. They can't sack existing workers - but neither do they have to make their remuneration or conditions any more comfortable to encourage them to stay. This of course places big downward pressure on wages both as the employer sees that he can get the same labour for a fraction of the price and the worker starts to fear for his position due to the ease and cheapness with which he can be replaced. Now what about working rotas. Well, the work-experience worker has to be given the 32 or 40 hours that his/her agreement stipulates and the boss is also going to be keen that this is the case since every hour of labour done by a work-experience worker only costs one third that of one hour done by a full time worker. So employees currently on a non contracted number of hours can expect to see their number of hours per week fall dramatically as those hours are given to the work experience worker. The boss of course will not expect to pay full rate for any hour that could be filled at work-experience rate.

Thus over time a 'rolling-out' will occor as more and more fully paid jobs are lost to the work-experience market - and ultimately the concept of a 'minimum wage' becomes meaningless. The Job Centres are happy - the work experience sheme is working and really helping to get people back to work, the colleges are happy - they get big bucks going around visiting the 'employees' in their work places to 'asses their progress'. The employer is very happy. He gets to employ labour at £2 per hour - next to nothing in real terms - and gets paid for the privelage of doing so! (did I forget to mention - he gets £1500 grant for every work-experience employee he employs). And the worker; well the worker gets to be employed in a menial job for six months or a year being paid next to nothing with no meaningfull qualification or prospect of a real job materealising at the end of it. Most likely he or she will go back onto benefits untill the next 'work-experience' position is forced upon them on the threat of loss of benefits if they fail to accept it.

This of course is not the only threat that low-end workers in the British economy face - and the next issue is a thorny old nut if ever there was one so lets ease into it with a bit of a history lesson. Believe it or not there was a time when people like you and me didn't used to get paid at all for our labour. We used to live as agricultual workers on the huge land holdings of the aristocracy and in return for working the land he would bung us a bit of the produce of our labours and allow us to live in a hut (that we built ourselves) on his land. The bulk of what we grew, he took for himself and sold for gold which he then kept. If we were lucky our particular lord was a good one and perhaps helped us if times were rough, or if we were unlucky he was a bastard. Then along came the plague and gave things a good old shake up. the main result was that so many labourers died that there wasn't enough left to work the land of all of the various Lords etc - and so they had to start competeing with each other to attract labour to their estates. They did this by offering gold in return for work - in other words wages! If Lord Buckingham was offering more than Lord Devonshire - then it was 'up sticks and I'm off'. All of a sudden the working man was in demand - he was needed for the first time in existence. Now take a good note of this - it's important. It was the level of available labour that determined the wage level that was paid for that labour. If labour was plentiful - then it was cheap! And vice versa, if it was in short supply then it was expensive.

Now to come up to date. We continually read in the papers about how much of a problem immigration is and see hand wringing politicians at there wits end trying to hold down the number of economic migrants entering the country. We get the old story on the one hand that 'we need the skills these people bring to our country' and on the other we hear that it's almost impossible to stem the tide of entrants (legal or otherwise) into the country. Rubbish, I say, on both counts. Since when was stacking shelves overnight in Tesco or cleaning in the local hospital a 'skill' that we couldn't grow at home. In respect of limiting the numbers of entrants into the country, if the will was there to do it, it could be done tomorrow. The truth of the matter is that there are vested interests in this country who do very well out of having a huge pool of available labour with it's attendant effects of downward pressure on wages and relaxation of employment conditions. Foriegn labour is both cheap and less strictly governed about how it must be treated (witness the fields of flower pickers and cockle harvesters that are bussed to and from their dingy digs to their unpleasant ond sometimes dangerous places of work and you will see what I mean). The higher unemployment is and the more at risk jobs appear, the less inclined people are to press for wage rises, to complain about terms and conditions and to refuse changes to their working practices that under normal circumstances they would never tolerate.

My wifes father was a clever man. A lifelong trade unionist and worker for the rights of his collegues at work, he once said to me "Don't ever believe that the improvement of conditions and pay seen for workers after the war were the result of Trade Union activity alone." The monied classes at the top end of society at the time were,he said, terrified that the country would go the same way as that of much of the rest of Europe and move toward Communism. It was deliberate policy by the controlling powers of the day to 'cut the workers some slack' in terms of improving pay and conditions in order to 'let off some steam' as it were and reduce the likelyhood of an all out 'revolution' in which they would loose everything they had taken generations to amass. So when McMillan said "You've never had it so good" it was to this he was refering - and he was telling the truth; but it was never meant to last.

There has been, and probably always will be a section of society for whom the level at which the mass of the populace is able to currently live is way too high. That working men and women should be able to own their own homes, drive arround in cars and fly around the world visiting parts that were once the exclusive domain of the rich, is to them anathema. We hear more and more in the press and on TV the patronising voices of politician's saying (like teachers to naughty scool children) "We're all living above our means and sooner or later it's got to stop". What they of course mean is 'You', not 'We' at all. What we are witnessing is the readjustment of society back to it's old level of a smaller number of top enders who capitalise on the work of the masses who, in return for their efforts recieve the bare minimum needed for survival and no more. This, for many of our societies elite, is where the status quo should lie, and the pressures at work as outlined above are but means toward that end. This work will be slow and will not be achieved overnight, but vested interest is nothing if not patient. They measure their plans over generations not years. When Owen jones said in the Independant newspaper last week that "We are governed by the political wing of the wealthy" he was telling the truth indeed. And what's more - we always have been!