I am going to tell you a story. Last week a girl came for interview for a job in the store where I work. It's a ten employyee 7-11 store with a manager, and is part of a bigger, but still local group of buisinesses. She was interviewed by the HR manager and our shop manager who both liked her. The job was a 30+ hr shop assistant role carrying payment at the national minnimum wage rate - about £6.10 per hour.

The HR manager contacted the shop owner who is involved in the overall buisiness group management and said that she and our shop manager were happy that the girl was a good candidate and requested permission to offer her the position. He was happy with their decision but requested for the girls CV to be faxed over for him to check out before an offer was made. Ten minutes later he was back on the phone saying yes - this girl would be ok, but he noted that she had previousely done an 'apprentiship' (ie worked for 6 months for half pay - £3 per hour) in another retail establishment. "Offer her the position, but only as an apprentiship." he instructed. My manager and the HR manager were dumbstruck. The girl had come for a full time fully paid interview, had all but got the job, but the moment the owner saw that she could be coerced into taking the position at half pay the goal posts changed and so did the deal.

So we have a situation here where once again the employer demonstrates insufficient integrity to be given responsibility for an employee's hiring, where a girls having already been used once as cheap labour is used as reason to coerce her into doing the same a second time - remember, if she turns the offer down she will loose her benefits anyway - and if she won't take the job on half pay, the offer wil be withdrawn. She is effectively locked into a spiral of employment abuse that will continue untill she finds an employer with the integrity to offer her proper employment at the proper rate of pay. She has demonstrated her worth time over time by turning up for work at half pay, yet there is no interest in protecting her from the kind of abuse outlined above. She's on benefits - she's fair game. Shame on us - shame on all of us for letting it happen.

And this brings me to my next point - why do we let it happen. Why am I for instance, not writing to my local paper, harangueing my MP, shouting from the roof-tops about this abuse. The answer is fear. I'm afraid if I make a song and dance then it will get back to my employers and I will be for the chop. Say my MP agree's with the 'work experience' scheme's that make such abuse possible. It ain't rocket science to get back from an e mail adress to an individual if you've got the clout of an MP so fear stays my hand. But make no mistake - this type of thing is going on up and down the country by the tens of thousands in small buisiness setups not affected by the kind of bad publicity that drove Tesco's and many other big concerns to come out of the scheme's. And so here I shout, annonymously, at the top of my voice "Somebody - Anybody -do something!" You see if people like me don't care enough to write blogs like this, and people like you don't care enough to take the trouble to read them - then how does true information about what is really happening at the bottom end of the employment ladder ever reach those in a position of power to do something about it.