Government wrong to make graduate stack shelves, High Court rules
The government was wrong to require a graduate to leave her internship in a museum to stack shelves in a high street shop, a high court judge ruled today.
However, the government had not breached her human right to protection from slavery and forced labour, the judge also ruled.
The judgment, handed down today by Mr Justice Foskett, arose from a judicial review brought by Cait Reilly (pictured), first reported in the Gazette on 26 January.
The review challenged the Jobseeker’s Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme) Regulations 2011 that had obliged her to leave vocational work experience for a government back-to-work scheme that offered no training or prospect of advancement.
Foskett found that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had failed to comply with 4 (2) of the regulations, which required giving Reilly written details of the scheme, such as a start date, its duration and penalties for not participating.
This breach of the regulations meant the DWP had forfeited the power to require Reilly to take part in the scheme or to impose sanctions if she chose not to attend, Foskett ruled.
Foskett found, however, that the government work scheme had not breached article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights that prohibits slavery and forced labour. The scheme, unlike slavery, was designed to help the unemployed to find employment and was ‘a very long way removed from the kind of colonial exploitation of labour that led to the formulation of article 4’, he said.
Comments
So if they had sent her a
So if they had sent her a letter with the details they would have been fine, and provided they do so they can act in the same way in future. A technicality rather than any grand principle.
Mr. Gradgrind is back !
"Working in a museum eh ? What profit`s in that ? What money`s in that ? What shareholder would plough their fortune into a-a-museum ? Ol`bones and the like . Now a shop, a respectable vendor of comestibles (give or take the odd tax-avoidance measure) .Very different, very different . Now there`s a future for any young personage seeking to make their way in the world. And they get to learn all about profit n` loss and stock control real easy see? But a museum ? Messin about with a pile of bones Sir ! Not a fruitful occupation by any measure Sir !
Foskett
Whether or not "The scheme, unlike slavery, was designed to help the unemployed to find employment" is surely arguable.
It is designed to help them
It is designed to help them find employment, though maybe not the employment they would most like.
Designed ?
The word "design" conjures up visions of a scientific strategy based on exhaustive actuarial research and testing, with the advancement of good governance and a healthy civil society at its heart.
I suggest that "cooked up to save money and make unemployment statistics look better at the expense of the vulnerable" is a far more accurate description.
Shelf Abuse
Employers will charitably attempt to assume that new graduates can be trained to become useful employees who will quickly learn to work without oversight. They further require to know two things. These are "Do they smell?" and "Are they nuts?"
Either can have a disruptive effect on an already-existing team. Thus the advantage to a new graduate of having been in any form of employment at all is that there's an employer ready to answer those two questions and thus hopefully assist the graduate into a career.
Of course in this particular case, the first assumption above appears to be cast into doubt by the graduate in question indicating that they require training and supervision merely to sweep up and stack shelves.
Shelf abuse
I am wondering what is wrong with stacking shelves. I recall my brother doing the same thing as a graduate engineering student and he is now a rocket scientist in the States.
I think Mike is right about the two questions in the context of a legal graduate, but the cynic in me wonders whether a third question might not be "are they an aspiring paralegal?" In which case stacking shelves might be a career high.....
Speak for yourself Mr
Speak for yourself Mr Justice.
However, the whole system is corrupt designed to corrupt young dreams and enrich the corruptors!
Government wrong to make graduate stack shelves, High Court rule
So the ECHR is not breached - which Article? 4. Well it's quite specific:
"No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
For the purpose of this article the term forced or compulsory labour' shall not include:
(a) any work required to be done in the ordinary course of detention imposed according to the provisions of Article 5 of this Convention or during conditional release from such detention;
(b) any service of a military character or, in case of conscientious objectors in countries where they are recognized, service exacted instead of compulsory military service;
(c) any service exacted in case of an emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community;
(d)
any work or service which forms part of normal civic obligations."
It is clear that (d) does not include workfare, so it beats me how as Judge could term its justification as 'common sense'. Does that perception have a legal definition?
Article 4 is absolute, there is no conditional clause as per Article 8, proportionality is not an issue nor the rights of others, health, morals etc
But no one appears to have raised the ILO Conventions which more specifically forbid forced or compulsory labour. I have been chasing DWP on this aspect via FoI. See:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ilo_conventions_and_work_fare_ty#incoming-291895
I think the key articles of the fundamental 1929 convention are nos 4-6:
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_095895.pdf
[pages 26/27]. I think it's clear enough, and in any further action one would suspect that the Courts would have a thin time of it if an ECHR A4 argument were backed by A4-6 of the said ILO Convention to which we are party, and I cannot find any derogation.
The DWP says that they have undertaken assessment against the ILO Conventions, so I've asked for evidence of that.
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Shelf stacking
The Governmnet is signed up to the UN Declaration that says 'it will do its utmost to make people healthy and improve their lives' so asking the person to get some direct work experience is perfectly acceptable at a time when rhere is a glut of lawyers and a lack of positions for them.
she now has the experience to become a Tescoite.
Stacking Shelves!
The government, or one rather like it came up with two particularly foolish ideas in recent years. One was to send hundreds of thousands of students to university to study for degres that had no vocational prospects and another that when armed with thses degrees they should go on half baked 'work experience' programmes.
Two questions spring from these rather absurd policies:
1. Why send students to study law when it has been common knowledge for years that there are huge numbers of law graduates who will never get near legal practice.
2. Why 'train' graduates and others to stack shelves when there are no jobs there either.
Incidentally before anyone chips in to say that students make their own choices there is little discouragement from law schools and very little realistic career advice given to those who are just not gonna make it!