Tesco Twitter storm lifts lid on number 'working for benefits'

AS FAIRYTALE career opportunities go, the job advert was right up there: a permanent position on a night shift at Tesco's superstore in Bury St Edmunds for which you would be paid precisely nothing but Jobseeker's Allowance and travel expenses.

The ensuing storm on Twitter yesterday morning quickly prompted a statement from the company blaming an IT glitch by Jobcentre Plus. The advert should have said it was an offer of work experience, not a permanent role. Apparently, more than 300 people have already gained employment at Tesco's through such government schemes, the company claimed.

Before the explanation came, one Tweeter had urged: "Everyone go out & steal from @UKTesco. If they challenge you, explain it's a Taste Experience Programme and 300+ food items have been bought."

At least the erroneous ad has helped shatter the surprising silence surrounding the growing number of young people working unpaid in the private sector.

Although some of the schemes have their roots in New Labour policy-making, the coalition has greatly expanded the programmes which effectively compel – through the threat of benefit suspensions – people to work for their welfare cheque.

Job centre advisors can demand claimants put in 30 hours per week of "mandatory work activity" (MWA) that is "of benefit to the community" for four weeks. Or they can ask people to do up to eight weeks of "work experience" with a guaranteed job interview (but not necessarily a job) at the end.

Originally, the thinking was that charities and the public sphere might be the obvious places for some jobless youngsters to learn lessons in "employability" (turning up, being polite etc.) Instead, some of the mightiest names in retail have led the way in creating a new model of private pseudo-employment – which some call "slave labour".

Argos, Asda, Maplin, TKMaxx, Matalan, Primark, Holland and Barrett, Boots, McDonald's, Burger King, Sir Phillip Green's Arcadia Group (owners of Topshop and Burton, amongst others) and of course Tesco – Britain's biggest private sector employer - have signed up.

Others, notably Waterstones and Sainsbury's, have pulled out, saying they do not want to undermine the principle of paid work. More will surely follow as bad PR stalks the programme, especially after yesterday's debacle.

Principles aside, there remain doubts about the scheme's usefulness. One 22-year-old graduate who worked at Waterstones - before they withdrew – told The Guardian recently how he was given "grunt jobs" that others would not touch, such as shifting entire sections of a book shop around. Another was known at his workplace as "our free one". 

Some complain that the exhausting manual work leaves them without the time or energy to apply for the sort of work their education had prepared them for – or that will offer the kind of rewards that will enable them to begin repaying their tuition fees.

The numbers working unpaid on coalition wheezes has grown surprisingly large. Some 34,200 have now gone through work experience; 250,000 will do so in the next three years. A total of 24,100, meanwhile, have undertaken MWA. Under the vaguely sinister-sounding Community Action Programme, planned for national rollout from 2013, the long-term unemployed will be compelled to work for no fewer than six months.

Notably, Tesco omitted to mention in yesterday's statement that while 300 may have gone on to gain employment in their supermarkets, a total of 1,400 had given the firm the benefit of their labour for free during the past three months.

Every little helps, of course. ·