Praetorian Marketing have discovered that the popular fast food chain Burger King has pulled out of the Governments ‘Get Britain Working’ scheme. The government campaign has been under scrutiny recently, and following the controversy and public concern, Burger King has decided they will no longer partake in the project.
The scheme sees jobseekers continue to collect benefits while working for ‘free’ for a business to gain work experience. The online page for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) states the following,
‘The Government is committed to fighting poverty; supporting the most vulnerable and helping people break the cycle of benefit dependency. As a result we have made significant reforms to the welfare-to-work programmes currently available to Jobcentre Plus customers. The Work Programme represents a step change for Welfare to Work in this country, creating a structure that treats people as individuals and allows providers greater freedom to tailor the right support to the individual needs of each claimant.'
It continues,
‘The Work Programme also ensures value for money for the taxpayer by basing payments largely on results, and paying service providers from the benefits saved from getting people into work. It is very much a partnership between Government and providers from across the public, private and third sectors’.
Burger King is reportedly not the only company to either pull out or voice growing concerns over the scheme in recent weeks. Companies who have expressed issues with the project are said to include the book shop Waterstones, Maplin, retail firm Matalan, supermarket giant Tesco and Argos amongst others.
Praetorian Marketing has been following the unemployment issues in the UK for some time, so were not surprised recently to find that graduates nowadays are as likely to be employed as 16 year old school leavers, (http://www.praetorianmarketing.co.uk/2012/02/graduates-just-as-likely-to-be-unemployed-as-16-year-old-school-leavers-praetorian-marketing-shocked-to-find/). Some of the issues regarding the ‘Get Britain working’ scheme have been attributed to what work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith brands as ‘work snobs’ or people who think they are too good for positions being offered. Forced to defend the scheme in light of its negative press he told the Daily Mail,
"Those critics waging a war against work experience also forget that some of this country's most successful businessmen and women started their careers on the shop floor. As well as betraying their ignorance and snobbery, our opponents have pathetically opted to use human rights laws, making claims about people being subjected by force to 'slave labour'."
A spokesperson for Praetorian Marketing commented,
“As a sales and marketing company specialising in client representation, we’re often looking for people to work alongside our company to help represent our clients. From recent experience talking to the unemployed, we have found that a lot of them are missing out on positions through lack of either experience or qualifications. In a lot of cases people require both experience and qualifications and a lot of people either have one or the other. Praetorian Marketing believe that whatever background a person comes from, if businesses took more time and effort to implement a training process for job applicants it would benefit all involved. More people would become employed, but also businesses would be more confident in knowing that the candidate has full knowledge of exactly what they need to do and when.”
