The radical left seem to be mobilising again. The latest target: Tesco.
Why? Not because they don't like the food. It is because they don't like Tesco training people.
They are up in arms because Tesco employs trainees without paying them wages. They argue that these people should be paid minimum wage and get regular benefits.
What they don't seem to understand is that employers are not charities. Wages are not entitlements. Wages are paid according to the value of the work that the employee does for the employer. If an employee has no value they either have no work or they work for nothing.
These are not wage slaves. They are trainees. They are being taught how to work. Why should they be paid to receive training?
Is giving people a training job on no pay really fair? Are these employers treating people like unpaid slaves?
Well, if they are then I have to admit that I used to be a slave employer too.
Twice I have run companies that didn't pay people.
Back in the early 1990's I used to employ people in the UK on no wages or on token wages (~£1 per hour).
In the 2000's a Californian company that I co-founded and ran used to employ interns on no wages. These were students or graduates from a local private university who couldn't find jobs.
We actually did pay some of them money if we had it, but only when we had it. We never paid them the going rate for the jobs that they did. We couldn't afford to because nobody would pay us the going rate for that work.
Was I a bad person for taking advantage of these kids (they were all young adults aged 18-25).
Well, I actually lost money on most of them. You see, I had to pay the rent and utility bills. I had to spend a lot of my time training them, and we all know that time is money.
So why did I do it? What was in it for me?
I was certainly not because I got rich from it. It was not because I'm a kind and generous person either (even if I am). It was because I wanted to grow my business. Growing my business meant my that I could create paying jobs and that my own was more secure.
I benefited from free labour, but honestly that labour is not something I could afford to pay more for because a) small businesses never have free cash and b) these kids didn't have skills that I could turn into money.
I wanted to train people to work as part of my team so that when work came in I had people who could do it. I couldn't afford to keep people around waiting for the work to come in and the I couldn't get the work without people to do it.
Most of the work that these kids did was worthless. Some of it had value, and some of that I could sell on to my customers. Those are the ones who got money out of working for me.
What did the kids get out of it? Why would anybody work for nothing?
These kids were out of work and couldn't find jobs. They all applied for jobs but were lucky to even get an interview and let alone a job offer.
The reason for that was simple. They didn't have experience. Employers look for people with experience and hire them over people who need training.
Employers ask for references too. They need to know if candidates will bother turning up for work on Monday morning.
In the current job market that means that people who have had jobs can find new jobs but people who have never had a job can never find a job.
What the kids got was practical experience. What the kids got was experience working in a workplace instead of a school or lying on the sofa watching daytime TV. What the kids got was a nice entry on their CV. What the kids got was a good reference.
What the kids got was a helping hand onto the career ladder.
The radical left have started calling this "workfare" and they want people out of work to boycott it.
There are even websites showing people on Job Seekers Allowance how to avoid "workfare". What they are actually teaching them is how to lose out on an opportunity to increase their job prospects.
These people are actually trapping the kids on the dole because they don't like the fact that these jobs are work with no pay. They may enjoy pushing their politics onto a new generation, but how is that supposed to help the kids?
These kids need help. They don't have anything of value to an employer except for their time. What is wrong with them exchanging some free time for training? Surely, that is better than staying on the dole for the rest of their lives.
So there we have it. I was a slave wage employer.
Would I do it again? Probably not.
These days the red tape is too much. I would have to deal with Health and Safety laws. I would have to deal with minimum wage laws. I would have to worry about maternity pay, paternity pay, sick pay and a million other ways that the government expects me to pay people who are not actually doing work to earn it.
Don't get me wrong - I believe that Health and Safety works! You are a lot less likely to have an accident if you never have a job. The downside? You don't have a job.
Everything seems to have changed to "protect" people in employment. Sadly, they are "protecting" people out of entering the job market in the first place. That is why youth unemployment doubled from 2004-2009 and never went down. That is why UK employers replaced hiring unskilled workers and training them with hiring experienced immigrant workers.
When Tesco try to work with the Government to train British workers they are vilified.
When Tesco advertise in Eastern Europe for workers they are vilified.
These people just don't seem to want Tesco to create jobs for young, unskilled workers. They want to stop unemployed people from receiving the training that would help them get jobs in the future.
Well, if the nation's most successful retailer is told not to train people then the people will be untrained. Just don't blame Tesco and the government for the long term youth unemployment that follows.
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