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THE FACT THAT companies are using JobBridge to take on fully-qualified solicitors as interns has been described as “a joke”.
At least two companies currently have internship advertisements on the JobBridge website which stipulate the successful candidate must be certified by the Law Society of Ireland.
Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Social Protection Aengus Ó Snodaigh described the situation as “exploitative to the extreme” and “a joke”.
Ó Snodaigh said he has written the Law Council to highlight the issue.
On the Law Society’s website it states: “Only an existing employer is eligible to qualify as a JobBridge internship provider”.
“This means having at least one full time employee, employed for 30 hours or more every week. Sole traders were initially excluded from participating as placement providers but they now can participate, along with all other business entities.
An employer may not provide an internship opportunity in an area of activity in relation to which they currently have a job vacancy. The employer must have public/employers liability insurance, under which interns will be covered. The employer must also be fully compliant with workplace health and safety regulations and all other legal requirements.
Ó Snodaigh said qualified solicitors already have “up to two years of experience as part of their qualification, usually on a very low wage”.
‘Exploitative’
“Trainee solicitors work in law firms for months at a time as part of gaining their professional qualifications through the Law Society. That firms are allowed to employ these graduates under the JobBridge scheme is exploitative to the extreme,” the TD added.
This flies in the face of what JobBridge is supposed to be about. JobBridge has placed additional, unnecessary internship schemes which ignore the practical training that has already been completed. It does not offer meaningful experience for countless thousands.
A spokesperson for the Department of Social Protection, which oversees JobBridge, said the scheme is “giving opportunities to jobseekers across the spectrum of qualifications”.
Participation on the scheme is voluntary. Given the numbers of unemployed jobseekers holding graduate and post-graduate qualifications, JobBridge offers them internships that reflect their abilities, aspirations and qualifications.
The spokesperson added that the department “has a number of controls in place to prevent abuse of the scheme”, such as requirements on host organisations to provide a mentor to the intern and submit regular monitoring reports.
“Based on the department’s own monitoring visits and the report of the independent evaluation, the Department is satisfied that these controls are working.”
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A friend of mine left her job and moved back to London. The company took on someone from job Bridge to fill her position. This company can afford to employ someone full time. They are taking advantage of this government scheme.
‘Afford’ – is irrelevant. Successful companies will use the system/what’s available – to maximise profitability.
Like the avoidance of tax, but not the evasion. Why blame them for using schemes made available by the government?
I don’t blame them. Like I said they’re taking advantage of this government scheme. I blame the government.
For all schemes that benefit companies?
Because all schemes benefit someone/some entity/sector.
Indeed, that’s their purpose.
Aengus O Snodaigh HA HA HA!!!
Sober up, hey.
A vote for ff fg labour is a vote for cheap labour those are the politicians that set up these schemes cheap labour for the boys i hope the people are waking up.The bail out is strangling this country https://youtu.be/27UL3tZW1bk they are born lyers ._.
Slave labour more like
Surely slave labour is involuntary?
That’s Ireland under Fine Gael
Its not voluntary when the social welfare people give you the options!
Are there many solicitors on social welfare?
No this ireland ,where you volunteer in the hope of employment at the end of your slavery .
you hve o be on social welfare to quailify for Jobsbridge
What?
So a few self entitled graduates who were eying up a nice soft fat salary from Ireland’s legal gravy train cash cow, can’t get a job???
Maybe they should have chosen another profession?
If there’s a job at the end there’s a job at the start …..
So is jobbridge
One nail at a time. Bye bye Joan…
Pulling them out or hammering them in…. either would be good.
Obviously pontious a lot of labour supporters were polled. My personal answer would be none of the above. I wonder if that was an option in the poll?
The people conducting these polls must be the same people who are counting the Irish water registrations and also the ones who are under-counting the protesters marching against Irish water.
At least the dole numbers are going down, right?
3,000 people on Jobbridge. Minor impact.
You’re right David, the tens of thousands leaving Ireland every year are having a much larger impact on the numbers.
Do you have more recent data showing that there are actually only 3,000 people in Ireland on Jobbridge internships. You’ve said it before and all I could find on the subject is this,
http://www.thejournal.ie/jobbridge-placements-breakdown-per-county-march-1375970-Mar2014/
which would suggest that there is closer to 6,500 people on internships. I know it isn’t the biggest number in the world but it’s more than double what you’re trying to say it is.
Don’t forget the people on courses paid for by solas and still getting the equivalent of the dole but taken of the live register.
Fair enough VinHeffer. 6,500 it is then.
440,000 still getting a dole payment?
Ah well as long as it achieves its aim of massaging the jobs figures huh Labour?? I don’t know how much longer this can go on without the rug being pulled from under them.
Never mind. One day, maybe just one day they’ll land a tribunal and live happily ever after…
One gov organisation is looking for a solicitor on jobbridge. Absolutely scandalous.
The national, as well as local, government seems to be a very enthusiastic user of JobBridge. Helps them to circumvent their own recruitment bans while paying less than the going rate.
There’s an ad in the times next week for a Supreme Court judge on jobsbridge
must have 30 years legal experience .
Why didn’t our politicians – not spotlight this loophole/flaw in the scheme before now?
The opposition have been highlighting the misuse of JobBridge for quite some time now.
Do you think it wasn’t known about. Jobsbridge is designed and intended to work this way. It’s only purpose is to provide really really cheap labour and mask the true level of unemployment while given false hope to those taking up positions in it.
What a dramatic example of inequality in Irish society yesterday ! Somebody could pay Euro 349,000 for a WATCH
And the number of people homeless who could only dream of getting a home for half of this obscene amount,
So instead of dealing with the whole Legal set up as told to by the Troika they decided to set up Irish water and screw the small guy and now they kowtow to the Legal profession by approving a State scheme that was never meant for them.
We badly need a change here.
Fully qualified graduates employed by governmental departments which have a freeze on hiring should be outlawed. Its a bloody joke!!
Even if they are getting a full wage or just in relation to jobsbridge?
If you gave every newly qualified solicitor a contract for one year paid them 100000euro ,gave them legal secretaries to work for them send them to every district court in the country and called them public defenders I would imagine that Millions would be cut off the fre legal aid bill and these highly qualified people would not have to go on scambridge….
Exactly the same in Accountancy. Trainee solicitor and accountants don’t get paid the minimum wage.
To me, what is insulting is not that solicitors are being taken advantage of, but that Sinn Fein thinks this makes it exceptionally appalling, and that perhaps moreso than someone with lesser qualifications.
The point being made is that solicitors gain in-office experience while training for their qualification and therefore offering a job bridge to a qualified solicitor is totally exploitative as they undoubtedly have the experience already. I don’t think he means that the exploitation of other workers is less disturbing but just that in other cases it may not be so easy to prove that it is in fact exploitative.
Jobsbridge should not be for those in professional grades as its an insult to the hardwork they have put into their career.
I don’t see anything in the legislation forcing people to take JobBridge positions. Just like any other job, if you don’t like the pay, don’t take the job. There’s a minimum wage there to protect people aswell as their right to not take the job in the first place. The wage I started with as an apprentice was probably ‘exploitative’ 25 years ago but you just got on with it. There’s too much whingeing these days….don’t like the rules, don’t take the job. Don’t like the laws, don’t vote in those that make them.
So because you were exploited a quarter of a century ago, today’s generation shouldn’t aspire to better?
I don’t believe it was exploitative, that’s why it’s in inverted commas. It was hard work at a lowish wage where you were ‘investing in your future and gaining experience’. I’ve done very well from it so I would say it is a system that works well. I could have chosen a different route. JobBridge is no different – choose something else if you don’t like the system.
There is a big difference between an apprentice and being on jobsbridge. Just to start with you were earning a qualification you were most likely not already a college graduate. Secondly you were unlikely going to be let go after 6 month’s.
A qualified solicitor has already completed a 2 year “apprenticeship”. The issue here is that some firms are using jobbridge to extend it.
holy god so many people with so many wrong facts. NOBODY IS FORCED TO TAKE JOBS BRIDGE . with jobs bridge there is no wage by the hour only a set wage 188+50 a week. the economy 25 years ago has fook all to do with today
I think your mixing that up with being a devils advocate for two years. That’s a barrister.
Yes but with jobs bridge employers will be a lot less likely to hire someone, when they can get fully qualified people to work for free, this is skewing the labour market in favour of the employer.
Forcing people to take these jobs is just slave labour.
John tempature check of late?? You seem to be on the side of justice . Not at yiu justbin general. Ah I see only when its solicitors people start paying attention. But when taking on people fresh out of college and they are cleaning floors on job bridge or the electrician or the the retail assistant its OK to exploits them.
I think we need a tech/ medical conversion course for our qualified solicitors. This country needs plenty of doctors and these people are obviously clever.
There’s already a medical conversion course.
That is one more off the live registrar Sad
Laughable…. No decent law firms would get any desirable
*Candidates on a jobs bridge. Even a barely mediocre firm wouldn’t get any.
I know graduates who sat on their ass and didn’t chase experience and over time became unemployable. Yes Job bridge has its problems but I work in HR and know plenty of companies who do not have the budget for another person in the HR dept other than the manager but through Jobbridge would have a lot to offer graduates in terms of experience. So in that category I would say yes Job bridge has potential. I fully accept that is not the case in other categories or grades but in that alone I know I would have taken the opportunity to learn via job bridge instead of waiting at home for a job to be handed to me . One gets experience and a reference , which the last time I checked still carried a lot of weight …..
So basically you’re admitting companies are using jobsbridge to get employees on the cheap.
Yup! Some of them are entirely unsuitable…But I have an example of how it could work. Obviously the red thumbs all deserve jobs without any effort on their own side !
Try before you buy… Plenty of crap solicitors out there.
Job bridge means not having to use a recruitment agancy and not paying good money to find out theyre crap at their job… Qualified or not!
If they are good they will get hired!
That is what trial periods in contracts are for, not a state-sponsored scheme where the taxpayer continues to pay the social welfare payments of the intern.
If a company wants to ensure that an employee isn’t “crap at their job”, they can follow the standard procedure of hiring the employee with a trial period like everyone else.
1.9 million working. 5000 JobBridge jobs. You need to be unemployed for more than six months and drawing the dole. If you don’t want it, don’t it it. Simples.
wrong 1.7 million people in full time work in Republic not to be confused with people who work and for some reason able to top up there wages by dsp. you have to be 365 days in total signing on with dsp before you are able to qualified for jobs bridge. unemployment rate at 10% meaning 366.765 unemployed.
Jobbridge is Job Scam…
This government has broken E.U. rules to play the CSO figures and business’ have taken these opportunities and took advantage of this. The question is are these Jobbridge , internships, momentum programs a way to play the dole figures for this government and for the E.U. or done because certain lobbyists and lobbying interests are using forced labour in some cases to give these companies a free labour force. As Joan did promise last year I believe to supply all the shelf stackers for Dunnes and Tesco from these on the dole?
In America it is illegal not to hire interns if that person is qualified or over qualified for the position because if it affects the stock markets share holders. its the economy stupid, everybody is disposable,
They don’t have to do it if they don’t want to.
If you were struggling to keep your head above water and the Social told you to take a JobBridge internship or lose your social welfare payments, you don’t have a choice in the matter.
€50 a week?! That’s €50 a week more than a barrister will make in their first two years!
The HSE is the largest employer from jobs bridge in Ireland. I’m currently doing a jobs bridge as a medical physicist and I have a masters, but getting experience is the only way to find work in Ireland due to the HSE hiring so few people.
Job bridge scheme is a sceme! Shud be a spelling check on that….
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