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THE ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA for the government’s JobBridge internship scheme is being widened, the Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has announced, and an additional 1,000 places are now being offered.
Under JobBridge, or the National Internship Scheme, jobseekers who have been on the live register for at least three months can take up a voluntary internship of between six and nine months without losing their social welfare payments. They are also paid an additional €50 per week.
However, the scheme has been sharply criticised as a means for employers to source free labour for positions they would otherwise be expected to pay wages for.
Burton said in a statement today that the number of places available is being increased to 6,000 “with immediate effect”.
“The eligibility criteria will also be extended to include those in receipt of One Parent Family Payment and Disability Allowance,” she said. “These changes will take effect from 28 May.”
The minister said that the scheme had made “significant progress”:
In just ten months since the scheme was launched 6,840 internships have started. The initial target provided for a maximum of 5,000 places at any point in time. At 4 May 2012, 4,670 participants were on JobBridge placements and 1,876 posts were being advertised on the scheme’s website.
Of the interns who completed their internship to date, 797 have gone into immediate employment with either their JobBridge Host Organisation or another company, according to the Department of Social Protection. The department said that the figures do not include interns who may have secured employment in the subsequent weeks or months after completing their internship.
To date, applicants in Dublin have accounted for the highest take-up percentage (40 per cent), while the South West accounted for 12.8 per cent of JobBridge take-ups and the South East for 10.8 per cent.
The minister has rejected criticism that the scheme could be used as a means of exploiting cheap labour. Although conceding that there were ‘teething problems’ with the scheme, she said that preliminary data showing that hundreds of interns have gone into employment signals the scheme’s success.
An independent evaluation of the JobBridge scheme will be undertaken by Indecon International Economic Consultants.
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Would rather do this then do nothing at all
There are huge problems with this scheme, too many companies taking advantage of people and not enough genuine.It also doesn’t cover many peoples travel costs, which is hardly encouraging people.of course what company wouldnt like someone to work entirely for free for them?
Well like I said its better then nothing. I went onto the job bridge site earlier for a look and searched for positions close to wear I live and a number of roles came up including HP so if I was to use this scheme I would suggest looking for roles as close as possible in order to cut back on travel costs. Plus you get an additional 50euro on top of your current payment.
Call it what it is. Slave labour. A way for government to try bring live register figure down. Not real job creation. Employers will abuse system to. Is this minister living in the real world.
Actually it’s a great way to get some experience in a field you have never worked in.
At it’s very worst the scheme gives people a routine again and puts them in the right frame of mind when trying to get back into the workplace.
@ Cliff Grebouwski, Like being a car valet?, Or a caretaker?, Or a drivers helper?, Or a general store-person?, Or a warehouse operative? There are dozens of these positions which a few years ago were being advertised as real jobs, not telling a person they will “gain practical experience” in washing cars for 9 months, using the extra €50 you receive to put petrol or diesel in your car to get to and from your “job”. I understand that there are some worthwhile positions on JobBridge but there are an equal amount of employers who have taken the piss with it…and they’ve been allowed and encouraged to by the Government. I am a mechanic and was told by my dole officer that a car valeting position on JobBridge would be “ideal” because I worked with cars…what happens if I were to turn it down?
Joe- this is exactly what i’m talking about- your attitude is all wrong. While I accept that some employers will inevitably take advantage of cheap labour (although I think they are in the minority) people have to start managing their expectations and getting real. This is not an economy where we’re all gonna get what we want straight away.
Look at it this way-
Option 1- You can stay on the dole, looking for the perfect job and getting nowhere, that is definitely an option. However, I can tell you from experience that the one thing that seriously turns employers off, more than anything else, is people who have had extended periods of unemployment. Even if it’s not your fault, it looks bad on a CV.
Option 2- Take the valeting job, get up every day with a sense of purpose. Get to work early, work harder than everyone else and show your motivation and dedication. Then, maybe your employer decides he needs a new mechanic for one of his garages- do you think he wants to spend a lot of time and money looking for someone externally, or does he talk to you- the person who has been to work every day without fail? Someone he knows he can trust.
You can take the negative approach if you want, but i’ve found, for me at least, when I look for the positives, good things tend to happen.
Employers fill vacancies with jobs bridge employees instead of paying qualified people to do the work. I know people in marketings and HR trying to move around but all the entry level jobs are taken by jobs bridge while they continue to work in non related areas such as retail. This has stalled the jobs market and made it harder for educated professionals to get a start unless they are on the dole.
Don’t like to be negative but you’re dead right. The government in Ireland should be learning from what’s happening over here in Britain. Tesco,Poundland,Asda…all advertising positions that are essentially exploiting the unemployed (mostly young people) to work alongside paid staff for free. Internships are important to get experience and a foot in the door though,I had to do one when I moved to London first and luckily managed to get into my paid position now.
You are so right and everyone is in on the action!! Replacing CE and other good more positive schemes. Really it’s just practice at being slaves a truly horrible thing.
Could any of you provide any evidence of this?
Healster- how exactly do your friends know that the job they applied for went to someone on jobs bridge?
A local solicitors firm that I’ve heard of have left their secretary go, within a week her old job was advertised on Jobridge!! That’s exploiting the scheme for cheap labour!! Who regulates this scheme, who can you report possible exploitation to??
A local solicitor’s firm that you’ve heard of!! Well i guess it’s case closed cos that’s all the evidence I need…
More anecdotal rubbish- my friend heard, I read about etc etc…
Come on!
Y’know Cliff, Google is there for everyone, not just other people. Demanding other people educate you and keep you informed is a slippery slope down to ill-informed biases.
This is a column by Cat Reilly who started legal proceedings against the internship scheme over here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/15/unemployed-young-people-need-jobs
And this is an overview of it all, yes the guardian again but it’s well written and concise
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/16/work-free-tesco-job-advert
It should be noted that the whole intership programme in the UK is a bit different, or possibly just more advanced, than In Ireland The mandatory work activity scheme is, well, mandatory. Even worse is the community action programme which can make people work for up to 6 months.
Capitalism is fucked, but maybe, maybe if we add a bit of slavery it’ll work. Haven’t tried that before…
Well Chris- the reason I asked for evidence is because “healster” made a pretty bold statement without any back up. This was compounded by Damien who dropped the bombshell that he had heard of a solicitor’s firm who had nefariously fired their secretary and then put up an ad on job bridge.
If you’re gonna make big claims, the onus is on you to back them up when questioned.
Putting that to one side however I would like to thank you for informing me about “Google” a service with which i was unfamiliar. As a matter of interest, was it annoying that the only information you could find was completely irrelevant to the discussion? That must have been a little frustrating….
Didn’t expect you to admit it was useless though:
“It should be noted that the whole intership programme in the UK is a bit different, or possibly just more advanced, than In Ireland”
Oh, FYI, I was aware of the case you were referring to, The Daily Mail did its usual outrage filled headline on the story a number of months ago along with the perfunctory glum picture Ms Reilly.
Personally i wouldn’t call 2 weeks of work a breach of my human rights, but to each his own.
I remain duly chastised by your brilliance, Chris.
@ Cliff, I never stated it to be a fact or a closed case, I “Heard” it, that’s why when I commented I asked the question is there a facility to report such cases, so the case can be closed on it! Read the comments properly Cliff!!
Was it irrelevant to the conversation? I thought we were talking about the UK scheme, oh only Ann-Marie was, I figured you were replying to her, the lack of nested comments can make this confusing.
Ah, I demanded you inform yourself ’cause the opposition to, and exploitation of, the internship scheme in the UK has been fairly prominent in the media and interwebs and so on. Not so in Ireland. Actually I haven’t really heard much at all about it being exploited so, sorry about that. Healster should substantiate her claims.
Being forced to work for 2 weeks is very different to just working for two, especially when you’re earning less than those who you are working with. Her case was about poundland inappropriately using the unpaid ‘training period’ in the mwa as a cover for getting people to work.
Google is good though, I highly recommened it, way better than ask jeeves.
Poor old askjeeves, even Yahoo can feel better than those guys. Just.
This is a great scheme to gain valuable experience though it did annoy me that tesco could apply for shelf stackers at xmas. The government would want to step in and sums abuse like this to keep the schemes credibility.
Joan & co. can fall back on this scheme when they leaves Government.
sorry to be cynical but this jobs bridge is nothing short of exploitation. jobs being advertised include senior management posts. the 50 extra euro would barely cover the cost of transport or petrol if applicants were lucky enough to have a car. it is fine to assume most people would prefer to do anything rather than n othing but equally people should be given a level playing field in order to accept & get to these jobs.
I was interested in a position I was over qualified for, (said the interviewer), I asked him at point blank range what exactly he was looking for as he advertisement suggested different, he asked me if I was on the dole for over 6 months, I said I wasnt on it ever? he said he presumed I was and that I didnt qualify for the position as I had to be unemployed. Bottom line, he had no interested in hiring someone with a bucket load of international experience. He wanted someone who he could pay 50 a week to.
I’ve a marketing post advertised since Jan and have yet to receive a single response. Hardly the roaring success the Minister tries to make it out to be ???
Maybe if u were willing to say someone to sell for you!!
What experience would be required for that role as a matter of interest?.
@ Dec Kavanagh, I’d imagine any marketer with experience would expect to be paid for their labour.
Eamon. You just don’t get it do you?? We are NOT looking for a marketer with experience. We have one already who does get paid. Jobsbridge is about giving someone WITHOUT experience some work experience so they will find it easier to get paid employment. You go to college to gain knowledge and you pay the college for that. If a company is prepared to invest their time and effort to give you training and practical experience to help further your career you should embrace that. As an employer if I interviewed someone who had previously participated on a Jobsbridge programme it would swing MASSIVELY in their favour that they were prepared to get up off their ass and gain some experience rather than sitting at home watching Oprah and moaning that the world owes them a favour.
@ Dec where is your company based?
Fitz sq. D2
So are u saying dec that there is NO employment offered on this role you offer or is it just experience for 40 hours a week for €50 ??
Because i cant get to dublin for less than €100 a week ..
These slugs raided private pension schemes to pay for this farce,not public or their own well designed troughs but schemes that have struggled as it is. A general election is just a rotation system for corrupt ineptitude.
797 real jobs in ten months counts as success? What would be failure having plundered private pension funds retrospectively of €500m and risked talk of a bank run? How many real jobs have been displaced by €50 interns? Who will be held accountable for this fiasco?
797 out of how many?
6800 – about 11%, though slightly more than that would maybe have been employed outside the scheme. Not a great figure.
Where did you learn to count? You can tell just by looking at it that it’s the lower side of ten.
@mark – its 11.72%
Just looking should tell you 10% of 6800 would be 680. 797 would therefore be greater than 10% ;)
That’s why we have jobs bridge so people like mark can stack shelves and dress up as an elf at Christmas.
The rest of the educated people prefer payment for their skill and input to the labour market! You can’t dress it up, it’s slave labour for the highly educated.
The umedmacated……..dole scroungies can have it all to themselves !! And that’s what that want, the dole that you have to work for !
Listened to the guy from HP this morning. its 797 from the 2000 that have been through. 37% i think. Thats the actual figure.
Sure we cant count down herein kerry. what suprised me more was the amont of thumbs up
@ Declan,
Fat bloke down the pub says different. ;)
An internship wont pay the mortgage,run a family vehicle and put food on the table. It may be more suited to younger people with no previous employment experience.It a shame to see some very wealthy organisations abuse the system. It should only be available to sme’s.
Fully agreed but it must be stated it is not just wealthy / big organizations availing of this cheap labor scam. Reviewing the website this morning, I noticed various Pubs, Hotels, restaurants, small printing business, even web developing companies gainfully seeking EXPERIENCED professionals on this scheme, even offering mentoring god bless them. One such exciting Job Bridge offer is for a well known but not named establishment (you know the sort who have poor staff retention) in the midlands, seeking a Bar Manager, working a minimum of 50 hours a week (hang on, whatever happened to the 48 hour rule), indeed this position is also advertised on the infamous FAS website also. What is perhaps intriguing is the wonderful selection of positions on the FAS website, most if all when applied for receive little if any responses to applications, one wonders what is the point of it all.
If ur lucky enough to get one with a nice company it be grand! But i was treated like a poor servant! Not good! Employers take advantage of the situation didnt learn anything!
Whilst there are certainly a number of negatives which can be raised about Jobbridge (I think the example of Tesco taking on intern shelf stackers is a disgrace and they absolutely should not have been allowed to participate with these type of roles. The government need to take far more responsibility in regulating this scheme), I feel there are consistently a lot of generalisations, predominantly of the “slave labour, exploitative employers” which is simply not true in a lot of cases. I started a business 3 and a half years ago – at that time it was just me working from my house. I now have an office premises and 5 people working for me – one being a Jobbridge candidate. This is the 2nd Jobbridge candidate I have taken on – the first was taken on as a permanent employee afterwards. I resent the general tarring of the brush that I see about employers as we are not all out to “exploit” and use “slave labour”. In my case, I have a start-up growing business. Anyone who has ever started a business knows that it takes a few years to start turning reasonable profits, the first few years are all about investment in your business (both in terms of money and time). My business is a service based business so staff are our biggest investment and asset. The fact that the banks have all but stopped lending in recent years means that I was unable to borrow to finance the necessary investment to get my business off the ground and hire necessary staff. Jobbridge has been extremely helpful as I have been able to take on staff to help me grow the business without the initial financial cost (instead the cost has been my time in terms of training and developing the inexperienced interns). It’s a chicken and egg situation in that without the money I couldn’t take on all the staff I needed, but without the staff I couldn’t grow the business to where it had the potential to go. I take the scheme seriously and have provided what I believe to be a lot of time and effort in relevant training for the two interns. The benefit is that the 1st intern enabled me to grow the business to a point where I could afford their salary and happily was able to employ them at the end. The aim is to repeat the same again now with the 2nd intern. I don’t plan to repeat this over and over again as the business will be moving out of the start up phase and maturing and hopefully financing for growth won’t be as big an issue. But the point is that Jobbridge has provided employment to one intern (and it appears at the moment that the same will happen with the 2nd) and has enabled me to grow my business (providing more employment opportunities not arranged via Jobbridge for the other 4 individuals and provided me with an income where I may have otherwise been unable to get a job myself). For small business who manage the scheme fairly and correctly I believe Jobbridge can be hugely beneficial to all parties. Don’t forget that increasingly “employers” will now be persons who were previously employed, perhaps made redundant and due to lack of jobs had no choice but to go into business for themselves. Not all employers are part of some exploitative elite gleefully rubbing our hands together at the prospect of “slave labour” to cream off yet more profits for ourselves for spending on a 2nd yacht or the like.
Well said Misses!
This is an excellent example on how the scheme should work. However, what about public bodies eg County Councils advertising for Interns and knowing full well that at the end of the 6 or 9 months, the person will not be taken on due to moratorium on recruitment in the public service.
Essentially, they have interns working for under 6 euro per hour.
Misses, it’s great to see somebody like yourself put this scheme to good use, and produce jobs in the end!! My only gripe with it is how poorly it’s regulated and that certain companies are blatantly allowed to take advantage of it!! Best of luck in the future success of your business!!
@Shane – I suppose it depends on what you see as the main purpose of the scheme. If you think it is only worthwhile if there is a guaranteed job from the same organisation at the end of it (granted it is the overall point of the scheme to help a person find their back to paid employment), then internships at organisations which know they cannot recruit would not be worthwhile. If however an organisation can still offer good training and experience for the intern, even though they can’t offer a job at the end, it might still be worthwhile. I suppose an intern would have to try and judge that for themselves. However as I said at the top, there certainly are still many negatives associated with Jobbridge and there is room for tightening up and improvement. I don’t suppose it suits the government to exclude public bodies from the scheme! I don’t necessarily think public bodies should be excluded as there may be many people who would like the opportunity to intern at one of these and they should have that option, but any positions advertised by public bodies should be held to the same higher standard of good training etc that I believe all positions on Jobbridge should demand. It surely wouldn’t be hard to put some extra effort in to monitor and improve the scheme but I suppose its as much about statistics as anything else for the government. Are they more interested in boasting about how many people use the scheme than really making the effort to ensure the quality of all those people’s experiences? Most likely!
@Damien – cheers for the good wishes, much appreciated! I do agree with your other points too, there’s definitely room for improvement. But it would be a shame to shut down the scheme altogether due to unpopularity instead of making a bit of effort to improve things. If Jobbridge has worked for my business and interns/staff, then there’s no reason it can’t (or doesn’t) work for others. I think the government seriously need to step in, listen to the criticisms and do something about them so that there may be more positive stories and opinions about Jobbridge in the future.
Well my experience of this has been very positive…we had two positions in my job…they did so well they got permanent jobs from it
Why not make the employer match the €50 with another €50? At least then you would get something resembling a wage,the employer should have to contribute. Or did I miss something?
I think most employers would be very happy to do that. Would be interesting to know if that was something that was ever considered and if so why it was ruled out. However, most employers could find ways to other some way of remunerating interns if they really wanted to. For example I pay for the cost of external courses and exams fees – precisely because I think that they work hard and deserve something in addition to the €50 extra from the social welfare. Paying for the cost of courses and exams also ties in with the general development of their skills and knowledge.
Looking on the Fas website, there are many positions im qualified for. They are under jobsbridge, which I dont qualify for. Included in those employers 2 weeks ago was Deutsche Bank…. Do Deutshce Bank really need to avail of this?
Pity you have to be on Jobseekers for three months before you can apply …
I’d definitely do it, there’s some
Great jobs and companies on it, better than sitting at home and great for the cv.
Can someone answer a question for me that I can’t get out of Fas-
I’m 23 and collecting 188 every week. I tried applying for a jobsbridge ‘internship’ and was told I could be possibly have my dole cut to 144. So the 50 on top would mean I get 194? Is this true?
At the moment I’m scraping by, so adding in transport/food for lunches will mean more than 7 euro would be needed each week. :(
Internships = a excellent concept is theory……
In reality without the regulations it needs to work properly it is wide open for greedy employers to exploit to increase their profits with a “slave” workforce.
Certain factors should be overseen to ensure that the candidate has a reasonable chance of securing employment with the company following their internship:
A few of my suggestions:
1. Companies who have had redundancies or lay-offs in the previous 12 moths should not be eligible to source workers through this scheme.
2. Only skilled or semi-skilled positions should be offered (no training is required for manual labor roles)
3. A certain percentage of full time / part time paid positions ( say 20% of interns used over a 12 month period) should be demanded from companies using this facility and if they fail to reach that figure find themselves banned from using it for a 2 year time period.
4. A person who takes up one of these roles should have the same workers rights (as outlined in most companies handbooks) with Dept. inspections carried out to see that this is happening.
5. Fines for Companies who have been proven to have exploited this scheme will ensure that companies will think twice about exploiting this for their own means.
99.9% of people want to work and need to work for a reason that goes beyond the financial aspect of it.Government sit up and take notice – under your watchful eye let this “Great Idea in theory” becomes a success.
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