unpaid caseworkers

They may save law firms from individual crisis of credit but the idea of hiring unpaid caseworkers or paralegals is fundamentally adverse to social mobility.

There are a significant number of firms in the UK reaching out to the mass of inexperienced law graduands who are desperately seeking something to put them into training contract contention.

Law graduates have to pay up to £10,000 for their LPCs so those on low incomes have to take years out to this earn money. After that they still find themselves in a huge amount of debt and necessity means they need to enter the job market as soon as possible whilst desperately trying to swing their career paths onto the legal ladder. Experience, experience, experience, is all grads have to tip favour their way - but how to get it? Vacation schemes? unpaid. Shadowing? unpaid. CAB? unpaid. volunteer? erm... unpaid. Now becoming a caseworker will often mean you are unpaid. Other caseworker positions demand experience as a prerequisite. Paralegal positions require 3 years pqe or experience giving advice - say at the CAB where you are unpaid.

Of course the system is fair. It judges on merit: If an applicant is an excellent advocate (due to all their voluntary experience) they get the job on merit: they are genuinely better, they deserve it.

So when the government advocates social mobility, and getting kids to university, bear in mind that university educates you, but education doesnt necessarily give you a boost up the career ladder - you still start at the bottom - education merely resets the plateau.

There is an answer though! Low income graduands shouldn't fret they will make it if they want it - there will always be hurdles for everyone. Sometimes you might get a break as an administrator in a nearly legal capacity. Which you then might be able to blag as caseworker-esque experience. The phone queries you answer become "advice giving": The public that wander into the office you "interview". But this needn't be the only way of only firms decided to remunerate you for your experience searching troubles: you are doing them a favour after all.

the free movement of workers

Hostility to foreign workers is nothing new and, in the recent context of EU workers in England, it's an even more tricky issue. Rather than pass personal judgement I will point out UNITE's approach of implying that British workers have been discriminated against rather than going into more dangerous territory by attacking the somewhat infallible EU regulations. They claim that British workers are being treated less favourably than the workers coming in from the EC who are prepared to work for less and therefore pushing their Brit counterparts out of the job market with cunningly simple supply demand economics.

The problem of course for British workers is that work opportunities in England seem attractive to individual citizens of the EC for a wide variety of reasons. Despite this the European Community, economicly rightly so, suggests that free movement of workers is good.

My point for this post is that the economic crisis has caused nations to become introverted. National governments buy out national banks paid for by the national taxpayers. Even America is looking within itself - seeking to take steps to being energy self-sufficient and, more controversially, by only allowing use of American steel. Restricting imports is essentially creating tariffs. If the US starts doing this the rest of the world might follow and simple economics suggets that the crisis will get worse. When considering how to deal with this situation parties should think of the bigger picture. The reason why there is free movement of workers is so that Europe prospers as a single economic entity. Therefore we should look to saving the European economy not just our national one.

A cheaper workforce means that many workers will be forced out of the job market - but it means that industry will be more likely to cope through the crisis. If people can sue firms for this suggested discrimination businesses are even more likely to go under. On a national level loosing our production industries is devastating. On a European scale you have to bear in mind that importation of skilled foreign workers is good for the economy. Both suggest that these measures are a good thing.

To save Britain from economic collapse we need to save Europe, and to save Europe we need to save the world. Gordon Brown was actually right when he said he wanted to save the world: using strong economic policy from an altruistic international perspective is more likely to save the world than the ridiculously selfish introspective nationalism: which will save us in the short term but bring the Western world to its knees before we see a single quarter of economic growth.

the snow day excuse

Walking past the Old Curiosity Shop on Monday at 8am one would be forgiven for thinking that you were actually strolling through Dickensian London. Cliched I know. The snow in the capital was truly spectacular, something I have never seen in my experience, but it was the quiet that was having the strangest of effects. London had a day off.

Now as exciting as a snow day on this magnitude is, it throws up some pretty contentious employment problems. I checked the forcasts the night before and got up an hour and a half earlier to ensure I wasnt unduly delayed by the inevitable transport problems that would occur. This was common sense. I made it into work on time by just compromising a little and planning ahead.

On the other side of the coin you have people who live in places where you absolutely rely on a specific transport link which lets you down. This would have been very common on Monday - south east trains, all open air tube lines, all bus routes. These people are unable to get to work. If they were heart surgeons or firemen or the train drivers themselves they just couldn't make it.

Then you have this middle ground. People who dont make any prior arrangements, who look out of the window in the morning and think "no way". Maybe they phone up a colleague, the colleague says "I'm not sure, the lines are probably badly delayed/ blocked up/ not running, i'll phone someone else and get back to you". This chain of indecision runs until one person, who may or may not be able to attempt to get in, simply says they are not. Safety in numbers, everyone goes back to bed - snow day!

Finally there is another group who look out the window and see the weather and think - "the tube lines will be messed up - i can have another hour in bed and easily blame my lateness on the transport".

So the problem comes when the employers are considering what to do: Those who made it in worked hard to compensate for the lack of attendance while those who couldnt make it in stay at home. Those who couldn't be bothered to try also get a day off. Legally the day is an absence. It wouldnt be seem fair however to dock pay on such a big level. The compromise appears to be in the realm of making the day off count as annual leave - objectively this is fair on those who battled the elements to make it in. For the people who couldnt possibly get in this is harsh.

There is no way to distinguish between those who made genuine attempts to get in and those who just stayed in bed. The uproar from many of my colleagues, and other stories I have heard, concerning taking a day of annual leave for the day off is somewhat offensive - if they were to be just let off then surely those who made it into work should have been sent home immediately. But in there defense another problem is posed: what if some cunning employees preempt the problem and take the day off as sick leave?