Employer told not to post advert for ‘reliable’ workers because it discriminates against ‘unreliable’ applicants

By
Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:31 PM on 26th January 2010

A job centre has been slammed for refusing to display an advert for a ‘reliable workers’ - because it discriminated against unreliable applicants.   Recruitment boss Nicole Mamo, 48, tried to post an advert for a £5.80-an-hour domestic cleaner on her local Jobcentre Plus website.She ended the job offer by saying that any applicants for the post ‘must be very reliable and hard-working’.But when Ms Mamo called the Jobcentre Plus in Thetford, Norfolk, the following day she was told that her advert would not be displayed.
Nicole Mamo, director of Devonwood Recruitment was stunned when a job centre in Thetford, Norfolk, said she could not include the phrase ‘reliable and hard working’ in her advert
A Jobcentre Plus worker claimed that the word ‘reliable’ meant they could be sued for discriminating against unreliable workers.The mother-of-two from Hertfordshire today slammed the situation as ‘ridiculous’.She said: ‘I placed the advert on the website and when I phoned up to check I was told it hadn’t been displayed in the job centre itself.
The Job Centre in Thetford, Norfolk, said the advert discriminated against unreliable people’She said “oh we can’t put that advert on the job points”. ‘She said it was because they could have cases against them for discriminating against unreliable people.  
‘I laughed because I thought that was crazy. We supply the NHS with staff so it’s very important for the patients that we have reliable workers.’We find jobs for hundreds of temporary staff every week and are proud of our workers but our reputation is at stake if they aren’t reliable.’We are taking people off the dole and finding them jobs so not displaying the advert just seems absolutely ridiculous to me.’Nicole, who runs Devonwood recruitment agency and employs eight people, placed her advert on the Thetford Jobcentre Plus website on January 21 this year.The job offer, which cost nothing to display, read: ‘Domestic cleaner required immediately. A variety of different shifts available. Must be fluent in written and spoken English for health and safety reasons. Previous experience preferred. Training will be provided. Must be very reliable and hard-working.’  The following day Nicole phoned Thetford Jobcentre Plus and was told by a woman that her advert could not be displayed.

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Part-time Britain: Jobless total falls by 7,000 as record number forced into shorter hours

By
Becky Barrow
Last updated at 9:53 AM on 21st January 2010

Record numbers of Britons are being forced to work part-time, official figures revealed yesterday.
More than one million workers said being unable to find a full-time job had left them with no choice. In the past 12 months alone 280,000 have been forced into a part-time job, taking the total to an all-time high.
The move to part-time work for many has at least stopped the unemployment figure from growing. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show unemployment was down 7,000 between September and November to 2.46million, the first quarterly fall for 18 months.
Queues cut: Many companies have cuts staff members’ hours rather than laying people off
But it has given rise to other worrying statistics. Over the past year, the number in full-time employment has plunged nearly 600,000, while the overall total of part-time workers has jumped to 7.7million.
Experts blamed the longest recession in recorded history for the trends. Unemployment among young people aged 16 to 24 has also fallen, by 16,000 to 927,000 in the three months to November.
This can be partly attributed to increased numbers going into further education to avoid entering the troubled job market.
Overall, the fall in unemployment among all age groups will reinforce hopes that next week’s GDP figures will confirm that Britain is finally emerging from the recession.
The number of job vacancies has increased, up 16,000 to 448,000, a boost for those looking for work. However, the Bank of England warned yesterday that the chance of getting a permanent new job in the coming months is slim.
A report, published by the Bank into business conditions, said: ‘There were very few plans [among firms] for any substantial recruitment of permanent staff.’
Even if companies are starting to do better, the Bank said bosses were hiring temporary staff or ‘reversing earlier cuts to average hours’, but rarely hiring any permanent staff.
The average part-time worker earns just under £8,000, compared to the average full-time salary of just over £25,000.
Many other workers are being given an ultimatum by their bosses to either forfeit their full-time jobs and go part-time, or be made redundant.
LibDem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said the figures showed workers were paying the price for the recession, while allowing the Government to boast that it had stopped an unemployment crisis.

He said: ‘This is the hidden unemployment, from top City solicitors to people working in factories. They are being forced to go part-time and having their pay slashed.’
The number of people who are ‘ economically inactive’, which means they are not looking for a job, has rocketed to a record of eight million, the largest figure since records began in 1971.
Over the most recent quarter between September and November, the biggest rise was the number of people deciding to become students, up 81,000 to a record 2.2million.
Experts said many will have tried and failed to find a job, or decided that it is not even worth looking for one in a recession.
Dr John Philpott, chief economist adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: ‘Ever larger numbers of young people are turning to study to avoid the dole.
‘It remains to be seen whether education or training is merely a stopgap choice for thousands more young people, rather than providing a genuine boost to their subsequent job prospects.’
The student boom has helped the claimant count - a measure of the number of people getting Jobseeker’s Allowance - to drop 15,200 in December to 1.6million.
Yesterday the Department for Work and Pensions warned that it expects unemployment will rise again before the summer. Economists fear it could rise as high as three million.
Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper said: ‘We know that things will still be difficult and unemployment is still likely to rise over the next few months.’

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85,000 rush to apply for Royal Mail strike jobs ahead of national walkout

By
Sean Poulter
Last updated at 7:56 AM on 20th October 2009

Opportunity: A TNT postman at work in Holland. The company is keen to do the same here
More than 85,000 applicants are chasing the 30,000 temporary posts being created by mail bosses to cope with national postal strikes.
The flood of applications suggests the figure could rise to 100,000 in the next few days among those desperate for work in the recession.
Royal Mail’s decision to recruit the extra staff is highly controversial and could even be illegal under 2003 legislation.
The move comes after three-quarters of union members who voted backed national stoppages this Thursday and Friday.
The Communication Workers’ Union is consulting lawyers to see if there is scope to take legal action against the company or its recruitment agencies.
The union is also considering a complaint to the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, a watchdog which answers to Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson.
It came as a number of rivals circle Royal Mail, hoping the strike will clear the way for them to begin offering doorstep deliveries.
The Dutch postal company, TNT, is pressing the Government for changes which will allow it to put its postmen, who wear orange and black uniforms, on to the streets.
There is fury among postmen that Royal Mail appears to be ready to hire temporary staff to beat the strike.
However, the company insists it is acting lawfully and merely trying to minimise disruption in the dispute over modernising the service.

There is already a backlog of 30million items following regional strikes and this figure is expected to top 150million by the weekend.
Royal Mail is advertising using agencies such as Manpower and Reed for locations stretching from South-West London to Milton Keynes, Bristol and Plymouth.

The jobs, paying £8 an hour, involve ’sorting mail and possibly delivering on foot in all weathers’.
They are normally snapped up by students, but jobless levels have stoked up demand.
The recruitment drive has inflamed relations between bosses and union chiefs, who were locked in talks yesterday.

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Get organised — and get the right people into council jobs

The holy grail for any local authority, particularly with economic pressures crowding in, is to save money and improve efficiency. In one crucial area — attracting the right recruits to work for us — we in Buckinghamshire are doing just that with a ground-breaking decision to outsource the search completely to a private sector agency. Our ten-year contract with Hays, which began last month, gives the recruitment agency a remit to recruit all permanent and temporary staff, including for schools. It will save us £690,000 in the first year alone.
However, more than doing better by the taxpayer and giving them the value that they yearn to see, the agreement signals a new era in the way we recruit, creating a more streamlined system to draw high-quality applicants. This will mean better-run services, saving more money in the long term.
Until July, we were no different from other local authorities in having a tangle of various procedures for recruitment, partly in-house and partly external. Clarity was obscured by complexity; and attracting the best talent, the lifeblood of any efficient public service, was inconsistently sought.
Candidates themselves had completely different experiences, too, depending on where they were applying within the council.

Our new recruitment process unpicks the tangle and provides distinct benefits, both for our managers and for potential recruits.
Previously, there were no systems to measure the effectiveness of what we were doing as a whole, let alone to ensure that we were attracting the right people to our opportunities. Now there are.
The changes have meant altering the way we think and certainly recognising the role of the internet in job searches. It is now easy to find our opportunities online, where advanced processes discourage unsuitable candidates, saving us time and administration costs.
The new recruitment procedures will create a valuable by-product — a bespoke talent pool of good-quality candidates to be drawn from as needs arise. This matters because the public sector suffers from a poor reputation. It is rarely the first choice for a career. The poor image creates huge challenges, even now when jobs elsewhere are scarce.
The key to becoming a first-choice employer is to give candidates a positive experience of their recruitment process. We have taken on the obligation that this requires to ensure that recruitment managers are precise about what they are looking for in candidates. They must now make clear what a job does and does not entail. By simplifying the process of working for Buckinghamshire and marketing vacancies effectively, I am confident that we will succeed in attracting relevant candidates at a fraction of the previous cost. We will also demonstrate that saving money is not incompatible with making services better.
The haphazard, usually costly, hotch-potch recruitment methods used by many local authorities, which deny them savings and greater efficiency, is no longer acceptable. Other councils should have the courage to follow our lead.
• Gillian Hibberd is corporate director (People, Policy and Communications) for Buckinghamshire County Council and President of the Public Sector People Managers’ Association

Spanish jobless claims ‘easing’

The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in Spain rose in April, but by the smallest amount in nine months, official data has shown.

Another 39,478 people registered as unemployed last month, compared with 123,543 who registered in March, Spain’s Labour Ministry said.

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In recession

By Duncan Bartlett
BBC News, Tokyo

As Japan heads into into 2009, the recession is taking its toll on all its leading companies.

No growth in 2009
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Woolworths store closures begin

More than 200 Woolworths stores across the UK will close later, signalling its final days on the High Street after 99 years of trading.

Barring any last-minute rescue, the remaining 600 stores will follow suit by 5 January and 27,000 permanent and temporary staff will lose their jobs. Read more

UK job market weakening rapidly

The UK job market weakened rapidly in November as permanent placements declined at record levels, a new survey from Markit Economics suggests.

The drop in permanent and temporary jobs was faster than at any point in the survey’s 11-year history. Read more