The curious case of Martin Lewis, Tesco and the job seekers allowance
At what point does a tweet go from being a harmless opinion to being something more substantial? At what point should those who wish to offer an opinion progress from "saying what they think" to "thinking before they tweet"?A tweet from Martin Lewis set me thinking about the responsibilities that regular and influential tweeters have. If you don't know, Mr Lewis is the UK's "money saving expert", an individual who has spent the past few years on a campaign to help the British people save money. Sometimes he hits the nail on the head, sometimes he's a little over confident for my taste. The tweet in question went:
Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis
In case anyone hasn't seen this Tesco outrage - one of our richest companies should pay better for a nightshit [link]
I've removed the bit.ly link as it no doubt will vanish over time. What it linked to was a job promoted on a website from Jobcentre plus that included the statement: wage: JSA + EXPENSES. By the way, JSA is Job Seeker's Allowance, a benefit paid to people who are unemployed and looking for a job.
This didn't seem right to me. JSA is a state benefit, so why would an employer be offering to pay this? My initial reaction was "this is an error in the posting." My question (unanswered) was whether anyone had checked to see if this was the case before being outraged.
It wasn't the end of the story. It transpired this vacancy was being offered as part of one of the Government's schemes to get the unemployed back into work. There are variations on the scheme, although most work on the principle you can try a real job whilst receiving your full benefits, giving you a chance to ease yourself back into work, making it more attractive for the employer to take you on and lessening the impact when wages start to replace benefits. At the end of the "trial" period the employer will then determine whether or not to take you on. Key to this is that there has to be a real vacancy to be filled, so there is a job at the end of it to aim for and not just an opportunity for a company to get some short-term cheap labour.
This, however, was not good enough for Mr Lewis who fired off two more tweets:
PS Im fine with govt subsidy help employment (its cheaper than dole) but surely Tesco could cough up more for hard night work
Should be noted this is a 'back to work scheme' that's all good & happy with govt helping (cheaper than dole) BUTnightshift shld pay more
Again, just a couple of minutes on the web would have shown this is not how the scheme is intended to work. Paying additional wages has an impact on the individual's benefits and, ironically, being paid more might make them ineligible for the scheme.
Had this been a tweet by someone like me with just a few hundred followers and little influence then the matter might not have been worthy of comment. That it was made by a journalist with a large following and significant influence makes the matter more serious. Basic fact checking does not appear to have taken place and surely those who hold sway over public opinion have a duty to ensure their facts are correct before making inflammatory statements.
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