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GREEK LAWMAKERS HAVE adopted another batch of controversial spending cuts and tax hikes, two days before a crunch eurozone meeting expected to unlock the next tranche of much-needed bailout funds for the debt-ridden nation.
The 7,000-page bill that raises the sales tax cap and introduces a contingency mechanism to slash spending further in case of budget overruns was passed thanks to the Syriza-led coalition government’s slim majority in the 300-seat parliament, according to an AFP count.
All 153 of the coalition’s MPs voted in favour, while outside the parliament building in Athens more than 10,000 people protested against the unpopular reforms.
Syriza MP Vassiliki Katrivanou, however, voted against several of the bill’s articles and later resigned from the party, citing a “deep political and existential impasse”.
“We (Syriza) implement measures and policies that are against the core of our values and also of our politics but I cannot think of any other trustworthy alternative. That’s why I resign,” she wrote on Facebook, handing her seat back to the party.
She had voted for the bill overall but against the articles calling for the contingency mechanism and the creation of a state privatisation fund.
The so-called contingency mechanism, labelled “the cutter” by Greek media and designed to cut spending if the country fails to meet fiscal targets in 2018, is of chief interest to Greece’s international creditors.
“European leaders get the message that Greece is sticking to its promises. Now, it’s their turn,” Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said ahead of the vote.
EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici hailed the deal.
“A key step has been taken… towards the conclusion of the first stage of the Greek programme.”
Greece urgently needs the next tranche of bailout money to repay big loans to the European Central Bank (ECB) and IMF in July, and has already fallen behind in paying for everyday government duties and public sector wages.
Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, bottom, addresses lawmakers during a parliamentary session in Athens
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I work in admin/clerical and companies the sector I work in no longer employ people they are getting interns instead. These are companies who can well afford to hire but choosing interns. Very disheartening when you are looking out for a job or knowing that your boss knows he could replace you with an intern.
Yeah LinkedIn were looking for people on Jobbridge a couple of months ago. Big MNCs like them should not be allowed employ people on the scheme as they can more than afford to pay people are proper wage.
Job bridge is a complete scam which allows the abuse of an unemployed person for 9 months , the companies profiting from this scheme should be named shamed and boycotted . The other thing it contributes to is keeping skilled and educated people out of work by filling the position with a €50 euro a week worker .
Absolutely, it’s forcing skilled workers into underpaid, non unionised labour by threatening to cut their dole entirely.
Why the hell would companies hire full time workers when they get paid to take in interns for free! It’s a scam.
Not a huge fan of JobBridge myself Fiona, but I haven’t heard of a single case where someone was told that they had to do an internship or their SW payment would be cut off entirely. I don’t think that would even be legally possible. Care to expand?
I could be wrong, it might have been a different scheme as he was interviewed separate from the job he ended up working in, and then given a list of what he’d be interested in doing and then one was chosen for him, but I had a friend who was told that if he didn’t come for the interview he would be cut off, unless he could give a legitimate reason for not working.
Have a look at the story above about the DAA profits they also looked for jobbridge staff , very disappointing to see this another failed labour policy allowing the right to abuse workers .
3 out of 5 interns secured paid employment. . in australia.
I completed a 9month Internship in September I am still unemployed and it was a form of slave labour.
have to agree with u sarah..im still on job bridge and its a complete slave labour scheme.. only thing i like about it is i can say i worked for my money and at this stage it beats sitting at home. joan burton needs to enforce employment after a certain period of time. fellas i work with on it 3 years now and no sign of employment..
It was only launched in late Summer 2011. Someone couldn’t be on it for three years.
@Rory. There was already a Work Placement programme in place, its actually still going as well, main difference is you dont get an extra 50euro.
I’ve completed 6 out of 9 months of my internship & they have made at least 30% (probably more) of the workforce in the company redundant in that time. Not a chance I’ll be kept on. I really think that only companies that are willing to actually hire the intern after their 6/9 month placement should be allowed participate. I’m worried I’ll find myself in the same position as SarahB81 come August. Minimum experience for most jobs in this field is two years & I’ll only have 9 months.
Diarmuid Jobbridge has a max 9 month internship and then the employer cannot use the scheme again for a further 12 months. It must be a different scheme you were on for 3 years.
sorry john ur right ..its community employment scheme.. kinda the same thing tho!!!!!!
No it’s not
Can we get a list of the 15 companies so as informed consumers we can choose to take our business elsewhere?
Slave labour with a new face
Some one should inform the Pope about this JOBBRIDGE, he seems to have come out strongly against ‘slave labour’ and capitalism
“Bangladesh ‘slave labour’ condemned by Pope” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22370487#TWEET741265
The HSE abusing JobBridge. How are the people meant to get full time employment there after the 9 month period when there’s an employment embargo
Government sanctioned slave labour. Have a look on their site. They were looking for a “warehouse operative” intern and a “fish filleter” intern last week. I wish I was joking because if it were not so sad it would be hilarious
It is a pure scam! Have a read of some of the stories on http://www.scambridge.ie
Saw an internship for stockperson in an off licence. What exactly will you learn doing that job?
Ill admit there are some good internships but there is also a lot of companies looking to save money by hiring slave labour.
Zachary
You can’t argue with the sixty per cent and the Companies banned from the scheme which clearly shows its being managed properly.
Actually I can and the above example is a perfect indication of what some employers think of the internship program. Not all mind but some
I was one of those 3 that got a paid job at the end of my internship.
Job bridge is a joke. Loads of firms who would otherwise be hiring graduates for paid employment are churning through interns for 50 squid a week instead.
Christian the employer doesn’t even pay €50 a week.SW gives every Intern an extra €50 on top of there benefit a week to take up these positions.
Shocking
The tax payer pays that €50 the company pays zero.
wonder what percentage of newly unemployed have lost their jobs due to Joanies little slaves being brought into their workplace.
How many resources in the economy are we diverting to this quango??
If you lowered taxes and regulations on small business, you’d achieve much better results.
The broken glass fallacy is in the spotlight again…
I’ve seen spin but this beats all.
Do you even know what the term quango means or are you just saying it because it sounds fun? JobBridge is not a quango – it’s a scheme administered by the Department of Social Protection.
Propaganda wheel spinning on behalf of the Joan and Enda circus,
Delighted to say I am happily in fulltime employment with the company I spent my 9month placement with seems they are few and far between!!
This is pure lies I know for a fact it is pure lies. I work for a company that hired many but kept none and I know of many large companies that have done similar.
FG propaganda as usual.
It skews the live register in the governments favour also. Since interns and those in Solis courses aren’t documented under the live register, they can say that their keeping the unemployment rates steady but the true numbers are far higher than the 14% that they’re saying.
saw one on it a while ago offering..i shit you not”experience in the preparation of fuel,and bagging of same and customer service/sales”
yep,you guessed it,selling blocks door to door.
That’s another fine MESS you got us into Enda…….
I wonder how the full time employees who list their jobs to interns feel?
Another Astroturfing story.
I know a place where they had an Health & Safety position,a mate got the internship for 9 months and at end was told thank you very much and good luck…….now 4 weeks later they are looking for another intern in same dept,to do same job…..this company is a huge multi national,another advertisement I seen recently was for a forecourt attendant in a petrol station.
absolute bullshit from joan burton. i work with about 5 fellas on it.not one of us has got a job from it and some have served 3 years and have been told time is up soon that they will be gone.. 4 years down the drain to be unemployed again..sad to say but my advise to any1 is stay at home this is a scam unless u can really find a sound boss who is actually genuine enough to keep u on
Again Diarmuid the max length of a jobbridge internship is 9 months and the employer cannot re-apply to take a new intern on for a further 12 months. Maybe you are on another scheme. I hope you find work soon. It’s certainly tough out there.
thanks john ..I replied to ur other reply there ur ight..community employment scheme.. kinda the same thing.. thank you for your well wishes
Did nine months. Still looking for work. It’s a joke.
When an employer employs an intern full time after the internship is up that employer does not have to pay prsi for the first year, so after this year is up the employer can let the employee go and take on another intern for a internship then employ them for a year then let that one go and it keeps going.
The FAI had an intern job bridge vacancy not so long ago on jobs.ie!! THE FAI!!
as a student made recently redundant(can’t draw dole) job bridge really pisses me off! i am more than qualified for half these “internships”,have over 10 years retail experience.But! because im not on the dole- i can’t do them.i am really struggling financially now and finding a job is becoming but a bitter distant memory. Its a disgrace that some of these companies could offer a decent wage/ job security but they go for the cheap option with no job security for those involved- the mind boggles.
The multinationals would have hired them anyway.
Unlike in the Public Sector …….
The private sector examines minutely what good you are doing in the job.
Love to have those standards in Irish public sector!
Half of Irish public sector workers would be sacked by the standards of Intel.
@Peter what would you do if you did not have the public sector to moan about? It seems like the only people capable of doing a good days work is the private sector….who we are bailing out for their greedy mistakes of the past! ! Do you think Boucher is doing a good job on 843k a year and the bank loosing 2bn. Something not right here…..
slavebrige is alive and well wonder would edna, happy gilmore and the gang in power go on jobs bridge
This research is based on a survey of interns and host organisations, with no objective assessment of the quality of internships on offer. There’s nothing wrong with surveys, but the lack of any other research means that the report doesn’t address the problem that companies are converting what were traditionally unskilled or low-skilled jobs (e.g. caretaking, cleaning, waitressing, shelf stacking, etc.) to “internships”. Regardless of whether these internships do eventally get people into employment, surely the question needs to be asked: do we want to create a situation in which people can’t get a job in Tesco unless they intern for nine months first? That seems crazy to me.
Also, the report mentions (but doesn’t highlight) that 55% of those going into employment after an internship were going into temp work. So it’s more than likely that they’ll be back on the live register within six to twelve months.
I think, it is a good idea – but the €50 is paltry. There needs to be a ‘cash’ commitment from the Employer and one that reflects the type of work undertaken and or the Travel expenses incurred. I know Business’s need help, but they can’t have it all their own way! So now they are going to extend the amount of placements – and in mid 2013 they will give 25% wages rebate to employers who take people off the live register.
Our intern finished last week and was offered full time work with us, when she started her internship we had no position for someone at her skill level but during her time we continually trained and up-skilled her so she could take a position. I feel like we’re one of the very few using the scheme correctly. When the scheme is not abused its fantastic, great for the employer and the employee.
Local FG TD had his pre-election position up on jobs bridge locally – if that doesn’t stink I don’t know what does
Some perhaps relevent information, although I am confused as to when the report was released, it seems to me that a preliminary report was released in Oct 2012, because no link was provided with todays article it is hard to tell if this is just the ‘final’ part of that report. Anyhow here is what one guy thought of the OCT 2012 report
http://irisheconthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/indecons-interim-evaluation-of-jobbridge/
The report published in October was an interim (draft) report. The report published today is the final version.
Thanks for the link, it’s an interesting post!
I reckon the thinking behind it is to give people experience so they have a better chance of getting a job abroad and off they go emmigrate and the live register stats look a little healthier, then come the self congratulations.
This is one of the biggest balls of shit that the government is trying to push down the road and now they are trying to manipulate the media to justify it. Piss the fupp off Ends and co.
What’s the story with job bridge and mortgage protection, technically your not employed your up skilling apparently, and still paid by social welfare even though your hidden off the unemployment register?
have your say