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This is horrible and scary. I could imagine it would be possible to establish such a business without telling the people that it's fake... Why not simply give

• rsynnott 11y ago
  > I could imagine it would be possible to establish such a business without telling the people that it's fake... I think they might notice that they weren't being paid... Bear in mind, this is not actually a fake job, despite the title; it's a rather contrived training scheme (and a reasonably successful one; as noted in the article most people who do this do get a proper job after).
  • maratd 11y ago
    The frightening part really is that no actual profitable business wants their labor for free. So they must provide their labor for free to a fake business. That's insane. That means in all probability, their labor is a negative for any employer even if it comes at no cost. My guess is that this is a result of idiotic labor laws and tax practices.
    • rsynnott 11y ago
      > The frightening part really is that no actual profitable business wants their labor for free. Accepting labour for free is illegal basically everywhere in the developed world, and for good reason.
      • dasmoth 11y ago
        Would you care to explain those reasons?
        • abrugsch 11y ago
          Define: Slavery
          • nkassis 11y ago
            Slavery requires coercion. If it's by choice it's different but there are other laws under which this falls that prevent it to avoid abuse. For example in the US, you cannot employ a intern for free that does work your company might profit from (not a lawyer so I might have that slightly skewed).
          • dasmoth 11y ago
            Slavery seems to go rather beyond accepting unpaid labour.
          • dragonwriter 11y ago
            That's not necessarily completely inaccurate, but terse to the point of opacity: the problem posed by unpaid labor in support of for-profit efforts is that if it is allowed, it is very easy for it to become a necessary prerequisite (e.g., as something you need to have to be considered) for paid labor in the same industry, which, if it expands to many industry, makes it potentially a matter of economic coercion to accept unpaid jobs as a means of gaining potential (but not guaranteed) access to paid jobs.
      • redblacktree 11y ago
        How do you account for unpaid interns?
        • dllthomas 11y ago
          They are frequently illegal unless the company is paying them in experience, expending at least as much time/effort/resources as if they were doing the task directly. And people sometimes break the law.
        • dragonwriter 11y ago
          Unpaid interns are often illegal if they are doing productive work for the benefit of a for-profit firm. For instance, in the US, according to the Department of Labor [0], for an "internship" not to be an employment relationship subject to the FLSA, including minimum wage provisions, one of the criteria that must be met is: "The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded" [0] http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm
      • kokey 11y ago
        The people who write these laws in developed countries accept free labour from interns.
        • rsynnott 11y ago
          Unpaid internships must provide education/training; otherwise they are typically illegal.
      • stephengillie 11y ago
        No, it's not. It's called volunteering.
        • rsynnott 11y ago
          And if you're a non-profit, you can accept volunteers. In most developed countries, if you're for-profit, and you have "volunteers", you will be in trouble over labour law, and likely tax evasion.
          • deleted 11y ago
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  • deleted 11y ago
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  • aluhut 11y ago
    We have people here in Germany who do Mini-Jobs or 1-Euro-Jobs. People still get their benefits, but do some kind of low-wage sector jobs (taking away real jobs there). I could imagine there would be no problem moving those people from the street where they pick up litter for example and put them in a office where they push numbers. They would be happy about it and you could give the real low-wage sector jobs back to different people.
• pjc50 11y ago
  establish such a business without telling the people that it's fake How do you tell the difference between this and a VC-funded startup which never acquires any paying customers, without resorting to speculation about what its value might have been were it to acquire customers?
  • cwyers 11y ago
    Because the VC-funded startup pays employees. The people showing up to these Potemkin companies don't get paid.