Waitrose axes autistic volunteer after mum asked for him to be paid for hundreds of hours worked
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/waitrose-axes-autistic-volunteer-after-mum-asked-for-him-to-be-paid-5HjdFjr_2/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
Waitrose axes autistic volunteer after mum asked for him to be paid for hundreds of hours worked
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/waitrose-axes-autistic-volunteer-after-mum-asked-for-him-to-be-paid-5HjdFjr_2/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
16 Comments
If he has to work accompanied by a support worker then it possibly opens up a whole can of worms having him on payroll.
As a volunteer it doesn’t matter so much because the responsibility for him lies with the support worker, if they start paying him then Waistrose are responsible for him as an employee.
Do they pay him the same hourly rate despite not being able to do the same work, and the are they responsible for the support worker as well despite them not being a member of staff? Things get messy very quickly from a legal/HR view so it’s easier just to stop him coming in.
The tone of the response from the head office kind of feels like the local branch got a bollocking for exploiting this person’s unpaid volunteer labour. As much as it might be something where they fear because he’s been acting as an employee for so long he might have an argument for backpay (not that the article says they asked for this, just the potential for a paid role going forwards), it’s also possible that they think it’s a bad look to be running the shop on the unpaid labour of people who have disabilities too.
What seems to have happened is the request about potential paid opportunities has brought the arrangement to the attention of head office, who have disagreed about how appropriate the arrangement as a whole is. I think this might have occurred even if something else had brought it to their attention.
His mum didnt ask for that. She hasnt requested money for the hours he has already worked which was on a voluntary basis.
She simply asked for a few paid hours and Waitrose said no as “couldn’t perform the whole role”. They then stopped him even being able to work as a volunteer.
So he was happy doing the job for a few hours each week and the support worker I presume was paid via a charity. But then the mother started asking for money and ruined it for him.
This is on the parents just as much as Waitrose if they didn’t bother to query this. After his first few shifts his parents (or him) should have asked them about his employment status & pushed to be paid, not 4 years later 🤦♂️
To be clear:
* it says he has worked more than 600 hours, working two days a week 9:30am till 2pm, since 2021. That works out as 16 weeks per year whereas full-time workers would do 46.
* he is accompanied by a supporter worker
* in general, companies are not allowed to offer unpaid work, but unpaid work experience is allowed, but typically once you get to a month or beyond they need to pay national minimum wage
* there is no exemption from NMW for disabled people.
* there is an exemption for voluntary workers (working for charities)
* there is also an exemption for volunteers, who must be free to come and go as they please, are under no obligation to work, and do not expect or receive pay. Once they expect pay, the volunteer exemption will go.
As such, while the work might be beneficial for him it’s not entirely obviously that it’s beneficial to Waitrose, and the NMW issue is a serious legal issue for them such that might decide it’s better not to have him there, especially as the new expectation of pay means he can no longer qualify as a volunteer.
If he did any work at all he should be paid. Shows the corporations are pure vile greed, they do stunts like this for show .
As a parent of an adult with severe learning disabilities and autism I understand where the mum is coming from. They were happy to have him in their store working but not happy to have him as an employee. And this is why disabled adults in this country will never excel or even be given the opportunity to. My daughter is at home with me 24/7. She would love the opportunity to have a little job. It would get her out of the house , a routine and a break from me! But no one will employ her because she needs supervision. There are no services specifically for women with learning disabilities in our area.
Sigh. Some of the very same people parroting stuff about “there’s too many people claiming disability benefits, we need them to get jobs” are also defending why corporations shouldn’t actually hire disabled people because they “can’t do the job as well”. Yeah, this is what we’ve been saying, corporations don’t hire disabled people more because more of us “can’t do the job as well”. Which is why disability welfare is so important.
Seems fairly clear cut to me.
The support worker was already paid. At this point then this is a ‘volunteer’ doing the same job as an employee. The argument that they can’t accommodate it because it’s only part time hours seems flimsy, as if people have never worked part time in supermarkets…
I’m honestly horrified at this, as an autistic person myself.
Why are supermarkets being allowed access to labour for which they have no obligation to pay any wages for? And why are vulnerable adults being shunted into these particular situations?
I’m honestly aghast that this is allowed to happen.
The mum was on LBC this morning so additional context came from that.
Head office made this decision. The specific Branch had basically moved him from working 1 hour a week unpaid as a volunteer to 8 hours a week he was doing this volunteer work through a charity.
They did this without informing head office. When the mum herself reached out to head office to ask for her child to be added to the books and paid going forwards head office panicked because it’s skirting laws around Modern Slavery and asked for him to stop coming in.
After this head office should have investigated and worked out what went wrong and likely did in the background but the Mother just wants her kid to go back to work.
Honestly the charity should have been the one raked through the coals here. What were they thinking not doing due diligence on this…
This title is completely untrue. Has anyone actually read the article and what the mum says? She isn’t asking for back pay.
I really do understand the desire to work and feel like you’re contributing to society, but this is why you never, ever do something like this. Volunteering is great and should be encouraged, but really it should only be done with a non-profit.
it seems that mummy dearest didn’t value all the positive things her son was getting from volunteering there. she ruined it for him by asking for money. was her son even bothered about money? i doubt it. still, waitrose should have paid him something from the start. i think it’s immoral to hire unpaid volunteers when you’re not a charity. they handled it in a typically British fashion. i feel sorry for the young man.
I’m physically disabled and used to work for Waitrose, I was also diagnosed Aspergers. I was expected to do the whole range of duties while awaiting Access to Work assessment – including unloading the HGV deliveries on my own. Strangely, only women were allowed to refuse this part of the job, and were rarely asked to – while I was there anyway. In my limited experience of a just over a year’s work, I didn’t see anyone there that cared about disability/equality at all. Managers were purely interested in profit. My ATW assessment wasn’t implemented at all so I just left.