Jamie Oliver has caused controversy recently. Saying young people should get up and go try working 100 hours a week.
I wonder how young he means. I hope he doesn't mean 17 year olds, otherwise their boss is breaking the law and making them work 60 more hours than they are legally allowed.
The reality is many people would love to just have a job. Let's remember how many people are currently unemployed in our country, it's in the millions.
So instead of giving one person 100 hours a week, do we not think it would make sense to give four people 25 hours a week, or 10 people 10 hours a week? That way people are employed and they would be working the amount of hours that suits them.
Beyond everything else, his statement comes at a bad time. Not that long ago an intern at the Bank of America, that worked three days and nights, committed suicide because of it. Is Jamie Oliver saying we should force people to work even more hours and lead them to being very stressed and unhappy?
Because working 100 hours a week, isn't very helpful to society. It doesn't help overall unemployment, and it certainly isn't necessary to produce things for such a large amount of time. And even if you work that long and get paid good wages, you spend little time able to enjoy it because most of your time is filled with sleeping, working, eating and general chores.
And where does he think that people should work, where working that many hours a week is actually beneficial to production and society?
He himself works in a sector where he doesn't produce anything socially necessary, he just cooks food and tries to turn it into art and charges extortionate amounts for it. I would recommend that Jamie Oliver goes and reads a pamphlet called Abolish Restaurants.
Would he suggest a hospital or a public sector where people are constantly in need of help, care or a service? Because working 100 hours a week in a hospital would probably lead to more deaths and mistakes due to tiredness and stress. That's if the NHS could afford such wages for a group of people working that much.
Perhaps he means they should work in a factory? Ah, hang on, my mistake, most factories are nearly fully automated now, where there is very little need for human intervention. It isn't like it was, even in the 70/80s, where you could just walk into a factory and stand a machine and pack things up.
Has Jamie Oliver not realised that shops are still shutting down and laying off staff because they cannot afford to pay the wages? And that most places are now looking at qualifications even more.
He cannot be suggesting that people go work 100 hours a week in a restaurant, can he? Where would most people find money to get a food and hygiene type qualification to even be considered for a role these days? Most people can't afford to get to the jobcentre let alone anything else.
According to Oliver the EU is to blame for a limit on the working week. Last I checked the law got put into place in the 1800s after a huge uproar in demand for change.
I would say that Jamie Oliver is living in a dream world, but really, nobody would want to see one person work 100 hours a week getting more stressed and destroyed, while everybody else starves because they have zero hours. If people worked more fairly and distributed workload more fairly then everybody could do their share.
If he is keen on seeing the young people of this country in jobs and employment, he should ensure that people actually get hours in the first place. He should stand up against the zero hour contracts that most young people are forced onto, and because of the clauses involved often trapped in the job, penniless and unable to budget from week to week.
And linked to all this, when I was on the bus not long ago, a retired man, said "I remember when there were ten people doing two peoples jobs. But that can't go on forever I suppose. But what are we going to do with all the people now".
There is the key. It is better for a lot of people to do a little, than for one person to do it all. Because beyond employment levels and wages and everything else that is deemed 'important' in this current system, it meant people could gain friendships, skills and at least feel independent.
He needs a kick up the bottom, and a hit round the head with the previously mentioned pamphlet.