Replacing paid workers with volunteers.

With big cutbacks in public spending, some local authorities are toying with the idea of replacing some paid employees with volunteers. In particular I’ve heard of one or two public library services toying with limited volunteerisation.

Superficially, some jobs appear to have the ‘I’d do that for nothing’ factor. People who like books tend to think working in a library would be a doddle. Or just think how many people would volunteer to occasionally drive trains! And why should the BBC waste millions of pounds of licence payers’ money on expensive celebrity TV presenters when loads of wannabees would be willing to present a TV show for nothing? !

OK, I’m being a bit sarcastic. The voluntary sector is great and volunteering within it is good – I do some voluntary work myself. But when it spreads from charities and self-help groups to the world of employed work, it leads to an interesting contadiction. We have a national minimum wage that on the face of it appears to be £5.80 per hour. But with if we include ‘volemployees’, the situation is that you can’t pay someone between 1p an hour and £5.79 an hour, but you can pay them 0p an hour.

I’ve also heard that architectural contracts are increasingly awarded by competition – this means that contenders have to do all the design work on a project – hundreds, maybe thousands of hours – but only the winning architect gets paid. I’ve also heard of this practice with graphic design and illustration work – that some clients invite several people to submit work but only pay the winner.