Transcript - Real Apprentices

NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY.

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PANORAMA

REAL APPRENTICES

Reporter: VIVIAN WHITE

RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE
DATE: 03:09:07

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JEREMY VINE: Hello I'm Jeremy Vine and this is Panorama. Tonight the young unemployed, what's their problem, is it that they can't work or that they won't?

MAN: They should really go out and do something with their life.

WOMAN: They're just lazy, layabout and can't be bothered.

VINE: Or are they stranded without the skills they need and increasingly without hope.

VIVIAN WHITE: Welcome to the world Tim.

TIM: Okay.

WHITE: It's ten past eight.

VINE: Tonight a real apprentice style challenge, 'Get out of bed and get into work'.

VIVIAN WHITE: Morning M.J. ten thirty we arranged to meet.

M.J.: Yeah I just woke up. I'm getting ready now.

VINE: There are nearly a million youngsters in this country, some watching now no doubt, who are not in work, not in college, not being trained for anything. Well tonight we'll meet four of them and we will set them real tasks. The prize? Breaking the habit of unemployment. They make a journey which will surprise you.

WHITE: Good morning Swindon, a town famous well for roundabouts but especially for jobs, that's what they do best here. Great Britain PLC depends on towns like these. How could anyone be unemployed in booming Swindon?

MAN1: People come here from all over the country and all over the world to work.

MAN2: I started when I was 14 and I'm now 79. I get up in the morning and do a job, that's my life, that's what I do.

Reporter Vivian White Now meet our candidates: four young men aged 18 to 20 without a job. Between them they've racked up over five years of unemployment. Our first candidate Michael James, known as MJ, lives on the Walcott Estate with his Nan and Granddad and he'd said he'd be with us at ten thirty.

WHITE: [knocks on door] Excuse me is M.J. here please?

GRANDDAD: He's laying in bed.

WHITE: Is he?

GRANDDAD: I've just called him.

WHITE: Have you, because he arranged to meet us at 10.30 around at the Walcott.

GRANDDAD: Michael, there's a gentleman waiting for you. He says you arranged to meet him.

WHITE: Well we said 10.30 it's now 10.40, start as you aim to go on, that's what we say. I don't think we'll mention the word punctuality do you.

M.J: [appears at the door] I'm just getting dressed.

WHITE: Morning M.J.

M.J: Morning.

WHITE: 10.30 we arranged to meet.

M.J: Yeah I just woke up I'm getting ready now.

WHITE: You're looking absolutely ready to roll.

M.J: Yeah (laughs)

WHITE: Okay we'll get you out, we'll get Glen and then we'll get started.

M.J: Yeah alright.

Not in Education, Employment or Training

WHITE: M.J's 18. The Government's got a name for young people like him, they're called NEETs. They're not in Education, Employment or Training.

Off we go then. I mean this hasn't come as a big surprise to you, we did arrange to meet at 10.30.

M.J: Yeah I know, I know yeah. I set my alarm and everything, I just overslept. I'd rather work than be sat at home you don't want to get out of bed in the morning if you ain't got no work or nothing, it's just stupid.

WHITE: M.J. had a troubled school record, he left at 16 with a handful of GCSEs, he's never had a fulltime permanent job.

'MJ' MICHAEL JAMES KEEN M.J: I'd shovel.. I'd shovel dog crap, I'd shovel.. I don't know I'd shovel horse crap if I had to. I mean I ain't got a job, I need a job.

WHITE: Candidate number two is his cousin Glen, he lives on the same estate, one of Swindon's most deprived.

WHITE: Just after quarter to eleven. [calling through letterbox] Morning Glen, this is your Panorama wake up call.

GLEN: Morning.

WHITE: You may remember we arranged to meet at 10.30.

GLEN: Yeah I know.

WHITE: This is us. Well you guys and what would you say - M.J. and Glen ? what would you say we've learnt so far this morning?

GLEN: Punctuality.

M.J: Yeah.

GLEN: Forgot all about it man.

WHITE: Well that's another lesson, forgetfulness yeah.

GLEN: Yeah, I am quite forgetful actually.

WHITE: How are you?

GLEN: Of course I want to work. I want to be earning my own money, buy my own stuff myself, don't have to keep getting money off my mum or whatever, she's getting a bit fed up now.

WHITE: Like M.J., Glen's 18. Left school at 16, qualifications poor. Work: four weeks at the minimum wage, complained about the Sunday rate and got his cards.

WHITE: What work would you accept now?

GLEN RICHARDSON Now I'd say truthfully now I'd probably take any job, even if it was just cleaning.

WHITE: And staying on at school doesn't guarantee a job. It's early morning in comfortable Wootton Bassett just outside Swindon. Just ask Anne Cruise, she's the mother of our next candidate, Tim. She's getting ready for work - he isn't.

ANNE: [calling up the stairs] It's twenty to eight, I'm giving you your first call.

WHITE: Tim's 20. He's never had a job since he left school at 18. He was still asleep though he knew we were coming. I thought I'd better keep my voice down - she didn't.

ANNE: (laughs) Thank you.

WHITE: Thank you, morning Anne.

ANN CRUISE Tim's mother He's got to get out of the living at night sleeping during the day because he's not going to get a job, he's time shifted.

WHITE: His mother's divorced so the only wages coming in are from her job.

ANNE: It's one of the reasons I've got to move, I can't afford to live here and support him.

974,907 NEETs aged 16-24 in the UK
Source: Department for Work and Pensions

WHITE: Tim gets nearly £47 Job Seekers Allowance each week, he pays her £25 in rent. There are nearly a million young people not working in the UK. It's a ten year record and booming Swindon has its fair share.

ANN: Cheerio Tim. [sets off for work in car]

WHITE: But no one wishes they could crack the problem more than Anne Cruise does because every day she sets off for work at the Job Centre.

WHITE: [Tim sleepily emerges] Welcome to the world Tim.

TIM: Okay.

WHITE: It's ten past eight.

Tim's CV is one long blank: In two years he's only worked a few days. He walked off a work experience course provided under the Government's 'New Deal for Young People' it was in retail. He says it was "Monkey work".

So why haven't you got a job?

TIM CRUISE Can't find one. I haven't been able to get one.

WHITE: Candidate number four is Tim's friend Ben, he's been unemployed for months and it's begun to undermine him.

BEN GILLETT Eventually you just stop really caring so much, it's just "whatever." You get up, you go through the grind, you have your day, you go back to bed, you repeat, ad infinitum.

WHITE: Ben's 20 he messed up his 'A' Levels, left school at 18 and got a job at MacDonald's where he'd already worked part- time, but he lost that job.

BEN: I'm not in a position to negotiate, the employer is. I've basically got to accept what comes my way.

WHITE: New Labour's had a decade to solve this problem but it's got worse. Gordon Brown talked about young people getting opportunities on his first day in the job he really wanted.

Gordon Brown's first day as Prime Minister
27th June 2007
If we can fulfil the potential and realise the talents of all our people then I'm absolutely sure that Britain can be the great global success story of this Century.

WHITE: Tell that to M.J. and Glen. Every couple of days they go looking for work in the recruitment agencies on Commercial Road. There are lots of jobs but - not for them.

M.J: He already knew you didn't he that big ??

GLEN: Yeah I went into Best Connections last Friday, and he goes like, "are you available to work for Saturday tomorrow?"

M.J. Yeah but he didn't ring you.

GLEN: Yeah.. yeah he didn't even ring me either.

WHITE: It's catch 22. What the agencies want is experience, and unless they can get work, they won't be able to get any experience, so they won't be able to get any work.

M.J: Crossing this road's doing my head in.

GLEN: Yeah it's like to and fro.. to and fro (laughs) I'm starting to get pissed off though man.

M.J: Yeah I know.

GLEN: I mean it's just yeah "leave your name and number and we'll get back to you." full of bollocks.

M.J: But they never do.

WHITE: Traditional jobs for the young and unskilled in the old manufacturing economy have melted away. Swindon's shut down locomotive works is now a shopper's paradise, the Designer Outlet Centre, and it's filled with new service sector jobs. More than that, they're recruiting here now, enthusiasm not experience required. We've met four unemployed young men who said they wanted work, there were the vacancies - bingo! We put the two together.

WHITE: [calls boys on the phone] Hi is that Tim?

TIM: Yep.

WHITE: Is that Ben, is that M.J. Michael James. Hi Ben it's Vivian here from Panorama. You know we said that we've had a task for you soon.

BEN: Yeah.

WHITE: Well we've got one and we'd like you to come here and see what it is. I'm in the Job Zone in the Swindon Designer Outlet Centre and we'll show you what we've got in mind for you.

BEN: Alright.

WHITE: Thanks old thing bye. That's it cool indeed Thanks Ben.

And this was the opportunity that we'd spotted, a young German couple setting up a Juice and Pretzel Bar.

So this is where you are going to have your Energy Kitchen, what here?

CHRISTIAN GIERSTORFER
Energy Kitchen, We will have the juicers right in front, we will bake our freshly baked pretzels with cheese and olive and mushrooms.

WHITE: Bavarian lean cuisine and it's a growing business, first Selfridges then Harrods and now naturally Swindon.

PETRA: Our workers will start on Monday so in two weeks time where we see now the square on the floor you will see our orange pride elite Energy Kitchen brand, fresh healthy food with some bar seeds and hopefully loud music and a vibrant atmosphere.

WHITE: And the competition for their jobs was already on, they were starting personal interviews that afternoon and learning about the British workforce.

ASSISTANT: [to Petra] I got a call from him, he's not coming.

PETRA: He's not coming!

WHITE: What's going on?

PETRA GIERSTORFER
Energy Kitchen, We just scheduled an interview at 1.00 o'clock with somebody who five minutes before the interview called in saying he can't come and wanted to re-schedule.

WHITE: A little rude. And then another no show!

Have you been stood up again?

PETRA: Yes! Would you believe that? We actually have the people we scheduled for an interview, we do a telephone interview, we confirm the date, they don't turn up.

WHITE: Bad health, unreliable or just a possibility could anyone be trying to convince the Job Centre that they had been looking for work so they could then go on claiming Job Seekers Allowance. M.J.'s drawn it and, though he isn't now, he knows the system.

Job Seekers Allowance costs £11.2 million every week for 18-24 year olds
Source: Department for Work and Pensions

M.J: I could sit at home for a week, two weeks, go in for my next little interview and just say, "Look I've been in this agency, that agency, I've applied here and I've applied there" they wouldn't know no better.

WHITE: Ben is drawing Job Seekers Allowance, he has to keep a booklet to prove he's seeking work.

BEN: I've shown them a few letters I've had from potential employers but they've never seen my little booklet and I've had friends on Job Seekers Allowance who never show their booklet, they just don't need to, it's really easy to blag.

TIM: What I'm supposed to do is prove that I'm looking for a job, but if I chose to not prove at all and in fact not look for a job I would be perfectly able to ponce off the system for the rest of my life.

WHITE: Which is why Glen isn't drawing it, he says it would stop him seeking work.

GLEN: Dole Dossers that's what we call 'em like because they just sit on their arse and then just sponge off of the dole or whatever, free money basically.

WHITE: So our four candidates seem to make the case for a tough system with carrots and a stick for the unemployed, the system Gordon Brown himself promised ten years ago under the new deal.

Gordon Brown's first budget as Chancellor
2nd July 1997
GORDON BROWN: There will be no fifth option to stay at home on full benefit, so when they sign on for benefit they will be signing up for work.

WHITE: But Tim's been through the system and he didn't notice any stick.

If there wasn't a Job Seekers Allowance what difference would it make to your efforts to get a job?

TIM: I don't know, it's a difficult question to answer but I think I would be looking harder.

WHITE: And this is what he's up against.

Dana LEWINSKA: You will be asked a few questions to tell about yourself, for example, where you live.

WHITE: Because the Government's also pursuing a rival policy, it's opened the doors to a flood of young people who aren't entitled to Job Seekers Allowance even if they wanted it - new migrant workers from Eastern Europe. Diana Lewinska, British but of Polish origin is briefing the latest arrivals eager to work and prepared to accept low pay.

How many applications you sent off?

IMMIGRANT: Twenty-two.

Dana: Twenty-two applications already she sent off to different employers.

WHITE: But it's Wednesday today.

Dana: Yeah.

WHITE: You came here on Saturday.

IMMIGRANT: Yes.

WHITE: You've filled in twenty-two applications already.

IMMIGRANT: Yes.

Dana: She was looking for application....

IMMIGRANT: On Monday and yesterday.

WHITE: On Monday and Tuesday. I can't imagine why she didn't fill in some on Sunday really, seems to be slacking.

Dana: I think they have, you know, desperation they just want to find a job, that's the main motive and that's why they are prepared to take any job they can get.

WHITE: Is it fair competition if these young Polish people are always prepared to work for the minimum wage, to work for less?

DANA LEWINSKA
Recruitment Consultant

They are not always.. they are not always prepared but if they can't get anything else they will go for lower wage.

774,000 UK jobs pay at or below the minimum wage Source: Low Pay Commission using ONS data

WHITE: So migrant workers aren't quote "stealing jobs" but they are helping to keep unskilled wage rates down. Half of Energy Kitchen staff are non-British.

WHITE: What do you pay?

PETRA: We pay as a starting point the minimum wage that's £5.35 for all of our staff, so this is the basic entrance. This is MICK of training and from that on they're entitled to bonuses.

CHRISTIAN GIERSTORFER Energy Kitchen
We invest a lot in the training and development of the people and I don't think that anybody feels like he is.. I don't know exactly how you said before (laugh).

WHITE: I asked, because this is the Energy Kitchen and you deal in juices, if they were being squeezed.

WHITE: No definitely not.

WHITE: Time for our candidates to join the race and after his problems at MacDonald's I imagine Ben would jump at this.

WHITE: Hi Ben.

BEN: Hi Vivian how's it going.

WHITE: Fine let's show you what we've got in mind.

BEN: I'd rather not be involved in food if possible but..

WHITE: Here there's a real job at the end of it, if you do it well enough.

BEN: So yeah I've got nothing to lose by it. I'll just give it my all.

WHITE: Tim.

TIM: Hello, I should probably write that down actually.

WHITE: I think you should. No doubts?

TIM: I've never been very good at application forms but I'll give it a go.

WHITE: Can't say fairer than that. Hi M.J....

M.J: Hello.

WHITE: How's things.

M.J: Alright.

WHITE: Now stop there because the job's over here.

M.J: Yeah I've got that on the piece of paper at home.

WHITE: Oh you've already seen this job advertised.

M.J: Yeah.

WHITE: Well that's great.

M.J: Yeah.

WHITE: But what.. never mind about looking at it had you actually decided to apply for it?

M.J: Yeah I've got to get my CV sorted.

WHITE: Well you've.. you haven't got much time you'd better go for it.

WHITE: But our final candidate, Glen, didn't take up our challenge because he didn't need to. That same day one of the recruitment agencies had called him back.

So tell us the news.

GLEN: Well I got rung up about 9 o'clock this morning by I think it was Best Connections and asked me if I could make it for round about 12 o'clock, working for them 12 till 6, so I said yeah.

WHITE: I bet you said.. I bet you said yes oh brilliant!

GLEN: Yeah.. yeah definitely.

WHITE: Glen set off for his shift at the Honda factory booked through the agency, but he still had some hard knocks ahead in the new world of work. Meanwhile, the other candidates entered the race for a job at the juice bar, CVs first then a phone interview, that's the way it is these days.

TIM: I handle a real interview much better but..

WHITE: Well it doesn't come much more real than this.

BEN: No I mean a real interview as in like face to face as opposed to over the phone.

WHITE: So the good news is you've got a phone interview.

BEN: But the bad news is I've got a phone interview.

WHITE: And the bad news is it's a phone interview.

And Ben needed to explain that he'd actually been sacked from his MacDonald's job.

BEN: I'm afraid I left under bad circumstances.

TIM: I finished sixth form two years ago and I'm... I've been unemployed since then to be honest.

BEN: I applied because I feel this could play to my strengths.

TIM: I like the idea of cooking but I'm no good at it. I can follow instructions and I can cook toast and that's about my limit.

BEN: As soon as you can hire me...

TIM: Okay thanks bye.

WHITE: That wasn't just any phone call that was the phone call.

BEN: Yeah and it was also quite a brief phone interview. I was expecting a bit more than that.

WHITE: And Energy Kitchen invited both Ben and Tim to go through to their next round. Tim admitted a push and a shove had paid off.

WHITE: Would you have ever applied for that job otherwise?

TIM: Probably not, I probably would have looked at it and gone "oh health food store no thank you" but most of that would have been a case of looking at it and going "I don't think I'm going to get this job. I won't apply because I don't want to get back and find out it's a negative" so yeah cheers for making me do it.

WHITE: But there'd been no phone interview for our other candidate M.J. three days on and he hadn't even sent in his application, time for the knock at the door.

WHITE: Hi you must be getting used to these morning calls from Panorama.

M.J: Yeah.

WHITE: Have you put in the application for Energy Kitchen?

M.J: They haven't finished my CV yet.

WHITE: What?

M.J: They haven't finished my CV yet, they were still doing it yesterday. I just wanted it to be bang on the mark and then I'll send it in.

TUTOR: I'm going to do like a revision on your CVs first of all.

WHITE: Employers say the education system isn't providing young people with the skills they need. Just completing a CV is a real barrier for some. M.J.'s local college now runs extra courses to help the young unemployed.

TUTOR: And this time I want you to add some new information.

WHITE: And not all, but lots of those who come here with good grades to study on academic courses lack pretty basic working skills. The college now has to carry out its own assessment of all its new students when they enrol.

CHRIS BROCK
New Collage, Swindon
They may be predicted As and Bs in their GCSEs but there are things with English and Maths where a school is trying to encourage them to be creative, to be analytical and what they then lack is actually how to spell effectively or grammar punctuation.

WHITE: Roughly what proportion of the young people would you need to deal with the skills problem whatever their grades may say?

CHRIS: Roughly 40%.

WHITE: The Energy Kitchen were now putting the remaining competitors in their race for jobs through their personal interviews including two of our candidates. Yes that's Ben transformed by the chance of work, his beard shaved off specially and stressing his fast food experience.

BEN: I'm used to an insane level of customer service, never faltering, it would be always smile, eye contact, greet them and take their order and you leave the customer walking away feeling they've actually enjoyed that.

WHITE: But he also let slip that he hadn't smiled at all his customers.

BEN: Customers rude to us, well we're the ones with the power.

PETRA: So what did you do? Did you make them wait.

BEN: Yeah.

PETRA: Tim (laughs)

WHITE: And Tim had changed his appearance for his personal interview too, he certainly got their attention.

FEM: It looks like you both like black.

TIM: I thought I'd dress like Johnny Cash today I thought I should get dressed up smart and I thought I was going to end up overdressed so I thought I may as well go for it. The only question that I was going to ask was one I was suggested to ask by my mum which I'm not sure whether I should but she told me to say..

PETRA: Mum's are always right.

TIM: What are the promotion prospects for this job?

PETRA: People who want extra.. something extra they get it, so the feedback to your mum is (laughs) yes but..

TIM: I like the sound of this...

PETRA: ...but it's completely up to you. Good day. Thank you.

WHITE: But it was up to Petra now. She had the power to hire or fire our candidates Tim and Ben. And M.J. - he never sent in his CV, it turned out that he'd taken the advice of his Nan instead.

NAN: I said I'm sorry ? no. I said I've worked in kitchens all my life, I said, and there's nothing at the end of it, and they're usually franchised and they go on the lowest pay going and you've got to fight for every blasted penny you can get.

WHITE: So that was out but he said he was searching for work elsewhere.

M.J: Get on a building site or getting in a warehouse or a factory anything like that and then I don't mind.

WHITE: Well we have one more challenge for our candidates, a days work experience this time at the cutting edge of manufacturing at BMW.

WHITE: Hi M.J. Vivian here from Panorama. Hi Tim it's Vivian. Hi Ben it's Vivian. Well this is it here's our second challenge, our second task. We want you to come along to BMWs, that's the plant where they make the panels for the Mini, it's a mini adventure. We want you to come to Gate 2 at 6.00am thanks Tim. We just heard one word when we said it was at 6.00 in the morning: "Blimey!" It's 6.00 o'clock in the morning at BMW this is where everyone goes into work. We are expecting M.J. to turn up but he called in half an hour ago to say he wasn't feeling at all well. He says he'll call in again at 9.00 o'clock. Well we'll take it from there.

But two of our candidates Ben and Tim got up and got in and there to meet them their mentor from BMW, Mick Northcott, he told them it wasn't going to be a game.

Process Leader, BMW Group Plant Swindon

The bonnets that you build will go into 3-400 cars and you will be building that today. Targets wise are bonnets today, usually target 422 we failed yesterday?

WHITE: It was as much an experiment for BMW as it was for us, they're constantly retraining and re-skilling their own workforce but they'd never done this before, taken someone unemployed and tried putting them straight to work on their line. And our two candidates had never thought of working here learning to feed some of the newest and cleverest robots in the world, but afterwards Tim told his host he wasn't keen to repeat the experience.

TIM: I don't mean to offend your company but I don't think I could do this job, not consistently for a long period of time. I think.. I think there's only so much I could do to keep myself interested.

MICK: And you've really got to look in the mirror and say to yourself "I need a change, I need to be motivated, I need to move on, I need a future" you need a goal.

TIM: Well I don't mean to sound all bolshy but I'm actually quite happy with myself the way I am.

MICK: Now I'm going to role reverse now, you're me and I'm you, would you employ me?

TIM: Honestly?

MICK: On what you've said today?

TIM: Honestly, no I almost certainly wouldn't employ me to do the job.

WHITE: Now it was the turn of the next candidate for the Mick Northcott treatment.

MICK: I seen Ben come in at 6.00 o'clock in the morning half awake. As the day progressed I noticed that there was a little bit of a spring in your heel as well.

BEN: Yeah it's.. it's basically getting out of the boredom I've been in. because I've been unemployed for seven months now, this was an opportunity to step away from that and hopefully come back into the working world.

MICK: So you'd be happy starting tomorrow morning at 6.00 o'clock.

BEN: If you've got a job to offer me.

MICK: Would I employ you? I think I would employ you. Well done Ben.

BEN: Thank you very much.

MICK: Well done.

WHITE: So we got Ben work experience, he got work, but through the agency that BMW use. More and more major employers don't hire people like Ben directly.

WHITE: Our volumes are up or down. We use fewer or more people at a time, so that's a bit of flexibility for us. However, if we were recruiting in the future we've then seen people with that agency that we know how they perform and we know what their work ethic is like and whether they suit us, so it's almost like a long term interview while people are working here.

WHITE: And Glen, remember him? Well he was already part of this new flexible workforce filling in for the agency on the early shift at Honda. The time? 5.25 am!

WHITE: Morning Glen. I won't keep you. I know you're in a rush, but just tell us how's it been going at Honda?

GLEN: It's been going pretty fine actually it's not that bad.

WHITE: So you've had four days on and you're just keeping your fingers crossed.

GLEN: Yeah hopefully I want to try and get as many days in as I can.

WHITE: You're doing really well. I won't keep you, you'd better be off.

GLEN: Cheers.

WHITE: A week earlier our candidate Glen had found it difficult to keep an appointment at 10.30 in the morning.

GLEN: "Oh... I still feel half asleep".

WHITE: But he's set off for his shift at the Honda factory on time and proud to be in work. When he got there he was told he wasn't needed after all, his spell of work there was over for the moment but it had never been secure in the first place. Welcome to the new labour market for the young and unskilled, not jobs, just work.

'MJ' MICHAEL JAMES KEEN It's always temporary work week in week out or a couple of days here, it's never full time work.

NAN: He says he works three days then they've got to go back and sign on because they haven't got a job for about ten days, then they get another day. That's not a job, that's going back to the 1940s when the men could go on the docks or down the coal, they could only work so many days. It's happening again!

WHITE: At the Designer Outlet Centre the Energy Kitchen was now up and running and the only one of our candidates who'd survived through to the critical last round was Tim. Today he had to do the job for real to convince the other members of the team and the boss, Petra, that he was worth hiring.

PETRA: With him we had we had a feeling from the interview process to today it might be a 50-50% chance it would be great or not work out at all.

WHITE: Could Tim move the odds? That morning after two years unemployment Tim passed a milestone, energised he earned the team a tip.

PETRA: Whoa... was that your first tip well done.

WHITE: And finally it was decision time.

PETRA: The good news is, after I spoke to every single of the team members and they gave you a 'yes' you're in, we would like to work with you so that's congratulations welcome to the team.

WHITE: The smile said it, after four weeks under our spotlight Tim was no longer a Government unemployment statistic.

PETRA: He's one who has not been completely demoralised, he's actually keen and giving it a go and hopefully achieving something for the future.

WHITE: M.J. got himself temporary shifts with a couple of local employers. He said our push helped.

M.J: I was starting to lose faith in myself starting to lose hope of ever getting back into employment and then I suppose you gave me a little rocket booster.

WHITE: Glen's still part of the new flexible world of work, getting agency shifts but nothing permanent.

GLEN: If I get like a few more months work at where I am now that would help with the next job like.

WHITE: So it's fingers crossed.

GLEN: Yeah it's fingers crossed.

WHITE: And Ben's getting agency shifts at BMW but after six months unemployment he's found more than work.

BEN: Hope essentially.. hope that I can now take this and fly with it and go somewhere in life, and relief that I'm not in that same crap situation that I was before.

JEREMY VINE: Vivian White reporting there. So do you have more sympathy for the young unemployed after seeing the challenges they face, or do you feel they should all just get out from under their duvet and be forced into work or risk losing their benefits? Do call my Radio 2 show on that. We'd love to hear from you.

Next week the Ghost Ship with a hidden human cargo worth over a million dollars, Panorama confronts the people traffickers cashing in on the economic migrants risking their lives to reach Europe.