Passage 3

Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage:

    As any middle-class parent knows, unpaid work experience can give youngsters a valuable introduction to a secure job. The government has recognized it too, abandoning rules in 2011 that had formerly stopped 16- to 24-year-o!ds from doing unpaid work while claiming unemployment benefit. But moving from that to forcing them to work without pay in order to collect these benefits has proved a big step.

     (79) More than one million young people in Britain are unemployed, the highest number since the mid-1980s. Keen both to cut the welfare bill and to avoid the depressed future wages that may result from early unemployment, the government has introduced an ambitious program of reform to get youngsters off welfare and into work. A key part of it is ensuring that no one gets benefit from the government for long; ministers are keen to avoid what happened after the early- 1980s recession (~/l/), when unemployment continued in some parts of the country for a long time after the economy began to improve.

     To help young people into work, ministers had persuaded lots of employers, including bakery chains, bookshops, and supermarkets, to take on unemployed youths, who receive work experience but no pay, with the prospect of a proper job for those who shine. (80) Some 35,000 youngsters participated last year; half found paid work soon after finishing the scheme.

     The idea of getting young adults used to showing up for work is popular with voters: according to a survey published in February, about 60% of people support the program. Equally attractive was the option of compelling them to work: Under the existing arrangements youngsters could choose whether or not to accept a place, but if they dropped out after the end of the first week, they stood to lose up to two weeks’ benefits.

     Yet the scheme has also polarized (两极分化的) opinion: a third of people are consistently opposed. Following a noisy “Right to Work” campaign that accused employers of co-operating secretly with the government in “forced labor”, several firms dropped out of the program. To prevent this from getting worse, Chris Grayling, an employment minister, admitted that young people could leave their work experience at any time without being punished for doing so. This not only halted the flight of employers (for now, at least) but also enabled him to announce that new firms have agreed to take part in the program.