Thanks to Paula Connaughton for this link to an article by Danny Dorling, Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford  :

If you are young in Britain today, you are being taken for a ride

Amongst a host of points he raises :

Work gets better only when we have a choice to say no to some work. We need to be able to say that it is too demeaning, too poorly paid, too dangerous or too dirty. Then the employers need to offer us enough money in return if they want that work done. That is what a well-functioning labour market looks like. It is what you get in a good society –a truly free labour market in place of servitude.

For work to be good work, there needs to be choice, including the choice to say no to bad work. The same is true of education and training. Young adults need a choice. It can become good when there is a choice not to take it, when there is a selection of provision and when there is no provider of last resort that you have no option but to endure. No sin-bin unit for the losers.

At the very least this poses a question for youth workers. Are we running some of the sin-bin units?