In an earlier post I referenced how my friend's wife was offered $50 a day to work in a restaurant. Cash in hand. My friend was really angry that they would try to pull that and he rang every relevant department and insisted that something be done.
Guess what happened? Nothing. Nobody cares.
Sadly, i am not in the least surprised. I guess the powers-that-be in both our countries are quite happy to accept that the modern economy is propped up by slave labour, the main goal being that the rich shpuld continue to get even richer.
IIRC, your friend's wife was only looking for a job out of boredom, so why doesn't she volunteer somewhere? I know i know, a lot of charities now are run just like private business, and thus virtually amount to scam,; but exceptions can be found, and State schools are often crying out for volunteers to help the teaching staff, and most parents are too busy working, or looking for numerative work. or hey! how about she founds a charity (or joins one if such already exists) to try to help those exploited Thai workers?
In Britain , the DWP now "encourages"" people to do voluntary work to help them gain work experience, so you'd think that volunteer posts were over-subscribed to the hilt. But in practice that means that voluntary organisations can't get the committed workers they really need, just a successive batches of random jobless who've who''ve been coerced by the state into signing up for a few short weeks.
When you and I were young, those with a strong social conscience ( in Britain at least) could effectively choose to put their time and energy into all kinds worthy projrects (in the Arts, education and social care) and survive on state Benefits rather than try to squeeze a wage out of it. Lots of people did it, and the DWP didn't mind because there wasn't enough paid work to go around anyway, and so they were under no pressure to get everybody back into work or anything like that. But most of those projects foundered long ago, as their workers got forced back into the general labour maket , and the myth was born that there's plenty of renumerative work to go round for those who really want it.
People who
want to do voluntary work are now required to drastically limit their hours, so as to maintain a full-time readiness for full-time work; they have to declare that they'll drop the voluntary work in a flash, should renumerative work become available; and if the charity pays them expenses such as bus-fares, then they're supposed to declare them , so their value can be deducted from their benefits. Oh! and the value of the benefits has gone down and down too, ofc. In short, it's been made impossible. And, one way or another, everybody's life is a little bit poorer for that.
People like your mate's wife (i mean who are under no pressure to try and earn a living) are now a rare and valuable resource. It would be a bit of waste, IMO, if she just used her talents to help line some restaurant owner's pockets