Yesterday’s Dundee Courier carried an article that amounted to little more than a free advertisement for ‘volunteer’ stewards at next month’s big music event in Camperdown Park. Not only are they expecting stewards TO WORK FOR NOTHING, ‘anyone interested will have to pay a £20 deposit and a £15 processing fee, with no guarantee they will actually be selected to volunteer.’ They are also expected to provide their own tent, food and toilet roll. Whatever happened to a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work? This is run by a commercial organisation not a charity, and I’m sure plenty of people will be taking home a nice profit, so why won’t they pay the people who work for them? And does Dundee City Council consider this acceptable? What about all those people looking for and desperately needing a paid job? Some may even feel pressure to ‘volunteer’ for the sake of their CV?

We put this up on Facebook last night, where it was greeted by well-deserved horror. We also tagged one of the local councilors who has promised to speak to the organisers. If nothing changes, I can feel a picket coming on…

This is becoming a bit of a pattern. Remember all those cheerful helpers working for nothing at the Commonwealth Games (we complained about that too). And the zero-hours contract workers hired to clean up Glastonbury and sent away because volunteers had kept the site so tidy. People on zero-hours contracts also lost out in Glasgow when a major gig was cancelled at the last minute. Just because a company is involved in the entertainment business, that doesn’t give it the right to make profits on the back of other people’s goodwill or desperation. All these events involve licensing, if not the use of public spaces and – in the case of the Games – public sponsorship, so there is plenty of scope for local authorities to take action.