“Snobs” is how Chris Grayling attacked those who criticise the ‘Work Experience’ programme for the under-25s.

The Employment Minister now  says, ” “The idea that people are being press-ganged for long periods of time to work for nothing to provide cheap labour for big companies is totally untrue.”

It’s all a helping-hand for young people.

Grayling  promises, however, to ‘review” the scheme.  (Here)

Protests have grown.

It’s grabbed people’s attention because big stores, like Tescos and Poundland, are involved.

The Cabinet’s Spin at the moment is to play on the fears that most of us have, righly, for the future of young people.

Who could condemn them, they seem to say, to a life without a job?

In reality this is a subsidy for the companies that take on the under-25s, and the sweetener is unpaid labour.

This undercuts normal employment rights, not to say the rights of those on Work Experience.

But ‘Work Experience is  just one of the Government’s many plans to for the unemployed.

For those 25 and over there is “Pathways to Work”. This is similar to Work Experience, but there is even greater room for exploitation.

It is less visible. But, as Work Programme has exposed on the Ipswich Unemployed Action Blog, government bodies, like the Police, and the DWP, are taking people on through this programme.

The Government says that these programmes are ‘voluntary’. This is far from the case. But it is true that they claim to lead, in theory, to work.

The Coalition has further plans.

They intend a very large number of people to work for their benefits.

This has begun.

People on this site (who we consider contributors not just commentators) point out that Mandatory Work Activity is already clearly workfare. It is not voluntary. It is a kind of punishment.

As the DWP says (Here)

“From today Jobcentre Plus advisers can refer jobseekers that need additional support to get back to work onto mandatory work activity. Where advisers believe a jobseeker will benefit from experiencing the habits and routines of working life, they have the power to refer them to a four week placement.

This could be in a wide range of roles, including doing maintenance work for housing residents, renovating and recycling old furniture, working in a local sports club or supporting charitable organisations.

Participants will be expected to spend up to 30 hours a week, for 4 weeks, on their Work Activity placement and will be required to continue to look for work.

This kind of scheme is to be extended.

Chris Grayling said to the Sunday Times (8.1.12).

“Claimants can expect to be involved in working in parks, helping in community centres, and picking up litter”.

From next year anybody who’s been unemployed for more than 2 years will be expected to undertake the Community Action Programme. Pilots are up and running.

This will be “Mandatory Work Activity” – for  six months.

Why is the government doing this?

They are building on New Labour’s ‘New Deal’ and ‘Flexible New Deal’.

These schemes made claimants do ‘placements’ for their benefits, though they claimed it would help make people more employable and update their skills.

Now work for your Dole is the aim.

What’s the Economics?

Many employers are now used to treating workers like their products.

They only hold the minimum in stock (‘just in time’) and want to get rid of anything they don’t want as easily as possible. They want employees whenever they need them, and to get rid of them as simply as possible. They want to pay them the least they can. In many cases they use Agencies, with Zero Hour Contracts.

Work Experience, or Pathways to Work, fits into this. It  reduces the of getting somebody new. The threat of benefit sanctions makes people do what they’re told. The main risk is taken by the state. People can also be sacked easily during the trial – and benefit sanctions will result.

Workfare is another angle. It  could replace the paid public sector workers Coalition austerity budgets  are cutting. It’s also another kind of discipline. It makes life hard for anyone on benefits. It gives an incentive to find a job, however badly paid at least you’d get something more than JSA. The work is an unopaid bonus for whoever runs the schemes.

Neither plan creates real work, or solves growing unemployment.

Expect of course for those private companies running the schemes that push the out-of-work around.

People sometimes talk of a return to Victorian values.

There’s a lot of  shouting at the ‘work-shy’ unemployed.

There’s also growing Charitable involvement in Welfare – from Food Banks onwards.

A Victorian writer, Dickens, wrote about the kind of people who had these values.

Mrs Pardiggle in Bleak House lectures the poor on their drinking and idleness.

Today there’s plenty of Mrs, and Mr Pardiggles, to hector the feckless out-of-work into Workfare.

Community Action Programme (Workfare).

Government Guidelines for Providers (Extracts and Comments).

From here.

“This scheme  is for “very long-term JSA claimants who  may reach the end of the Work Programme from 2013.”

Note: There are 750,000 long-term unemployed. This figure is not expected to go down by 2013.

The government’s approach, already in place, and adopted by Work Programme providers,  is summed up in the Guardian today,

“The subtext is that external economic factors can never be the cause of someone’s unemployment: the problem must somehow lie with the individual.”

Those long-term unemployed who have gone through thee Work Programme will now have to face up to this further effort to make them solve ‘their’ problems.

“10.  Participation is mandatory and a claimant’s benefits may be stopped if they fail to start or complete the programme. “   

Those who will have to participate  include,

3.  The majority of these claimants will have been unemployed for a substantial amount of time, and having received support through both Jobcentre Plus and contracted provision, should display similar characteristics to those we expect of claimants still out of work at the of the WP.
 
4.  The claimant group set out above will include a range of claimants with circumstances that need be taken into account in designing CAP  support. These will include:
•  claimants with caring responsibilities, including lone parents
•  disabled claimants or those with health conditions
•  claimants who are over 50 years old
•  claimants serving a community sentence which could involve
Community Payback
•  socially excluded claimants, including ex-offenders, offenders,homeless claimants, and claimants with a drug or alcoholdependency problem.

What is the nature of the work?

9.  CAP work experience placements must deliver a contribution to the local community and must not displace what would otherwise be paid jobs.
 

 Those who are succesful to run the scheme will have to deliver,

“provider-led jobsearch support for a minimum of 30 hours each week where a participant is not in a work experience placement •  delivering up to 10 hours of compulsory provider-led jobsearch ( Note: more pointless sitting in front of Computers)  each week for each participant
•  raising compliance doubts with JCP Decision Makers, and notifying us when participants subsequently re-engage
•  reporting specified participant changes of circumstance to JCP
•  producing an exit report, when a participant completes CAP, within ten working days of a participant leaving CAP
 
Duration of the CAP
 
12.  Each work experience placement will last for up to 26 weeks, however a single work experience placement of 26 weeks may not be possible in every case.  If necessary, CAP can be made up of several shorter work experience placements, but you will need to ensure the participant completes a minimum of 21 weeks on a work experience placement or combination of work experience placements and employment (off benefits) to achieve a 100%  completion fee.  

Defining principles.
 
A2.2   The community benefit of a CAP placement should:
 
•  be of benefit to the community and the individual 
•  directly create, or significantly contribute to the creation of, tangible  and lasting benefit to the community, or particular groups or individuals within the community;
•  be clearly demonstrated in the placement activity, and not be an    “add on”; and •  where the placement does not directly benefit the community, there must be clear demonstrable evidence that the placement provider business objectives are to deliver community benefits.

What ‘community’ is, and what ‘benefits’ are is open to question. 

Who will decide what is, or is not, of ‘benefit’ to a ‘community’? 
 

Who Will Deliver Workfare?

A2.4  Examples of organisation types that deliver direct/indirect benefit to thecommunity for the purposes of this section include; 
 
•  Local Authorities and Councils 
•  Government Departments and Agencies
•  Charities and third sector organisations
• Social Enterprises
• Environmental Agencies

Unsuitable activities: or, there are limits you know.

A2.8  Participants must not be expected to engage in activities which could   put them at risk, or are against their personal beliefs. It would be difficult to produce an exhaustive list of unsuitable activities.

 
Please note this list is not exhaustive. 
 
•  where there are doubts as to compliance with the relevant Health   and Safety legislation 
•  where it may involve the claimant breaking the law e.g. street    sales without a licence from the local authority where one is required
•  involvement in religion or party politics. 
 You should take account of a claimant’s personal belief. All participants on CAP should be treated fairly regardless of their religion or beliefs. They should not be asked to undertake any activity which goes against their beliefs, for instance, working within certain types of industry (e.g. particular sectors of the food industry). You should also make allowances wherever possible to accommodate religious holidays and practices.  

My political and ethical belief is that workfare is wrong.

So?

Exploitation.

Ensuring participants are not exploited by placement providers
 
A2.10  You are responsible for ensuring that participants are not exploited. 
 
A2.11  Some placement providers may be tempted to get involved in the delivery of provision as a way of getting cheap labour or getting someone in to help during a busy period. This is not acceptable. Placements must be additional to existing or expected vacancies and should not replace what would otherwise be paid jobs.

Comment.

The last area is the trickiest one.

Clearly working with Councils and Charities will replace what could be paid jobs.

These organisations, and businesses, are already suspected of being deft hands at ‘re-defining’ jobs so that a placement on the Work programme (work experience) is not considered a ‘replacement’ for paid employment.

We can expect that they will find ways of making it appear that Community Action Programme people will take positions that could get a salary. But they will now, thanks to generous government payments, get somebody to do this for nothing.

Cuts in local government, from libraries, spending on the environment, to social services,  mean plenty of things are no going to get done.

The Community Action Programme will fill the gaps, without ‘replacing’ anybody – nobody is going to be doing the work at the moment.

In any case working for way below the minimum wage  is by definition exploitation.

Cait Reilly [David Sillitoe/Guardian]

Cait Reilly was told she otherwise would lose her Jobseeker’s Allowance

A university graduate was told she had to stop volunteering at a local museum for four weeks and do unpaid work in a Poundland store in order to continue receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Cait Reilly, who graduated from Birmingham University in 2010, was regularly volunteering part-time at the Pen Museum & Learning Centre in Birmingham because she hoped to pursue a career in museums.

But last autumn she was told by her local Jobcentre Plus that she had been placed on a “sector-based work academy”, a four-week programme made up of two weeks’ employability training and two weeks’ unpaid work at Poundland.

Reilly has this week launched proceedings to seek a judicial review of the Jobseeker’s Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme) Regulations 2011, which include a power to compel JSA claimants to carry out work.

Her solicitor, Jim Duffy of Public Interest Lawyers, said Reilly had been volunteering at the museum since May. He said she was placed on the work academy programme by her local Jobcentre Plus and agreed to do it after being told about the scheme in “vague and inaccurate terms”.

Duffy said when Reilly found out more about the programme, she told staff at the Jobcentre Plus that she did not want to take part, but was told that it was mandatory. She did the Poundland placement in November.

Brian Jones, another volunteer at the Pen Museum, a registered charity, said Reilly was not able to give much notice that she would have to stop her work for a month. “She is a valued volunteer here, so to lose her in that period was very difficult for us,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “Working in retail is perfectly good experience for a career in a museum. There are very similar transferable skills involved.”

Here.

Comment.

The Daily Mail seems to think that working for your dole in Poundland is a good idea.

Someone calling herself Dominique Jackson writes, “We should be grateful that Poundland has signed up to the scheme to provide work placements, training and a guaranteed interview for kids trying to improve their employability.” (Here)

I suppose anyone under 25, who gets a reduced JSA, is a “kid”.

To be treated as such.

The idea that Poundland have found a nice little earner – getting workers for free – seems to have escaped her attention.

Or that it is indeed a human right to be able to choose your job.

As in, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

Article 23

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice  of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (Here)

Naturally for those who want to see the unemployed forced to clean the streets (and why not with Toothbrushes – there was a Pilot Scheme in Vienna in the late 1930s) this right does not exist.

On the Background to Workfare and details of how Private Companies, Local Government, the Third Sector and Charities are going to exploit this Harpy Marx is highly recommended – here.

I know some people who had temporary jobs with the Royal Mail over Christmas.

The Unemployed  are encouraged to take us these posts, and normally this works out well.

Things have changed.

That is, they now worked not for the Royal Mail but for a private agency ANGARD STAFFING AGENCY-.

This was set up by the Royal Mail – to employ them as lower wages.

There are accounts, (first hand) that conditions of work for these temporary staff were extremely poor.

Many of these people (including in Ipswich)  only got paid – late – by vouchers (print-outs) which they had to cash at Post Offices.

Now, as we all know, signing back on (Housing Benefit included) is never easy.

This will have been helped by this experience.

But no doubt somebody at ANGARD STAFFING AGENCY is coining it in at their expense.