Cait Reilly Forced Labour Case Goes Forward.
Posted by Andrew Coates | Posted in Campaigns for Unemployed, Cuts, Department for Work and Pensions, poundland, Public Interest Lawyers, Welfare Reform, Welfare State, Work Programme, Workfare | Posted on 13-01-2012
Tags: Ipswich Unemployed Action, Unemployment, Welfare, Workfare
Museum volunteer told to work unpaid at Poundland
By Kaye Wiggins, Third Sector Online, 12 January 2012
![Cait Reilly [David Sillitoe/Guardian]](http://cached.imagescaler.hbpl.co.uk/resize/scaleWidth/456/?sURL=http://offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk/News/NST/D1CDFC7D-CAA8-F05A-29D3753D197748EA.jpg)
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
- 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.
