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Brighton Campaign Victory On Poundland Workfare Placements.

Posted by Andrew Coates | Posted in Campaigns for Unemployed, poundland, Welfare Reform, Work Programme, Workfare | Posted on 06-02-2012

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Cross-Posted from Brighton Benefits Campaign – Here.

They tell us, “after just one demo that branch has pulled out of the ‘work experience’ scheme.”

 

h1

Brighton Benefits Campaign’s successful Poundland picket

The government would have us believe that the growing army of the unemployed – including over a million under twenty-fives – are ‘scroungers’ who will avoid work at all costs.  They conveniently ignore the fact that for every job vacancy there are tens or even hundreds of applicants. And that at the same time, increasing numbers of sick and disabled people and single parents are being forced into the job market.

In the right wing media, workfare is portrayed as a way to prevent the ‘lazy’ unemployed getting ‘something for nothing’ by forcing them to ‘volunteer’ or face sanctions. To those signing on, particularly young people, it is promoted as work experience that will improve their chances of employment.

Of course in reality, workfare provides free labour for companies such as Poundland and other large retailers, enabling them to make yet more massive profits, and to cut the jobs, wages and conditions of their paid workers.    Last Saturday activists from Brighton Benefits Campaign, together with members of Brighton Solidarity Federation and other supporters, took part in their first picket of the Poundland store in Western Road Brighton, in protest against this misuse of the unemployed as unpaid labour under the workfare scheme.

Over a thousand leaflets exposing the truth behind the government’s propaganda were handed out to shoppers outside the shop.  Many showed interest and stopped to discuss the issue.  Some  shared their own experience of workfare.  We were told by one woman that her daughter worked for a Tesco store where workfare had resulted in paid staff being told ‘no more overtime’.

The Poundland manager came out almost immediately and tried to argue the case for workfare as ‘work experience’. Within a short time a whole group of Poundland employees were standing just inside the doors either joining in or listening as we explained how exploitation of the unemployed as free labour is an attack on those in work as well as those without, and that all work should be properly paid.

Interestingly, although the store manager obviously felt somewhat besieged, there was no sign of the police, not even community officers who have turned up at other pickets. Or maybe they were all too busy at the Brighton match!

More pickets are planned as the campaign hots up.  Hopefully this kind of action will be taking place in many other places,  as unions and anti-cuts groups join the fight against workfare.


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Workfare workers are employees of the Crown?

Posted by Work Programme | Posted in Community Action Programme, crown employee, DWP, employee of the State, Mandatory Work Activity, poundland, public sector worker, tescos, unison public sector trade union, work experience, Work Programme | Posted on 04-02-2012

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A new blow for the Government with its Work Programme, Community Action Programme, Mandatory Work Activity and Work Experience schemes as it has been suggested that the jobseekers being placed on mandatory placements through statutory legislation are in effect Crown employees.

Regardless of being assigned to the premises of an company (we prefer not to say employer in such context) or the street:-

  • there is no employment contract expressly written, verbal or implied between the worker and the company;
  • no payment in cash or in kind from said company;
  • jobseekers on the employment programme schemes are statistically employed; and
  • such appointment is exercised through statutory instrument (of an Act of Parliament)

Thus these workfare workers are employees of the Crown, an employee of the State and a public sector worker (regardless if you are operating in a private sector environment) – this is what workfare is all about, working for your benefits.

So, when you are about to start a 6 month stint at Poundland or Tescos stacking shelves with threats to your benefits, make sure you:-

  • Register with UNISON (public sector trade union) for around 81p per week
  • Serve notice on the workfare general (the company you are based at) to alert them of your union membership status
  • Remain active within the union in particular about your working conditions

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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

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Museum volunteer told to work unpaid at Poundland

By Kaye Wiggins, Third Sector Online, 12 January 2012

Cait Reilly [David Sillitoe/Guardian]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.


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Wordpress.com blogs for 'poundland'

Ipswich Unemployed Action comments...

  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by Wayne green
    Am flabbegasted that the big work programme consist's of you going once a wk from minute you walk in to minute you walk out half hour latter you get no contact with a work programme provider apart from them making sure you sign their attendance book and thats only so they can get paid if sitting you in front of a computer half hour a week looking on web sites at jobs that dont change from one month or the next or looking at dwp site at jobs that are made up and never was a real paid job then god help us and the sum thing for nothing excuse me its what we have payed in to the system when we was working that we are getting paid with in fact we are paying our self's with our own money by rights, only people getting sum thing for nothing is the likes of tesco and the rest that take free labour and of course emma harrison and all the other work programme providers that are getting paid what for they dont give us any help to help us back into work so please drop the sum thing for nothing as its what we have paid in to system when we was working and only people to rob the tax payer is all the mp's who fiddled their exspenses and of couse emma and the other chums
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by Noam Chomsky
    It is an imperative that you transform yourself from a consumer of the rich man’s bullshit, to a manufacturer of the people’s truth. – Noam Chomsky, <i>Manufacturing Consent</i>
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by mrmrkrchrdson
    Regarding this letter, I'm no legal eagle - but do remember that in the McLibel case, the European Court of Human Rights criticised the UK for not adequately protecting individuals' rights to publicly criticise private companies, especially where the activities of the company affects people's lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_Case
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by A4e Corruption
    In these recessionary times, we’re all very interested in unemployment. Newspapers and commentators pore over unemployment figures, whether they’re up or down and reflect on what this says about the state of our economy. But nobody seems to care much about the unemployed. Apart from Iain Duncan Smith, of course – or so he would have us believe. In a speech last May, in which he introduced his ideas for welfare reform, he announced, ‘We must be here to help improve people’s lives, not just park them on long-term benefits. Aspiration, it seems, is in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy’ One of the proposals in IDS’s welfare reforms which are currently being pushed through parliament is to involve more private companies in getting the unemployed back to work, who will then be paid for their successes. It’s hardly an original idea – Jobcentre Plus already has contracts with hundreds of such organisations (‘training providers’ they’re called in a classic example of New Labour-speak ) whereby claimants of Jobseekers Allowance are forced to attend ‘employability training’, which often involves little more than them being sat in a room with some newspapers and the Internet for 5 hours a day (if you care to search the web, there are a fair few ranting forums and blogs devoted to these places). The providers have various targets, for getting people into work or onto work placements, and they are paid according to their results. This was the New Labour version, so one can only assume that the Tory version is going to be even more wedded to free market dogma. I worked in the employability sector for a while in the mid-noughties and have friends who still do. I can say fairly confidently that it is run by a bunch of cowboys. A4E, one of the government’s largest private contractors, was investigated by the DWP in 2009 for fraudulent practices, including falsifying employer signatures. It was brushed off by A4E as an aberration, but it is symptomatic of the way that many such companies are run; I know of many cases, from my own and others’ experiences, in which signatures have been forged, paperwork falsified and evidence faked in order for targets to be met and money to be claimed from the Job Centre. One such instance involved a bewildered client being asked to pose for a photograph standing by a photocopier, only to find out later that this was being used as evidence of an office work placement that she had never done. These organisations treat their unemployed clients with contempt. People are regularly put on unpaid work placement schemes, usually with unglamourous high street outfits like Iceland or Poundstretcher, sometimes with the vague promise of a job at the end but just as often not, and expected to be grateful. One man I knew, a 50 year old from Sri Lanka, began a 2 week placement as a shelf filler at a high street chain on the understanding he would be offered a job at the end. The period was extended to 4 weeks and then to 6 weeks, at the end of which he had sustained a bad back injury from the heavy lifting and the offer of a job was withdrawn. 6 weeks of slave labour for a crappy minimum wage supermarket job that never materialised and which gave him a bad, possibly long term, back injury. Is this the kind of aspiration that IDS wants to see more of?
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by A4e Corruption
    In these recessionary times, we're all very interested in unemployment. Newspapers and commentators pore over unemployment figures, whether they're up or down and reflect on what this says about the state of our economy. But nobody seems to care much about the unemployed. Apart from Iain Duncan Smith, of course - or so he would have us believe. In a speech last May, in which he introduced his ideas for welfare reform, he announced, 'We must be here to help improve people's lives, not just park them on long-term benefits. Aspiration, it seems, is in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy' One of the proposals in IDS's welfare reforms which are currently being pushed through parliament is to involve more private companies in getting the unemployed back to work, who will then be paid for their successes. It's hardly an original idea – Jobcentre Plus already has contracts with hundreds of such organisations ('training providers' they're called in a classic example of New Labour-speak ) whereby claimants of Jobseekers Allowance are forced to attend 'employability training', which often involves little more than them being sat in a room with some newspapers and the Internet for 5 hours a day (if you care to search the web, there are a fair few ranting forums and blogs devoted to these places). The providers have various targets, for getting people into work or onto work placements, and they are paid according to their results. This was the New Labour version, so one can only assume that the Tory version is going to be even more wedded to free market dogma. I worked in the employability sector for a while in the mid-noughties and have friends who still do. I can say fairly confidently that it is run by a bunch of cowboys. A4E, one of the government's largest private contractors, was investigated by the DWP in 2009 for fraudulent practices, including falsifying employer signatures. It was brushed off by A4E as an aberration, but it is symptomatic of the way that many such companies are run; I know of many cases, from my own and others' experiences, in which signatures have been forged, paperwork falsified and evidence faked in order for targets to be met and money to be claimed from the Job Centre. One such instance involved a bewildered client being asked to pose for a photograph standing by a photocopier, only to find out later that this was being used as evidence of an office work placement that she had never done.
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by analiensaturn
    These organisations treat their unemployed clients with contempt. People are regularly put on unpaid work placement schemes, usually with unglamourous high street outfits like Iceland or Poundstretcher, sometimes with the vague promise of a job at the end but just as often not, and expected to be grateful. One man I knew, a 50 year old from Sri Lanka, began a 2 week placement as a shelf filler at a high street chain on the understanding he would be offered a job at the end. The period was extended to 4 weeks and then to 6 weeks, at the end of which he had sustained a bad back injury from the heavy lifting and the offer of a job was withdrawn. 6 weeks of slave labour for a crappy minimum wage supermarket job that never materialised and which gave him a bad, possibly long term, back injury. Is this the kind of aspiration that IDS wants to see more of?
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by analiensaturn
    The government schemes are for those with a full brain and low morals to milk those with less mental skills for profit.I had dealing with similar organisations and know them as wolves.
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by Wayne_Kerr
    https://twitter.com/#!/pha_digital
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by Eli
    <a href="http://elibloglondon.blogspot.com/2012/02/welfare-to-work-gravy-train.html" rel="nofollow">Eli Blog</a> The Welfare to Work Gravy Train
  • Comment on Work Programme in Disarray: Up the Ante! by Eli
    <a href="http://elibloglondon.blogspot.com/2012/02/welfare-to-work-gravy-train.html" rel="nofollow">Eli Blog</a> Eli Blog

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