Previously we have criticised charities such as the Papworth Trust and YMCA Training; and those that people think are charities (when they are not) such as The Big Issue…

Today, we will focus on The Prince’s Trust, who took the risk of using the riots as an opportunity for a fund-raising campaign to raise over £1.5 million of additional money with the assumption that by donating to Prince’s Trust will stop the youth having to resort to such measures in the future (although it clearly states most young people weren’t involved – but no mention of the demographics of the rioters).

We understand that the Prince’s Trust provides the following courses and grants:-

• Team
• Get into… (Youth Work, Retail, Cars, Cooking)
• Get started…  (Football, Music)
• Development Awards (grants)
• Community Cash Awards (grants)
• Fairbridge Programme
• Enterprise Programme

But you never really hear much about the 650,000 people helped in 35 years.

Taking the Enterprise Programme for example (due to it being much easier to gauge than the other programmes) there is solely one funded business in the East, in Lowestoft called Vivaz Media whose website is in development; however all Princes Trust offices in the region hold rather regular introduction events for the programme.

Are people that bad? Especially in the well renown Cambridge-Ipswich (Suffolk) IT corridor (also known as IP-City)…

Feedback would be appreciated. Have you or do you know of anyone having benefited from being on one of these programmes?

• As for the community-based programmes and grants, do you know if they have significantly impacted your community and improved your neighbourhood?

• Are you in a new career now thanks to the “Get into…” programmes?
• Have you improved your person skills, team building, confidence etc. thanks to the Princes Trust Team programme?
• Have you set up a business with finance or mentoring support from the Enterprise Programme?

Cait Reilly: Singled Out For Attack by Ian Duncan Smith.

In the Sunday Times today (22.1.12) Ian Duncan Smith Work and Pensions Secretary says of Cait Reilly,

“What a snooty-so-and-so. She seemed to say she shouldn’t stack shelves because she’s intelligent . The way she sneered -as if she was too good for it,” he says,. “She’s wasting our time and money going to court. It’s ridiculous. What about the human rights of the taxpayer. It’s a human right for the taxpayer to know you’re doing something productive instead of wafting around looking for the job you want while someone else pays for it.”

We can be sure Cait Reilly will receive a fair hearing with that kind of comment from a Minister flying around.

Not to mention his novel definition of human rights.

Wikipedia says “His wealth is estimated at £1 million much of which has been earned by working as a high end after dinner speaker”.

Ian Duncan Smith has never done an honest day’s work in his life.

Support this Campaign (see Box Bottom Right for link).

The Cait Reilly case has brought workfare (unpaid work for benefits)  to people’s attention.

Some seem to think this is a new policy.

Red Pepper reports,

Karina was mandated to work in Primark under New Labour’s Flexible New Deal. She had been sent to a private ‘welfare to work’ provider whose regime included putting claimants to work without pay in businesses, charity shops and public sector workplaces. Although regulations meant that she could only be obliged to work for up to 12 weeks without pay, she worked for 24 weeks, fearing she would have her benefits stopped if she did not agree. She had signed up to and paid for a college course that would help her find work but she had to give it up to do the placement: ‘They told me they would stop my JSA, so I stopped my English course.’

This sytem  began with the New Deal in 1998.

This is what the programme offered, (Wikipedia),

The NDYP begins with an initial consultation session, referred to as Gateway, that focuses on improving job search and interview skills. This training is provided by an external organisation such as a4e, CSV or YMCATraining. If the search for employment is still unsuccessful after the Gateway sessions, to continue to receive unemployment benefits, one of four options must be chosen:

• A subsidised job placement. The subsidy is £60 per week, and lasts 6 months; a £750 training allowance is also available to participants. Clients are paid a wage from the employer.

• Full-time education and training, for up to 12 months.

• Work in the voluntary sector, the client is paid JSA plus a £15 training allowance. This is called Community Task Force.

• Work with the Environmental Task Force.(DWP website; Peck, “Workfare” 304; Glyn 53)

Participation in one of the four options is mandatory to receive benefits, refusal to participate will lead to the benefit being stopped and will be referred to a Decision Maker who will decide whether a recipient should receive a sanction should they decide to reclaim.”

Gateway normally meant some CV writing (highly useful) job application and interview techniques (also useful).

It could also included less useful ‘courses’ including those based on the kind of self-help manuals that made Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus school of thought.

Despite appearing to offer a number of ‘options’ most people were put, without any choice, on the 3rd (I know nobody who did the first, which meant they got paid). Placements were rapidly extended beyond the ‘voluntary sector’ and the ‘Community Task Force’. They included working in local government, and private companies.

Why did people participate?

‘Work experience’ might be useful (for your CV for example). There was always the possibility of paid work. But more important perhaps was that getting an extra £15 and doing something was preferable to sitting in a room being hectored and told, 5 days a week, to do “job search”.

These Placements lasted from 13 weeks to 26 weeks.

I know personally cases of people of working in Ipswich warehouse-mega-stores shelving and carrying stuff around. One told me that his boss bought him a couple of drinks at Christmas – as well he might.

Charities and the ‘voluntary sector’ might seem a good idea. The Labour Government began farming out welfare services to them. The unemployed were used instead of paid employees – when they were not working alongside people sentenced to do Community Service.  Or, in Ipswich, working alongside prisoners on day release from Hollesley Bay.

Without the rights of salaried employees the unemployed were open to a wide range of abuses. Charites (often with highly paid executives) and the Third Sector are not always good employers.

I know of a number of significant cases where people felt ill-treated.

In nearly all cases when the Placement ended there was no job.

The attitude is thank you very much and now for the next placement-person.

The Flexible New Deal was introduced in October 2009.  James Purnell Work and Pensions Secretary was behind the change, though he had to resign that years when his expenses claims were found out.  

The Flexible New Deal reduced the time of Placements to 6 weeks. It got rid of the ‘sitting in front of a computer doing job search’ (though not the ‘courses’). It abolished the £15 bonus.

But the slide towards using the unemployed as free labour became more explicit.

They also used ‘volunteers’ from the Dole in place of genuine volunteers.

The Work Programme was introduced last summer. On this site Worky has explored its details.

Cait Reilly appears to have got into one of its programmes, a 2 week placement.

There is already the Mandatory Work Activity to punish people – which we have discussed here.

The plan now to make everyone who is unemployed for over 2 years participate in the Community Action Programme.

This is full-time unpaid workfare.

When it’s introduced it will be used to fill the gaps in public services - caused by the Liberal-Conservative Coalition cuts.

That is “picking up litter”  tidying up parks, and no doubt carrying all kinds of tasks not getting done because of government cuts.

It will be US style workfare.

There is conclusive evidence against workfare – here.

But, as reactions to Cait Reilly show, there are people in this country who simply want to order the out-of-work around, and make them sweat.

Something that Lord Freud, a former banker and wheeler-dealer, the man who advised the Labour Government on the Flexible New Deal and now, the Coalition on the Work Programme, has only ever done in a Sauna.

Under this picture of the Gallagher family “Ipswich Unemployment Action Spokesman” Andrew Coates is quoted in a Sunday Times article (8.1.12) titled, “End of the Something for Nothing Culture“.

With by the by-line Jon Ungoed-Thomas there is a page about the Work Programme, “Mandatory Work Activity” and the coming “Community Action Programme.”

What is the central problem about unemployment?

On a  brief venture to a Birmingham dole queue a reporter eventually  found someone saying what they wanted to hear, “why should I work for nothing when I can get money for nothing?”

That was not the only ‘investigation’ they undertook.

On Friday there was a brief trip to Ipswich.

Not the Sunday Times but a journalist for Anglia Press Agency visited the town. He also telephoned me and interviewed  me – by phone.

During our conversation I told him of Boycott Workfare and the case of Cait Reilly in Birmingham who was made to work unpaid in Poundland. These duly figure in the report.

The main plank of End of the Something for Nothing is the Work Programme.

Work Placements are there.

The investigators did not find time to trace the history of this – from the New Deal to the Flexible New Deal.

The Liberal-Conservative Coalition says its Work Programme is different.

They might have asked about the drift – which we predicted – from genuine ‘work experience’ to filling in jobs in places like Poundland.

As part of the Work Programme people who are  under suspicion (or in fact those who refuse to obey instructions from Work Programme Advisers) , can find themselves on Mandatory Work Activity. That is unpaid work for four weeks.

We learn of the chief Minster for Welfare  Ian Duncan Smith’s pre-election visit to a Job Centre. He heard of how tough measures had support.

Employment Minister Chris Grayling is cited saying that ‘work for welfare’ will be introduced. The article fails to mention the time, but it is said to apply for anyone unemployed for over two years.

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

I am cited as saying

“People sent out on the community action programme have said they are being made to feel like criminals – working alongside the people ordered to carry out community work by magistrates for breaking the law. It seems increasingly the government  wants to punish people who are not working.”

This is a fair summary – although I said programmes like the Community Action Programme.

I also described Placements and Courses I had been on and how doing this had failed to get me work.

A serious article would have investigated why this has happened, not just in one case, but in tens of thousands (and there is a Parliamentary Committee report last year which – ignored by Ian Duncan Smith and Grayling – did just this)

In an Editorial, The Year to Tackle Welfare Reform The Sunday Times, concentrates on Mandatory Work Activity. Its says the DWP ”appears” to have selected some of those it suspected of playing the system”. In reality people can only be sent on this because they fall in this category.

The Editorial  mentions “the problem of welfare and the claimant culture”.

It then says, “But the government must ensure that jobs exist”.

Its solution?

Get the economy moving, and “securing Britain’s borders”. There is, it notes, legal immigration and illegal immigration. In fact the sole concrete way the Sunday Times foresees creating a better job market is to crack down on illegal immigrants.

We have some questions for the Sunday Times.

No doubt it would give Grayling pleasure to see the assorted Gallaghers, Coateses and no doubt other ne’er-do-wells, picking up litter in the streets for the sum of just over sixty quid a week.

But to do so will cost more money than our Dole payment.

Assorted Gallaghars and Coateses will need some pretty tight supervision to make sure they keep the pavements spotless and the parks immaculate, not to mention the fact that Community Centres may not relish the prospect of our help.

Elsewhere in the paper Nicholas Hellen reports on Entrepreneurs make millions helping Jobless.

So we can get a  fair idea of who will organise this ‘Community Payback’ for the out-of-work.

But hold on.

Aren’t these tasks already carried out by paid employees?

The National Union of Litter Pickers, Rag Collectors, Community Workers, and Leaf Sweepers, may not like the idea of their members’ jobs being replaced by unpaid Benefit Claimants.

Those recently made redundant by public sector cuts may not enjoy the prospect of seeing their old employment transferred to the Community Action Programme.

Ian Duncan Smith attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He spent six years in the Scots Guards.  Chris Grayling attended the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. He then went on to Cambridge University. He has worked for the BBC and has been a ‘Management Consultant’.

Admirable qualifications no doubt for understanding unemployment.

From Channel Four.

Subject: Channel 4 documentary series

Thank you for your interest.

I doubt if many unemployed people in Ipswich regard Jimmy’s farm as ‘ethical’.

It is a high-priced niche company that charges people to walk on its ‘Woodland trail’ (when there are plenty of public footpaths in more attractive sites nearby) and sells packets of maize for children to feed their own fowl at over a pound.

In reality it’s  not much of a rural farm, being only a few minutes drive from Ipswich.

Apart from that anyone on JSA would, even if they wanted to, be hard pressed to afford its products.

So, as for helping this exercise in self-publicising, we would say, no.

Yours faithfully,

Ipswich Unemployed Action