“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.
