I heard Chris Grayling complaining about the campaign against the workfare scheme and today the Telegraph echoes his claims that it is a tiny band of left wing radicals that are behind the campaign against this idea. Having listened to Grayling trying to compare work experience stacking shelves with real learning in a college, for example, I am reminded that politicians are all knaves. Stacking shelves involves minimal learning, frankly. Gaining a qualification at a college for free* is a incredibly useful.
Actually, if working in a supermarket is your thing, then the experience may well be useful – however, while working there, the job seeker should be paid the going rate. Anything less is exploitation. And, if you really do want to work in a supermarket, you can safely ignore his wittering about career opportunities and learning about the wider business. Sure, you might, but likely as not, you won’t. Likely as not, you will get a brief induction, some simple stuff about health and safety and you are out in the aisles with a mentor for a shift while you stack shelves. After that, you will probably be flying solo. Unlike Grayling, I reside in the real world. Given that you normally pay a college to train you, demonstrates Graylings disingenuousness when attempting to compare the two things, frankly.
Getting back to the accusations of this being a tiny band of radicals, well, sure, the left are agin it. However, to suggest that it is only they who are creating ripples about this is to ignore the reality. Many of us who are manifestly not left wing radicals can see exploitation when we see it and are deeply appalled by it.
Let’s be clear here, there is nothing wrong with a scheme that gives the unemployed an opportunity to improve their prospects, whether that is training or a work placement. However, if they are going to do work, irrespective of the costs that may be incurred by the employer, they are adding value to the business. And, like the full time employees doing the same work, they should be paid the going rate for it.
If, on the other hand, they are put though a training scheme, it is perfectly reasonable that they receive no more than their JCA as the cost of training is itself an additional benefit and when you’ve spent a lifetime paying in, that small amount of investment in one’s job prospects is a reasonable expectation.
Both Graying and the Telegrah have misjudged this one. Just about everyone I have spoken to about this, both here and out in the real world, has reacted in the same way – with horror at what they see (correctly) as exploitation and not a SWP member to be seen. You don’t have to be a member of the SWP to find the current workfare scheme repugnant and to rail against it as I have done on more than one occasion, now; just a decent human being.
*not strictly free – if you have been contributing taxes, then you have paid several times over.
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Edited to add, If you came here via Sunny Hundal’s tweet, please note that I am not a right wing libertarian. If you really must attach a label to me, I’m a liberal in the classical dictionary sense and am fairly centrist when it comes to the right/left axis.
Another tweet that amused me was this one:
Main point s/b about long term gain, not what happens in a few weeks. What’s diff between that & volunteering?
You have to ask?
I am reminded that politicians are all knaves.
Classic.
It’s all very well claiming exploitation when it’s people who have lost thier jobs and want another. There are a lot of people out there, and I’ve met many, who simply have no intention of finding work.
If these long term unemployed come to realise that they will have to work, to claim benefits, they may also realise that it’s in thier best interests to get a job at the going rate, therefore easing the burdon on the taxpayer.
If it were the long-term “unemployed-‘cos-it’s-easier-than-working-even-though-I’m-fit-and-able” who were the primary targets of this scheme I could accept that. Even then they should be working for public benefit, i.e. charities and the like. But the actual victims are the soft targets: mostly youngsters who would like to work, but who have on occasion for instance, been denied time off when doing workfare to attend an interview for a real job!
I don’t know that working for charities is necessarily any better, a young relative of mine was recently given a weeks unpaid ‘trial’ by a firm sorting books for charity shops, needless to say at the end of the week he wasn’t offered a job. There’s also the fact that charities are too often at least part government funded so the taxpayer is paying twice for anyone doing workfare for a charity. Plus charity bookshops undercut second hand booksellers, not that you hear the left complaining about that, all their bile being reserved for Tesco.
Actually, I feel a bit sorry for Tesco. They misjudged the public mood on this one. I don’t doubt that someone, somewhere in the organisation thought that this would be a good thing for jobseekers. If not for the piss-poor execution, they would be right.
I’d echo Julian’s point.
We pay taxes to fund JSA. The deal is that people claiming JSA look for work. If work experience helps them do that, then that’s a good thing. However, it is not right that they should work for the JSA. If they have already paid in, they have already earned it. If not, then eventually they will.
The bargain here between the taxpayer and the job seeker is that the job seeker actively seeks work while claiming the benefit; that’s what it is there for. I am content that they are paid this without having to work for it. However, if they do work in whatever capacity, I expect the employer to pick up the tab and pay them properly.
I’m not a left-wing extremist and I am totally opposed to this workfare slavery, as are many Daily Mail readers, judging by the comments on its website. Tesco and other companies can afford to pay workers. They don’t need to be supported by the taxpayer.
Also, there are around 5 million people in this country chasing half a million jobs. The government should focus on trying to grow the economy.
Take a supermarket. It already employs people on minimum wage in low skill jobs. It can pick the best qualified candidates when it need to hire new ones.
Why would it hire a work experience person and pay them for four weeks when it could just hire a full time employee? The full time employee learns skills once then uses them. The work experience kids have no skills so the employer is continually teaching them. The courses last 4 weeks so they have to train new people every 4 weeks.
The supermarket is happy to get out of being in the training business because they don’t benefit financially from it. They had to be pressured into doing it in the first place and now they don’t need to do it any more.
All this class warfare has done is leave the people who can’t even get job offers for shelf stacking jobs on the dole. Those are the people who need help the most and you have just taken it away.
The union socialists are happy because they already have jobs and don’t want the unemployed to work because they are competition.
The middle class socialists are happy because they can sleep tight knowing that they have stopped the kids being exploited. They don’t know what it is like to be unemployed and their children still get all of the opportunities in life.
The employers are happy because they don’t have to spend money training lots of work experience kids.
The only people who are worse off are those kids on the dole. The left have forgotten about them.
The work experience person has no skills, no experience and does not have the work habits like turning up to work on time every day. Now nobody will help them get these skills, so they will be abandoned.
The socialists in this country should be ashamed of themselves. They have not helped the most vulnerable in this country, they have stolen their hopes and dreams of getting work.
Surely an obvious first step is to require Tesco (or whoever) to pay the JSA component for the Workfare employees? Either way, they’re still paying a lot less for the shelf-stacker than they would be otherwise.
Shelf stacking isn’t “work experience”. It’s what students in my day chose to do during summer or winter holidays. It’s also work that could trivially be done by machines were Tesco and their ilk willing to put in the cash to install them. (In fact, the Japanese are, unsurprisingly, already moving in that direction.)
Personally, I have no quarrel with the notion of the unemployed making some *meaningful* contributions to their communities, but shelf-stacking in a supermarket is not it. Maintaining public buildings; a bit of landscaping work, perhaps cleaning the streets (which would certainly teach the value of using the bins!) and other council-run work would make more sense. Even driving Dial-A-Ride or school buses would be a logical option if the jobseeker is suitably qualified (or can be trained).
Older jobseekers who are unlikely to be able to return to their previous careers might be better employed as teachers, passing on their knowledge and experience to the next generation.
So… Workfare, as a concept, is not inherently wrong. It’s just the *execution* of it that needs tuning.
Don’t make the mistake of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I agree, there’s nothing wrong with the concept. Indeed, there is much that is right about it. If one has been out of work for a while, routine goes to pot. So the workaday routine is helpful as is the work experience itself. However, I go back to the core point – if they are working, then they should be paid the going rate. Why should they be subsidising a business when they have only £65 a week coming in? There’s something seriously wrong with that…
Is work experience a bad thing then?
Not at all. See my comments above.
Why would an employer take on someone that requires supervision and training, and pay them the “going rate”, when they can and do employ people to do the job anyway? You’d rather they just employed an extra person, regardless of whether that person is needed? That’s what the public sector does.
Strawman. I said no such thing. I suggest you respond to what I have actually said as opposed to what you would have liked me to have said.
See your comment at 8.20 (above) and at 12.30 (below).
You want such people to be paid the going rate. The company does not want to do this because it is short term and temporary, and chances are they’ve accepted someone they wouldn’t normally employ – by definition someone that has been on JSA for a long time (12 months?) and is being forced to do it (unless you’re talking about the work experience scheme that is for young people and is voluntary).
That’s one hell of a conclusion you’ve just jumped to with no supporting evidence whatsoever. Tesco are setting up their own system whereby the jobseeker is paid. They are doing this presumably because they see a benefit to themselves in prospective new employees. They clearly do want some of these people.
When they take on new employees, they are paid the going rate from the outset. I am suggesting nothing more than this.
As an afterthought regarding your comment on the temporary nature of the employment – it is not unusual for temps to cost more than permanent staff on an hourly basis. So really that argument doesn’t wash, does it?
Tesco have just caved in to pressure from the protesters (and their PR department). I guess it can be a good thing that they have been shamed into changing, but if I were a shareholder i’d be annoyed as it probably won’t change any perceptions because the Guardian reading sorts who have forced the change don’t like Tesco anyway!
The difference between employing someone through the normal channels and taking on one of these work experience people is the fact that in the former scenario someone approaches them and are subject to a CV check and interview, etc. In the latter case the people are largely chosen for them. For these reasons any sensible business owner would pay the non-employee less. If only there wasn’t the minimum wage…
And temps would only cost more because an agency take a slice.
Did Tesco et al actually need these workfarers? If so why had they not already hired people, or hired these?
Answer: they were supernumerary/not required.
It is called “work experience” because it gives experience of doing a job: that includes working with others; keeping good time; caring for appearance; following instruction. It is not supposed to be training in a particular job.
As for payment, are they not already being paid by the State?
If the argument against that is that Tesco et al are benefiting (I doubt it) at the State’s expense, then stop State payment and let the employers pay the amount.
This is unlikely to work as the employers do not need them so they are just an expense.
In other words the workfarers are supernumerary and probably a nuisance.
I managed a company and from time to time children of Board members would come for unpaid “work experience”. None of them were any trouble, but others were diverted from their duties to find things for them to do and supervise them.
Interesting that when “better off” kids do unpaid workfare – called intern-ship – nobody shrieks slave labour.
Point: getting people out of bed in the morning, out of the house and used to work is as important as getting them into an actual job.
Choice: either companies give them some work experience “as a favour” without paying them, or the kids get no work experience and continue to collect State benefit and stay in bed.
Make your mind up which it is you want.
Actually, I take exactly the same attitude towards intern-ship as I do with this. if they are doing work, they should be paid.
All of the benefits you mention, I have already indicated that I agree are benefits. However, anyone who is doing work is benefiting the company as if they were not doing it, either it won’t be done or someone who is being paid will be doing it, and will not, therefore be doing something else. So, either the work needs doing or it doesn’t. If the company wants it done, then it should pay the going rate to whoever does it. It really isn’t an unreasonable expectation.
The REAL give-away is in the “Telegraph” itself.
Their amazing cartoonist “Matt” has, erm, torpedoed the whole thing with his cartoon of 26th February – look it up!
It’s a classic!
Yeah, I saw that. Made me smile.
That’s only part of the story. They are also paid more to compensate for the lack of stability and to cover holiday pay. Temps will often work for an odd day providing cover for absence and sickness frequently at short notice, so the argument that these people need supervision and training to the point of them being uneconomical just doesn’t hold up – especially in a low skilled role. This is no different to what has been happening since time immemorial with temps and no one is suggesting that temps not be paid because they cost too much.
Tesco didn’t cave in as a consequence of a half dozen protesters, like the other companies that pulled out, they could see that there was a wider disquiet. This was a sensible reaction for them. The people expressing disquiet are potential or actual customers. So it made good business sense. The PR folk were right.
As for the difference between this route and the normal one, the company gets to try before they buy, so again, this is good for them. It’s why jobs are often posted as temp possibly becoming permanent in the long term. Nothing new here. Both the business and the employee get to try each other out to see if it is going to work for them without any great commitment up front.
However, anyone working on behalf of a business should be paid the going rate for doing that work. If I had ever been asked to take on a temporary role sans pay (or for the equivalent of JSA) because I would be too expensive otherwise, my response would have been short, to the point and not particularly polite.
“What’s diff between that & volunteering?”
Oo, oo, I know the answer to this one.
Err, lots. Volunteers don’t ‘punch the clock’ and aren’t penalised for being late or bunking off for a break without asking. They come and go at their pleasure, not an ’employers’. Anything else isn’t ‘volunteering’.
First off the Daily Mail etc. websites have clearly been spammed by various agitators, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work that out, look at the “unique messages”, same old claptrap.
Secondly, it is not exploitation. The companies – and smaller shops and local businesses as well – actually have to go out on a limb, training and instructing – and constantly watching – someone who simply was not good enough to gain the job through the normal channels (else s/he would have received an interview etc.). They have to take a risk asking someone who may well be entirely useless to work for them for 2 weeks (etc.) which includes an element of risk. A company is better off hiring a single reliable worker than going through month after month of risk-taking and micro-management (if they even turn up: as many of you no-doubt are aware quite a lot of of jobseekers simply do not bother to turn up to their sign-in times DESPITE the repercussions). So exploitation?
Thirdly, a similar scheme has been in place for 5 years or more – through JCP – where you can ask an employer who you are applying to, to work for two weeks FOR FREE. This scheme has been cooking for ages and is not *too* different from the scheme in question.
Fourthly, let’s assume this is exploitation, you still have the OPTION of doing it. It’s up to you to use your reason and decide if it’s worth it or not. It’s an “investment” that may or may not pay off (and apparently it is paying off). If you already have 2 years working in Tescos on your CV it’s unlikely you’ll go to Tescos, now, isn’t it, for work experience. HOWEVER a great number.. ooh caps lock… however, a lot of people – students especially – come out of uni never having worked at all. What’s their main problem? Their degree counts for little as they simply have no work experience. It’s tough out there, and many are finding it hard to find work despite their fancy degree. Many jobs are not going to hire a graduate with no work experience over someone who has no degree yet has the experience – there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around. I think at this point it’s obvious why many young people out there will rationally – and freely – choose to be “exploited” for two weeks. Keep in mind one of the major problems for many unemployed are large gaps in their CVs where they have not worked. This is a death-stroke to jobseekers. How to fill this gap? Then there are references and so forth.
– “stacking shelves” in tescos may be a simple task that most find unhelpful in terms of experience, but that’s not the whole picture. This scheme may well be useless for many but it IS useful for some – 2 weeks unpaid work at Waterstones, for example, sounds perfect for some. It’s an investment that one is free to consider rationally, to weigh the pros and cons, and I’m sad to see this option has been destroyed. If you’ve been out of work for a year, the chances are employers are skipping straight past your CV. There’s always volunteer work mind you.
*with the extra point that it seems absurd to pay someone who couldn’t have got the job through the normal means, the same rate of pay as those who have actually been considered for the job, interviewed, got the job, been trained and then proved themselves able to hold that job. It’s not an all a given that someone on this scheme would add value to a business.
I wouldn’t ordinarily expect to find myself sympathising with the left, but when I read an apology such as this for what is blatant and obvious exploitation, I find that I do.
You have clearly chosen to ignore the points made in this discussion about temporary workers for whom businesses pay extra for the privilege of maybe only a day’s work. So all the bleating about costs and supervision is clearly cack that doen’t stand up.
Your assertion that these people cannot get work through the conventional means devalues their input is just that, an assertion. And how do you know that they are not getting interviews? You don’t. This is pure assertion with no supporting evidence. And, having been interviewed and not succeeding is no reflection on their ability with so many people chasing so few jobs.
Anyone who does work for a business is providing value. Therefore that value should be remunerated – that it may be an investment is neither here nor there, that they may have agreed to it is neither here nor there. Not paying them is still exploitation. Also, investment is a two way street. It is not up to someone struggling on £65 per week to subsidise multimillion pound businesses. Charities, they ain’t.
If a business went out to the market and offered people an option to work for them for free as “an investment” the market would make a fairly assertive decision for them.
Finally, your use of the Chris Grayling “they are all trolls/agitators/SWP/hard left” argument is simply not true. Apart from the apologists who have come here to try and defend the indefensible, everyone I have discussed this with has reacted in the same way that I have, and none of us is a left wing agitator. Far from it.
All that said, I do tend to agree with you on the graduates point. I’ve been in call centres surrounded by graduates with degrees that are not only useless, but I’ve found myself having to help them with basic maths and English. Worrying…
Further to that, in my own field, I am increasingly finding that employers want degrees when my generation simply didn’t go to university unless it was for a vocational qualification such as medicine or engineering. To say that this is annoying would be to understate it somewhat.