Workfare - Long-term jobless 'made to work'

[llamatron]

So everyone who is unemployed doesn't get up in the morning? My brother-in-law ran his own business and used to get up at 10:00 am every day. You and most others know this whole thing is a bad idea and are probably just looking for an argument. You sound like Percy Sugden.

 

no-one said or implied that. However you can't turn up at a job interview after 10 years out of work and expect them to just believe you will get up in the morning.

[Guest]

How else would you suggest making the workshy get out of bed, or benefit fraudsters give up their cash jobs?

 

Create some REAL jobs and MAKE them take them.

I am in favour of making them work, but only if it is REAL and VALID work.

I am not in favour of a scheme which will simply provide a pool of free/cheap labour to keep the country going on the cheap.

[Conrod]

It may infringe upon Article 4 of ECHR

People will still be drifting along on benefits

Use google

Now you're being a drama queen.

 

Giving people a choice to do some work for their benefits is neither slavery nor foced labour.

[harvey19]

Of course, but this Tory/Lib Dem forced manual labour programme is not really about getting the long term unemployed into sustainable employment. Such a programme will add little in the way of skills to the unemployed, but it will provide employers with a pool of free labour for their manual work.

 

This 'Work' programme will be demeaning to the unpaid employee, forced to do manual work for below minimum wage rates, and unfair to low paid manual workers who will be kept out of paid jobs as a result.

 

This type of workfare has distorted the availability and wage rates of low paid manual jobs in the United States, with businesses that do not take on free labour unable to compete with those that do.

 

I do not see it this way, it is an opportunity for those who have not worked for a long time to experince a different lifestyle and put routine into some of their lives.

[Mecky]

Now you're being a drama queen.

 

Giving people a choice to do some work for their benefits is neither slavery nor foced labour.

 

 

How so a drama queen, if you can't think of a worthwhile reply you shouldn't bother.

[harvey19]

It may infringe upon Article 4 of ECHR

People will still be drifting along on benefits

Use google

 

You do not or do not want to acknowledge that it is an attempt to improve their lifestyles in the long run.

[Conrod]

Food is not free in the majority of cases, it is provided by the farming industry and produce is largely bought from shops.

I never suggested otherwise, but when you said "Who is going to buy their food", I think that implies that 'they' do not pay for it - it is free to them.

In fact, everything is free to people on benefits, because they are given cash for nothing, so they do not pay for anything - tax payers pay for their food and everything else.

[harvey19]

Create some REAL jobs and MAKE them take them.

I am in favour of making them work, but only if it is REAL and VALID work.

I am not in favour of a scheme which will simply provide a pool of free/cheap labour to keep the country going on the cheap.

 

I seem to remember in the 1960s that you were offered 3 jobs by the labour exchange. If you did not take the third one your dole money was stopped.

[espadrille]

I seem to remember in the 1960s that you were offered 3 jobs by the labour exchange. If you did not take the third one your dole money was stopped.

 

So why did it all change then?

[INTERVIEWER]

I do not see it this way, it is an opportunity for those who have not worked for a long time to experince a different lifestyle and put routine into some of their lives.

 

This is what I suspected. 'Putting some routine' into the lives of the unemployed, for a short, temporary period of time, is more about making Tories feel good about themselves than actually increasing the employability of the poor.

 

Similar workfare schemes around the world have shown that they fail to help people gain sustainable, qualitative employment. In Australia, workfare has left unemployed people less likely to get a job, as their confidence has been eroded and they have ended up much more demoralised than before. In New York existing low paid workers have lost their jobs to workfare temps.

 

And as for gaining a useful reference, what employer would want to recruit someone who has been forced into their last job?