JerryChicken wrote:2. His assertion that 50% of those on the workfare program do not draw benefits after they have completed the course - I'd like to know what happens to them because I have not seen any statistics that suggests that 50% of those on the program find employment at the end of it, indeed the figure I have seen have been in single percentage digits - so where do 50% of workfare claimants go after completion, why do they not claim the benefits that they were claiming before and during the program, who or what stops their benefits at the end of the six week program - we deserve to be given an explanation from IDS, its either true in which case why, or its complete bollax in which case why.
I'll tell you what happens and this is from firsthand experience. The antidotes I'm about to mention are ones I've wrote about on these very boards before.
When I was younger and naive I did two weeks of free labor at ASDA. This was all organised by Remploy who promised that they'll help me get some work but I'd have to prove my worth first. Well at this point I've been unemployed for a year so with encouragement (outright pressure from some) from a lot of people I though I'd give it a go. Now I'd be working for my Job Seekers Allowance whilst working alongside people who I went to school with who'd be getting paid more on a hourly rate than me for doing the same work. These schoolmates went straight from school and got a job at ASDA. None of them needed 'work experience' to stack shelves and staff the tills - just a little bit of training.
Anyhow I was working alongside a fellow job seeker (also with Remploy) who stuck out his ten week placement at ASDA. After that ten weeks he was offered a temporary job with ASDA but once this temporary contract was up he was back on the dole with me. The next time I bumped into this bloke he's done ten free weeks at Morrison's and got a temporary job at Morrison's after that. But he's back on the dole because I've recently caught up with him at Ingeus where he'll no doubt be sent off to do more free labor.
He's had it bad but the worse example of exploitation I came across was when I went on a little demonstration across Leeds with SOL-FED to protest against the likes of Best LTD, a4e and ATOS.
I got talking to this woman who was about twenty and she said that Best LTD have helped her get a job. So told me that she went on a six month unpaid placement at Primark and ended up getting a one year fully paid contact with Primark. But after that year was over she was back on the dole and the now defunct Best LTD (now renamed Interserve) probably packed her off to six more months of free labor at another retail shop in Leeds.
This is what I think is happening with the work programme at its best. Yeah people are getting proper paid work at the end unpaid placements but it'll be temporary and they'll soon be on the dole to make way for the next person who's completed an unpaid placement.
Schemes like New Deal, Flexible New Deal and The Work Programme to me are nothing more than sophisticated versions of a Long Firm that criminal gangs run.
Here is the wikipedia definition:
Quote:A long firm is a trading company set up for fraudulent purposes; the basic operation is to run the company as an apparently legitimate business by buying goods and paying suppliers promptly to secure a good credit record; Once they are sufficiently well-established, the perpetrators then purchase the next round of goods on credit and decamp with both the goods and profits from previous sales.
Basically the unemployed are the goods and the likes of a4e are long firms that collaborate with big multinational companies for one shared motive: profit. Education should have led the people of this country to better places but instead it's took some of them into the hands of poverty pimps like a4e.
Once the Work Programme is scrapped it'll be renamed something else so that this scam will continue on just like the long firms of yesteryear. The likes of a4e have all been paid off for the cancellation of the failed Flexible New Deal and that money has been used to fund the Work Programme.
My final antidote.
I know a bloke who's never had paid work in his life but he's done thirteen years worth of voluntary work for the council which he enjoyed. However after those thirteen years he spent ten years in complete isolation and then at 47 years old he was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. This diagnoses has helped him socially but the chances of staff from the Work Programme helping him get permanent fully paid work for the first time in his life is zero.
Now this bloke has some stories to tell about how bad staff are on these back-to-work schemes. Recently he was asked to build a giraffe out of tin foil in order to build up his confidence.
How is building tinfoil giraffes going to get anyone a job?
It's just wrong all of it.
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