Inspired by the PR shitstorm Tesco have got themselves into over this advert:

http://jobcentreplus.jobhits.co.uk/TESC ... -BSD-27442

It originally said permanent but this was an alleged IT error by the DWP. So, instead, we have mandatory unpaid work experience under guarantee of an interview. Despite the fact the company has had 1400 JSA claimants take part in the past 4 months. Their PR indicates they've created 300 jobs from this government funded scheme (SBWA).

You only have to look at their Facebook page (when they aren't deleting comments) to see the negative feedback.

http://www.facebook.com/tesco

In 2008, the DWP comissed a report on workfare in America, Canada and here. The findings were damning:


http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rpo ... rep533.pdf

So, if the average claimant has to work 40 hours a week for their JSA in Tesco they'd receive a mere £1.33 an hour (under 25) and £1.68 an hour if they are over 25. Failure to turn up or complete the program sees your benefits cut for 13 weeks and 6 months for repeat offenders.

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My blog: https://stevenplrose.wordpress.com/

On the one hand, expecting people to do something in return for their benefits....not a bad thing.

On the other.....help out at a school, or an animal sanctuary, or a charity shop, or a homeless shelter. Tesco make billions of pounds profit every year, if they need people to work for them, they can pay them!

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The upper hand is on the other foot now.

I think what annoys me most about this scheme is that a proper work programme for the long-term unemployed (provided they're paid a fair wage, obviously) could be genuinely useful in getting them back to work, but all this does is provide a corporate behemoth with a limitless supply of free shelf-stackers. In addition, it grinds down wages and conditions for people already employed to do these menial tasks and deters job creation - after all, why would Tesco pay someone to stack shelves when they could rope in a doley to do it for nowt?

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True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Great blog piece on it:

http://edinburgheye.wordpress.com/2012/ ... economics/

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My blog: https://stevenplrose.wordpress.com/

I think they might have covered this already through their tax and N.I. contributions?

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True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Workfare was abandoned by John Major because it cost too much money. I assume he was thinking of arranging actual work that needed doing, rather than just sending people off to Tesco.

It has existed for a while on a small scale- a relative of mine got sent to work in the cemetry for a couple of weeks. I've no problem with that, and expanding it so more people get sent along for it. Industrial scale freebies to billionaires though- fuck that.

As someone said on another board, this workfare must be that anti-business culture we have.

This sums up my views very succinctly. I think people should do something to 'earn' their benefits where possible - and many people I know on JSA don't spend much of their time looking for work (just doing the minimum needed to be signed off)* - but they shouldn't be expected to do the same job for free that someone else is getting paid for. Volunteering for charities would help both the jobseeker and the charity. I can't think of many skills that someone would learn slaving for Tesco as they would working in Oxfam.




*Don't think I'm tarring all jobseekers with the same brush, this is just amongst the few people I know on JSA.

The natural choice for those with a terminal illness?

Signed. I imagine the government thought these e-petitions were a cheap and easy way to appear tech-savvy, modern and engaged with the public and now they're probably getting sick of them. I don't think they have much power directly but each one that gets widely publicised and the goes absolutely nowhere only serves to mobilise people against them. Splendid.

And there's more:

Disabled people face unlimited unpaid work or cuts in benefit

Signed. Drip, drip, drip every little helps.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

That Guardian article makes me fucking sick.

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"The first casualty on your Facebook wall is always facts..."

#rightwingpoliticalcorrectness - for when some "Tell it like it is" bullshitter plays the political correctness card, often without irony!

This government has no morality.

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My blog: https://stevenplrose.wordpress.com/