Occupy Mumnset - Mumsnet, i know you are P(p)olitical. Seriously, can't you tell your advertisers to fuck off if they are workfaring?

Claig it is driven ideology, not by savings or efficiency.

And big businesses can squeeze out smaller businesses, because they can start out being able to afford better rates and the State cannot afford taking on risk-taking smaller businesses who may outbid themselves. So, the big businesses can get bigger and bigger and more successful until they are calling the shots and the State has to do what they tell it to, not the other way round. And the State purchased its way into that position by relying on the profit motive being the only motive that gets people working.

Why does the state use outside private contractors to train people to get jobs or to test for disabilities etc.? Do you think these things are rocket science and the state could not do a more effiicent, less expensive job?

The reason businesses like Tesco employ immigrant labour is because they have a long term objective to undermine labour costs. It is perhaps the only way in which they can now increase profits.

The Worfare programme has handed these businesses the state funded opportunity to undermine paid work and don't think the Tory Toffs will do anything to curb economic migrancy either and get Brits working, that would be counter-productive to their relationship with corporations.

MN has in the past campaigned for things effecting parents, whilst many of us have good jobs and are free from exploitation we must acknowledge that worfare isn't a quick fix, if it becomes embedded it will effect our children's life chances.

I'd rather she spent two weeks flipping burgers in McD's and clearing tables than sitting at home and having nothing to put at all on her CV.

Then why don't you suggest she work for a charity?

A solicitor's office will be more impressed with doing pro bono work at a charity than flipping burgers at McShittals.

We all want clean drinking water, we all want good public transport, we all want good healthcare. The State wants these sectors to be profitable. Unfortunately, they are never profitable for the State, whether it runs them itself or via private enterprise. However, put them in private hands and someone makes a profit out of them - by returning less to the State in tax than the amount they make in profit. More jobs are not created that way (less "bureacracy" means less employment...). A different type of service is created, of course, but it doesn't seem to be a type of service that really offers the promised improvements in efficiency or customer care. Instead, private individuals take advantage of the fact that they provide an essential service, so can behave badly with a certain degree of impunity.

The state has been conned into nothing. The state is in charge and has chosen to shut down profitable state businesses and let private operators run them.

The State has been conned into thinking that work is only worth doing if someone is making an immediate profit out of it (preferably not the worker, however). Employing people to run non-profit making schemes doing beneficial work for the community is not what the State is into any more. Nor is it hugely into investing in schemes or businesses for the long term, because that's a lot of outlay now for a potential gain a long way in the future. It wants private enterprise to take all the risks, but funnily enough, private enterprise would rather stick to what is immediately profitable, too, because those who want to plan for the long term can't get any funding, because everyone wants to put their money on the horse that's winning the race, now, even if it does eventually drop dead of exhaustion because everyone's been flogging it too much. That's why capitalism produces great booms and busts and change only happens when it is forced to happen (eg workers run out because they are all dying of cholera or have been killed off in stupid wars).

Anti capitalist is about taking industry into state hands, shutting down all private enterprise. I am not in favour of that. That only benefits progressives at the top of the food chain and destroys freedom and free enterprise.

'sound really quite anti-capitalist'

Not at all. They are just common sense. There is no black and white, wrong and right. We don't run everything on capitalism. The health service is not capitalist. If capitalism cannot provide enough jobs, then the community itself (i.e. teh state on behalf of all of us) should do so.

Actually, not quite Tesco since that doesn't appear to be one of the options. But I did say I'd be quite happy for her to do her work experience in Mcdonalds despite the fact she wants to be a solicitor.

Naturally I'd rather she did a placement in a solicitor's office but there doesn't seem to be any who are interested in work experience students.

In the absence of that, I'd rather she did SOMETHING than NOTHING.

I'd rather she spent two weeks flipping burgers in McD's and clearing tables than sitting at home and having nothing to put at all on her CV.

Surely there had got to be something illegal about compelling people to work for less than the national minimum wage?

claig, your comments earlier:

"If people were working for teh benefit of the state (i.e. for all of us) then it would seem less bad. We need to create some state businesses and give people some real state jobs that help the entire community with the community's money."

sound really quite anti-capitalist....

Anyone at all familiar with the field of conspiracy theory will recognise the maxim "cui bono?" and that is not a call to the U2 lead singer.

'There is nothing to be gained in learning these skills'

There is for the employer

There is nothing to be gained in learning these skills if you are looking for work in a completely different field or if you have lost a job in a career you have already trained for and hope to return to.

So, you would like your 15 year old to stack shelves for Tesco for his work experience, then, niceguy2? I would rather my child got that sort of job for his spare time and had something that widened his horizons a bit further for his official work experience.

To me, it is counter intuitive to offer free labour to companies which exist to make a profit rather than to maximise employment, because they will not use the opportunity to create more jobs, they will use it to save costs and therefore increase profit.

How sad for you.

So if Workfare is slave labour because it's "unpaid". Then should I be reconsidering allowing my 15yr old to do work experience at school?

To me I see no difference. Except one appears to be a good idea, the other slave labour.

Sorry, I mean nobody but those at the top of the pile. The pile of people who no longer feel the system is working increases as the gap between the richest and the poorest increases and the proportion of people who can count themselves amongst the richest diminishes - particularly where some of the richest oversee some of the companies which pay some of the poorest....

The biggest issues for me with workfare are:

• Companies are able to use the free labour to avoid creating "real" jobs, and there is even a risk they will dump existing staff in order to replace them with free workers. I have read at least 3 different stories (at different companies, Tesco being one) of people being made redundant, and then eventually being sent back on workfare to work in their old jobs, but unpaid(!) at the same companies they were made redundant from. Also several companies that seem to have avoided creating their normal Christmas jobs, or giving extra shifts to existing employees, by relying on free labour instead. Surely this is achieving the opposite of what it's meant to, by making it even harder for people to get in or stay in actual jobs?

• And the plans to make the disabled complete unlimited periods of unpaid labour, even if they have been recognised as unfit for "real" work - read up on WRAG on the other threads if you haven't already, this is a total scandal.

There are other reasons I disagree with it too, but these are the things that make me especially

Big businesses are forced to bring in overseas staff in order to force down wages, because the majority of people in this country would like a better standard of living than the people from the overseas countries and would be willing to work for that if in return they got the means to have a genuinely better standard of living, rather than finding that they were working very hard for a pretty poor quality of life. Only those with enough nouse to get out of the lowest paid jobs as quickly as possible don't mind doing the lowest paid jobs for a while, because they understand that for them it is temporary. Those who, however hard they work, are not able to move up the scale (and we do need people doing the lowest paid jobs, because they are some of the most essential jobs, so we need people to stay in those jobs), will never get a good quality of life doing those jobs, despite their use to society. We are trapped in a system where the lazy, dysfunctional and feckless can be used as an excuse to flog those willing to work hard, in order to increase the profits of the wealthy. Unfortunately, that seems to result less in the lazy, feckless and dysfunctional being cured of their dysfunctionality and more in the hard working feeling as though they are being picked on.

Those at the top take what they want and pass down what they want, and those at the top do not want to pass an awful lot down - particularly when others at the top won't let them, because they want to maximise their personal profit via their shareholdings, not maximise gainful employment for everyone. Those at the bottom can work for less than minimum wage and be thankful for it. But there are still not enough people clearing playgrounds of disgarded needles, painting over grafitti, running scouting groups, visiting hospitals, etc. So nobody gets a feel-good feeling doing things this way.

I am all for work experience. I know quite a few graduates in the early 90's when graduate unemployment was very high who got work from being on work experience offered by the job centre. Charities and small businesses would take people on for 8 weeks. Lots of people got a start there, got taken on and then move on to something else- because they had some work on their cv that wasn't just working in a pub or bookies. However there were a couple of big charities who basically used it as free labour- they took on loads of people and then dumped them after 8 weeks- people couldn't even volunteer to continue as they had too many new ones coming in. People felt really used and pissed off as they had invested great hopes in being able to get a job.
That's one of the problems of workfare it makes people do unskilled jobs whether or not they need the experience and it just engenders a feeling that they are being used and people become more despondent. People go into these schemes with great hopes.

That's quite apart from the moral issue whether big profitable businesses should be using unpaid workers to do the most basic jobs when they could afford to employ them properly. What about Tesco taking on new workers and them paying 3 days wages and the government topping up with the other 2 days - rather than the government giving them what amounts to backhanded tax break.

It all seems to stem from some ridiculous notion that anyone who is unemployed is lazy and would rather lie on the sofa than get a job. Undoubtedly there are people like that but as there are more unemployed people than jobs even if you took these people out of the equation there still wouldn't be enough jobs for everyone who wanted one.

"they give up after a few days because it's 'easier' to sit home and take the JSA for doing nothing."

Minor point, but it won't be JSA if you voluntarily quit a job surely? Ditto if you turn down a certain number (2? 3?) of jobs offered to you. You get kicked off JSA.

cogito - i am sympathetic to your point that people choose not to work and to live off welfare and that that choice is too easy. But I don't think forcing graduates to work in Poundland is the solution.

I think a return to a system of meaningful apprenticeships that people could do that would actually lead to long-term work would provide an incentive. Asking people to stack shelves all night in return for no pay is unlikely to encourage people to believe that work pays, or is at all desirable.

More to the point, given the country does not have unlimited funds, we as taxpayers should not be subsidising multi-billion pound companies like Tesco to take on unpaid workers AT THE COST OF REAL PAID JOBS which - as stated above - has the effect of actually increasing unemployment rather than decreasing it, long-term. All it does is transfer yet more taxpayer subsidy to big businesses that don't need it at all.

If we want to get the long-term unemployed to do work experience, it should either be paid at the going rate by Tesco etc, or better, be done in industries where there is a shortage of workers and where these people will have a real chance of a job at the end of it, so we do not ned to import people from abroad to do these jobs because of a shortage of skilled workers.

Plus we need to pay people a proper living wage so that working IS more attractive than benefits.