to boycott shops that use forced unpaid labour (aka slavery)?

[ChickenLickn]

These stores:

Boots,
Tesco,
Asda,
Primark,
Argos,
TK Maxx,
Poundland,
Arcadia group of stores run by billionaire Sir Philip Green, which includes Top Shop and Burton,

are all using 'workfare' schemes, forcing jobseekers to work 30 hrs/week unpaid for 6 months in profit making companies or face losing their jobseekers benefits. Mre details here.

Please avoid shopping in these shops as much as possible, this is basically slavery and is illegal under human rights law (and currently being challenged in the courts).

The good news is that Waterstones and Sainsburys have recently pulled out of the scheme.

Have signed. Thank you for sharing

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I have no issue with people working for charities and non profit organisations, volunteering etc whilst claiming benefits but to me it is immoral that we have minimum wage yet workfare expects people to work for 67.50 a week full time! businesses which are making profits who need staff should pay them the going wage, it is simply wrong not to, if they need extra staff then the best way to reduce unemployment and benefit costs is to EMPLOY them. simple really. signed and passed on.

I think the phrase 'workhouse without walls' is apt. Tesco themselves admit that less than 1/4 of workfare staff are offered jobs with them. It's a fucking disgrace.

At least they aren't sitting on arses all day.

Would prefer it if they were working for
non profit organisations instead.

OMFG They want to make disabled and ill people do this indefinately

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/16/disabled-unpaid-work-benefit-cuts?CMP=twt_fd

Last year MP Philip Davies said that disabled people should work for less than minimum wage. He was obviously testing the water to see if they could get away with bringing this in.

I was dead against this until I spoke to my brother who is 19 and unemployed, he said he would be glad to do it as even if he didn't get a permanent job from the company he was doing the workfare for it would give him experience of employment that he could put down on his CV.

Aborol: but it still won't do him any good if all the jobs at that level are being given to workfare people rather than being paid proper wages.

Absolutely unbelievable!!!!! Tesco's Chairman and all the other greedy bastards of these free loading organisations must be wringing their hands in glee!! Free staff labour, bigger profits and a fee for doing it from this bunch of idiots who are in charge!!!

I just feel so sorry for so many people. It is going to be awful

Terminally ill people expected to live more than 6 months will be expected to do Workfare.

Is that right?

its just unbelievable, but then i would believe anything of that shower of shit that is supposedly running this country.

penelope i pray that you are wrong on that :(

You're right, Penelope.

It starting to sound like they are just determined to punish the poor/disabled/ill/unfortunate as much as possible. Can't think why they don't just go the whole hog and make them walk around with a sign around their necks and a little bell to ring, so that 'people like them' can avoid the people they obviously see as 'undesirables'. Bastards.

I'm joining the Labour Party.

This is my future. With uncontrolled epilepsy, my future is never-ending Workfare.

Where's my bell?

Do I get a Shiney dave badge saying 'undesirable' too?

Or is that me being too entitled?

My labour is not even worth £6.08 an hour now. £1.92 is all I can expect. I shall have to learn to bow and kneel before my masters, like the serf that I am.

How is this really different to community service which is supposed to be a punishment?

Dandelionss: Well, community service, even when it's officially punitive, is usually stuff that benefits the community rather than enriching private corporations. If workfare involved people doing the sort of jobs that make life better for others around them (whether that's meals on wheels delivery, planting bulbs along the roadside or co-ordinating some sort of community festival) but which are deemed as not essential/affordable by local councils, I could see the point in it. But conscripted labour that increases the profits of already-wealthy organisations and enables them to put more people out of work and replace them with free conscript labour - I really don't see how anyone can consider that morally acceptable.

I now have a very very short list of where I will be doing my future shopping!!

Is Morrison's included in the boycott as can't see it anywhere? They are the only supermarket in my area that don't seem to be and don't live near a Sainsbury's or Co-op!!

dandelionss I don't understand your comment.

Are you condemning the way the workfare scheme 'punishes' those people legitimately claiming unemployment benefits or or you thinking they ought to be doing something akin to community service which is a sentencing option for those people convicted of a criminal offence?

Genuine question.

i agree limited period. Last time i checked being unemployed or a carer or a disabled person is not a crime.
And some claimants who have been punished like this might develop a reversed way of thinking afterwards.
"Well ive completed the punishment so now in going to commit the crime"
i am a carer for my DH who has stable chronic heart failure and ATBI (Acquired Traumatic Brain Injury) oxygen was cut off from his brain during his heart attack leaving him with memory loss and he can be aggresive. Now can you really not see anything wrong with me being forced into workfare in my local British Heart Foundation shop which could happen under this "scheme"
Can you really not see something wrong with them using someone who their charity is suppossed to advise and help as free labour?
Because they are targetting carers and the disabled for INDEFINATE periods of workfare so this WILL happen. Blatent astonishing shocking speechless hypocrisy.

Sorry carernotasaint I did note the name British Heart Foundation earlier in this thread but didn't realise they are participating in this scam.

Another name off my list then and another organisation who will be receiving a formal complaint. I am truly shocked that a charity with such a well-regarded image would do this.

How exactly do they justify this? They get volunteer labour anyway in their charity shops. Or are they getting unemployed people to do other forms of BHF work for which they would normally pay?

I'd be grateful for your input because I'll add it to my complaint.

I just don't get the logic of the 'make them work for their benefits' mentality. If the work needs doing, it needs to be paid for at minimum wage at the very least. That's irrefutable, surely?

My lovely postman was telling me yesterday that they are "reorganising" his shift because he slipped on the ice last year delivering and has had time off. Not much presumably as I see him nearly every day. Thirty years doing the job. I suppose he'll be replaced by workfare.

This idea is crazy. Companies get a fee for taking people on, treasury pays the JSA, no money goes back into the economy via tax and the job-market is shrunken further yet many tax-payers are happy about it?