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.

ReduceRecycleRegift - Yes I have.

Why couldn't these people work in a local charity shop for example?

and the quoted section again shows why any spark of interest I get in the against argument is quickly put out. In both retail and healthcare I've never been allowed to take even in date waste food, it's a sackable offence, it sucks I HATE food waste but that's how it is I get on with it. What's that got to do with being on placement? There is something in pretty much every story linked that just makes them loose credibility for me. The paper CV, the food thing, the break lengths..

Lol at tesco taking on 12 extra staff to cover Xmas rush!

lumbered with most of that lot

It's not often words fail me but I am speechless. Really.

Boots also allow school aged kids to gain work experience in stores if that makes them sound better? Means the kids can get a meaningful reference and a bit of cv padding. Sounds a shitload better than filling cv with babysitting and interest in music when you are looking for a Saturday job at 16!

"Why couldn't these people work in a local charity shop for example?"

they are, wasn't the BHF mentioned. I would think they would have to be selective about what kind of charity work they could put people into who don't want to be there at all, I am ed at care homes being in this scheme for example, horrified that people who don't want to be there are working with vulnerable people!

horrified on behalf of the service users that is, not the workers, its great experience on the job seekers side, a lot of hospital jobs require 6 months of other health care experience etc so it offers that

"I?m one of the DWP work experience lot at Asda. The store has been sending home paid workers early and using workfare workers. The store has somewhere between 10 and 15 people on DWP work experience.
Not long after my group started work paid staff started mentioning people being sent home early while work experience people were kept in (and a second group of five or six work experience people was actually taken on a couple of weeks ago). At the same time everyone from the managers and team leaders down were talking about large overspends on stock. All of the work experience people that I know personally are working christmas eve and new year?s eve and while I?m not exactly in a position to know exactly what the rosters are for those days it seems pretty unlikely that they?re going to have normal levels of paid staff working on extra pay when they apparently can?t afford to pay them all normal wages in the course of a regular week."

ReduceRecycleRegift - I don't know the % but from people's accounts it is clear that the companies are replacing paid staff.

horrified on behalf of the service users Yes i thought as much. humming a different tune now arent we?

To work with vulnerable people, you have to have a CRB check. This includes volunteers. I realise that CRB checks are not a failsafe for weeding out people who are unsuitable for working with vulnerable people, but they don't just shove anyone into these placements without any checks at all.

again it starts off and I'm thinking "hmm, okay, tell me more" then I read down and it doesn't ring true. Having worked in these kinds of jobs I know that the rotas usually have EVERYONE on on the christmas and NY days with AL banned for all rather than have the arguements. It's ridiculous they end up overstaffed most christmas eves and noone is allowed to swap shifts over christmas even if they find someone who's happy to swap. So I think the bottom half at least is very unlikely from my experience so makes me wonder about the top half

same applies to most the stories linked, there's just something in every one that makes me

A supermarket store can have 100-250 people working in it! And Christmas and new year are the busiest time in the whole year! I don't doubt the store sent people home but it was likely to be cutting overtime hours rather than contracted. All these people will need trained in h&s and company procedures. This does not happen on it's own so the stores will be investing time into the jobseekers as well...

carernotasaint, no I'm not

cake, yes CRBs are important but they only tell you one thing!

Now I would be fine with care homes being used in this scheme if there was an opt in to a caring placement option, so at least the people working with vulnerable people want to be there. That is not much of an issue with frozen peas though!

for example student nurses on the old bursary system at least were getting less than minimum wage if you worked it out (I don't know about current funding arrangements) but they wanted to work with that group so from a service user's point of view, who's dignity may already feeling low, it didn't feel degrading to have them there like it might someone who resents every second of being there and sees no value in it.

So I'm still not against it, I just think that for some sensitive areas of work it should be streamed

I don't think that there is hope for them to get paid job after the 6 months because the stores will just take another load of unpaid staff.

Basically what this genious scheme does is reducing available jobs even more

RRR - Do we actually know whether these care placements are being given randomly, or whether they are given to those who express an interest?

Not having a go here, but are we just making the assumption that these care placements are given out randomly?

(I might have missed something in the links that explains this - I'm tired and breastfeeding atm)

The govt only cares about the figures. While on this scheme they don't figure in the unemployment stats. There should be real jobs for real pay..the vast majority on benefits want a job not hand outs! Free work robs people of real jobs!

Didn't someone on here said that there wasn't any sort of job matching? and I have no reason not to believe them.

I think that is okay in general, but not in senstive work from the service users point of view. But that is just tweaking.

Some of the stuff being complained about isn't discrimination against unpaid workers at all but standard things that apply to everyone in these jobs, it may not be anyone idea of fun but why are these things relevant to the issue? (time to job hunt etc)

Yes in an area where there are a lot of placements being offered they will replace the un-paid workers with other un-paid workers, how else will others get the oportunities to do them? But most jobs in these areas are paid, the vast majority, and without an offer of a job out of that SPECIFIC placement, people are still in a better position to apply for other similar jobs than they would have been if they'ld not been working at all for those six months!

Some of the assumptions I have noticed on this thread:

That the jobseekers have no previous work experience
That workfare is taking away just a tiny proportion of entry level vacancies
That workfare is not removing entry level or casual worker vacancies
That the jobseekers can expect no better than menial work
That workfare does not interfere with legitimate jobseeking
That people taking part in workfare programs are more likely to become employed at the end of the placement.

I would say most of those assertions having read the link and more widely on the subject are wrong. They are wrong just looking at basic economic principles: don't pay for what you can have for free.

The reality is workfare us often demeaning and damages the economy as a whole.

Here is an example:

A supermarket historically has taken on an additional 1000 hours of labour for the Christmas period. This labour has generated approx £1260 in income tax (assuming 20% rate). This year the supermarket fills those same unskilled hours with Workfare workers from the job cebtre. Let's say there are 5 of them and they work for 6 weeks (it's actually 5.7 using 35hr week). The state pays each of them £65 per week = £325 per week = £1950 for 6 weeks work. This means the treasurery makes a loss of £3310 (£1260 + £1950). This example does not include the negative impact of the loss of those workers wages had they been paid at NMW nor the amount the government pay the supermarket or the scheme administrator to run the scheme

Now tell me Workfare's a good thing

I assumed a wage of £6 per hour to allow for simplification and to acknowledge the banding for NMW (National Minimum Wage).

My assumptions:

Job seekers have gaps in their CVs. Most applications are now online and some I've filled in recently asked specifically for examples from the last six months so it can be hard to apply work experience from further back sometimes

Menial, manual, low end jobs have value and can help you get better jobs, you can use examples from them for other applications. This is from experience.

The people on here making arguements against the scheme in the links (not the entire JSA populations) discredit themselves to me

The majority of entry level jobs are paid

If you were a teacher or a senior administrator or a plumber or a piano tuner a 3 month placement stacking shelves is not going to help your cv or job prospects.

Having gaps on your cv does not make you unemployable. Having unexplained gaps may well do.

6 months recent work experience that has no relation to your previous qualifications or work experience will not help you get a job.

Jobseekers can do voluntary work for up to 15 hours per week at any time for charities, social enterprises and other not for profit organisations.

There are some industries and some areas that are a major employer for that industry that are laying people off. That can saturate the pool of available labour, driving down the wages and increasing the time it takes to get a job substantially in a particular area.

You can have had a career, good income and become unemployed. How is working in a care home or shop going to help the former marketing director? The secretary? The skilled worker? The audio typist etc etc etc?

It doesn't. It just displaces skilled people into unpaid workfare jobs and takes away jobs from people who could only ever hope to do menial or unskilled jobs.

Until the labour market is in a position where there are more jobs taking jobs away with workfare is madness. Just look at the numbers quoted above.

Kitty - using your £3310 calculated for 5 people.

Tesco have taken on 1,400 in the last 4 months. That makes £926,800 lost from the treasury from one company in just 4 months.

Thats 3 million pounds we are giving Tesco from our taxes :(

Its even worse than I thought.

£3 million pounds a year!