to think Tesco should fucking well PAY THEIR STAFF?

[QueenOfFlippingEverything]

I know, I know, there have been threads about it already.

But this is so rage-inducing, I want THE WHOLE OF EVERYONE to know about it.

Jobcentre advert placed by Tesco for night shift staff. Who will be paid [drumroll] JSA (£67 a week) plus travel expenses.

Why the fucking fuck should Tesco get their staff for free? Why? Their profits last year were something like £3.5 billion last year!

I know who I think is taking the piss here, and its not the unemployed people who will be forced to work night shifts at Tesco for their £67 a week

mini this is fucking HUGE isnt it. Its practically ingrained. And then the Government have the absolute bare faced cheek to say its the claimants who have the sense of entitlement.

Notthefull i am a carer for my DH who has stable chronic heart failure. If im forced to do workfare in a British Heart Foundation shop and sanctioned for whatever spurious reason they can come up with it will affect my DH who one of the people this charity should be helping and advising not blackmailing and sanctioning. its fucking SICK.

And my personal example is only one. There are going to be lots of massive conflicts of interests like this occuring.

carernotasaint: I empathise with what your saying and hope you ar never put in that situation. It gets worse though as should your husband be called in by ATOS who then find him fit enough to go in to the wrag group (those not job ready but who should be encouraged to be so) your DH as ill as he is could be sent on one of these placements, which as the article points out might be for months and months.

Its fucking awful Notthefull but im hoping they will leave him alone as he is over 60. (hes 23 years older than me)

He also has ATBI (Acquired Traumatic Brain Injury) he suffered a cutoff of oxygen during his heart attack.

Do you know what really worries me. Its that all it takes is for one claimant to reach their breaking point after being on workfare for weeks/months and we could have another Derrick Bird/Cumbria situation occur.
I really hope this doesnt happen but it is certainly a possibility.

I agree that it would seem inevitable that someone probably a male with access to firearms will go on a shooting spree. However he will be described as sad and pathetic, or a loner and a loser. In reality he or she might just have become so desperate and angry that they want to lash out. That is a crime in my view. It is also the same level of crime that has forced 13 people to take their own lives as a result of losing benefit. All 13 cases had remarks made by the coroner to the effect that the loss of benefit was part of the motivation for these 13 people to give up the will to live.

Your DH should be fine given his age carernotasaint, but the stress and worry will allows be wih you. I hope you both manage to remain well and sane. Others will need your good example.

Thankyou Notthefull im so glad people are fighting against this. Its the future generations we have to think of too. If workfare carries on i dread to think what it will be like in ten/twenty years time.

I can't get my head around the fact that Grayling is sending emails out protesting that they are being misunderstood, when it is there in black and white.

A female accountant unemployed for 12 mths, lets herself go (no mention pf health) is advised to smarten up. She uses the money meant for a pampering session at the hair & beauty on the gas bill (no mention of who was paying).

The interviewer confirmed that the panel were put off by the way she looked. This is an example of a reason why a female would be sanctioned OMFG I am actually speechless.

My eyes are going blurry trying to decipher the various groups

WTF WTF they are NOT being misunderstood.Workfare schemes have ALWAYS been mandatory as a man from Pelcombe Training once took great delight in telling me.
And Grayling rips a woman to pieces over her appearance and gets an employer/interviewer to back him up on it.
WHAT AN UTTER UTTER VILE CUNT and that goes for both of these "men" and i use that term in its loosest sense. CHRIST ON A FUCKING BIKE.

Notthefullshilling, your first explanation was not quite right, so I'm just explaining for readers: the WRAG aren't deemed Fit to Work.

People being deemed Fit to Work (despite having limiting health conditions) are being thrown off ESA completely and told to apply for JSA on the same terms, and with the same Work Programme and Mandatory Work Activity Scheme, as people with no health issues at all. They are no longer included in discussions of the Disabled - because they're labelled not Disabled.

The WRAG are the next tranche down. They are not deemed Fit to Work. They are just deemed not very far away from Fit to Work and therefore required to prepare for the day when they will be Fit to Work (even if their health is unchanging or in fact deteriorating). And it's now mooted that this preparation should include manual work stacking shelves, even though the person is not physically fit to do their old desk job.

Sorry to be so pedantic about this, I just think the govt are doing very nicely out of the natural confusion. Eg saw a think tank bod on Newsnight last week saying of the WRAG, "You say they're disabled, but in fact they are completely fit to work."

Another thing I about these policies is the fact that private businesses and individuals are both compelled and encouraged by government policy to exploit but through philanthropy to "save and rehabilitate" Dave's Big Society idea !

Like the conflicted ideas about women they have conflicting ideas about poverty and working people, people unlike them who are disadvantaged or have disabilities. (i think it's because most of these toffs had a distant relationship with Mummy and Nanny, though they adored her, she wasn't permitted to hug them )

I suspect Tesco and others will see a modest increase in profits in the short term through the suppression of wages but in the longer term this will lead to a rapid decline in demand and therefore profit and demand for labour. Then we are really fucked.

Carernotasaint I really wish you didn't have all this worry. I can't empathise that well because I just haven't been in such a difficult and desperate situation but I try because I really feel that all people regardless of "luck" of birth, life choices and chances or fate have the same intrinsic value.

Workfare if it becomes embedded will eventually create a two tier society with no social mobility. In fact the Tory Snobs may as well cease all spending on education because my kids won't need it to stack shelves.

They are true arseholes Mini. Tesco and other stores involved have been saying that they had no idea that people stood to lose thier JSA. LIARS.

I go into my local Tesco's 5 days a week, and have done for the last 7 years. (Don't flame me,there ARE reasons I have NO choice but to shop there, not least because of my own disability). In the last 15 months, there has not been ONE job advertised there. Not one. In the fifth largest Tesco's Extra in the COUNTRY. Yet at LEAST 1/3 of the checkouts are manned by people in black and white clothes. I.e. NOT contracted Tescos staff.

When I last spoke to one of these workers, his answers to my questions were telling. This is his story: He is 19yo. He left school at 16yo, and took a paid job at Tescos, stacking the shelves in the dairy aisle, stock rotating, accepting dairy deliveries etc. 8 months ago, he was made redundant, Tescos saying they didn't need a defined person to do that job anymore(?!). So he had no choice but to claim JSA, as he was no longer living at home with his parents. After 6 months on JSA - he was sent to Tescos to do Workfare. Doing the same job as he was doing before. So Tescos TRAINED him while he was on school-leavers NMW, and just as his wage was due to raise, they got rid of him. And rather neatly for them, he has been placed on a 'Work experience' programme with them. And they quickly put him to work doing the job he was PREVIOUSLY doing for NMW of £6.08/hr__. And is now getting just £1.92/hr__ for.

This week, I am ASKING every worker I come across in there who is wearing the 'black and white' uniform if they are there on Workfare. Today there were 4 - ALL were on 'Work experience' programmes. One of whom I had worked with in a PREVIOUS retail job.

HOW exactly is putting a 49yo woman who has been an ASSISTANT MANAGER in a retail outlet on a 'Work experience' placement in Tesco's going to ENHANCE her employability?! (She was the Ass. Man. of a shop that went bust). It's 1) Downgrading her skills, which will make any future employer dubious of her employability AS an Ass. Man. and 2) Not of ANY use to someone who has started at the bottom and worked up, all the way to Assistant Manager over the course of more than 20 years in retail.

Oh Huntycat i would like to say that i am shocked by what youve said here but because of previous experiences myself and other stories i know about i am no longer shocked but i am fucking angry.

Around about Christmastime i was in our local Tescos and asked a young lad who was shelf stacking if he knew where an item was.
He was wearing black trousers black jumper and a white shirt. i asked him if he worked there and he avoided the question either because he didnt know what to say or because he had been told to keep quiet about it i reckon.
I have two big tesco stores close to me. i will have a nosy in the town centre one on Wednesday just to see if i can spot this "uniform"

To see if i can spot this "uniform" again and how many there are.

Black shoes, black trousers, white shirt, and black sleeveless jumper if they are wearing a jumper. Count them in your local Tescos. You don't have to buy anything, you could ASK them if they are there on Workfare. Just don't ask them when there is a 'proper' Tescos employee or manager around - as they have been TOLD not to answer any questions on their 'Work experience placement' OR FACE SANCTIONS INCLUDING THE LOSS OF THEIR BENEFITS!!

Hunty, sounds like another one for [email protected]

Tell him what you've just told us.

And believe it or not - the reason I KNOW there has been no jobs advertised in my local Tescos for over 15 months...is because I was looking for a PT job there. For the first 3 years I lived here, jobs going all the time. For the two years after that, it tailed off to one job every few months. For the last 15 months...NOTHING. Nada. Zilch.

And on our estate - Tescos is the ONLY retail outlet - as the entire estate was BUILT around the Tescos store...therefore it is the ONLY retail employer that doesn't require a (very) expensive journey on public transport to work for.

Will do.

Hunty that is highly suspicious. No jobs advertised in the fifth largest tesco in the country over the course of the last 15 months which includes TWO CHRISTMASES!

IT STINKS!