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

Has anyone just seen Nick Clegg on Sky News about unemployment of 16 and 17 year olds? He said that companies can't just conjure jobs out of nowhere.
Funny ... I thought that was what Scameron expected to happen when he started making the huge public sector cuts .
Also IDS is in th epapers today talking about so-called job snobbery. What will it take for the government to understand that this isn't about the job - it's about people not getting paid! Oh and the exploitation of disabled people.

One of the Right to work campaigners has just been speaking on Radio 4, a guy called mark Duggan,

I am so glad because much of the media coverage so far has been propoganda and activists have been portrayed as hysterical job avoiders.

Are we getting somewhere?

Don't flame me, I have just bought the DM to see if there was anything about workfare. (don't bother)

Littlejohn - headline "Fight for the right to stay in bed all day" The article goes on to discuss "That dopey bird from Birmingham who claims that stacking shelves in Poundland for £54 per week unemployment benefit is not only beneath her dignity but a breach of her fundamental yuman rites " (yuman as is printed)

That would be the dopey bird with a vetinary degree

Without stating the obvious all this negative press coverage is due to one of three things or all all three

People who are educated and in a position to inform public opinion are often not terribly intelligent just advantaged to have received the pre-requisite education and qualifications.

The press is motivated by profit and so panders to an already dumbed down populace who have been fed capitalist clap trap for too long, who actually cheer at their own oppression.

The political parties have far too much sway over what is reported and we don't actually live in a democracy.

I have read this thread from start to finsh and I have formed the strong impression that the DWP does not know how this scheme is actually working in practice on the ground.

Now that they do know - they should be taking immediate action to make sure that no one is made redundant from an employer where workfare staff are working. It shoudl be illegal to make staff redundant and replace them with worfare employees. I also now hope (but unsure) that no one is being compelled to work for no money.

I do agree that people need a transtion back to work and if Govt can assist with say paying for training leading to a proper qualifictaion (eg NVQ, HND) while they work in a paid job as a proper apprenticeship that is good use of public money. It is not a good use of public money to allow firms to replace paid staff with 'workfare volunteers' and get their labour for free plus a special grant for providing the job. I heard employers get £2000 paid to them for each workfare placement - is that true?

I'm not sure how much the problem is the DWP not knowing what's going on, and how much is to do with them overestimating the public's hatred of benefit claimants; I wonder if they thought they could get away with doing what they wanted because everyone would go 'oh well they're just scroungers, it serves them right'. And now there is a public backlash they're denying it all.

(And the public backlash.... well I think this is the kind of scheme that's frightening for people IN work, because it doesn't take much imagination to see how easy it would be to take away their job and make them do it for free, so rather than 'I don't care what happens to these people, unlike them I work for a living' there is a feeling of 'Yikes, I could be next!')

Don't flame me, I have just bought the DM to see if there was anything about workfare. (don't bother)
Peekaboob
Littlejohn - headline "Fight for the right to stay in bed all day" The article goes on to discuss "That dopey bird from Birmingham who claims that stacking shelves in Poundland for £54 per week unemployment benefit is not only beneath her dignity but a breach of her fundamental yuman rites " (yuman as is printed)
That would be the dopey bird with a vetinary degree

Littlejohn: That would be the moron who writes the same article every week - direct from his place in California.
Ricky, hate to tell you that the UK has abolished the death penalty and Wham have split up.

Oops... Florida, not California. Apparently.

I don't think anyone will be coming to take my job, it's highly specialized and qualified.

I also don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with people working for their benefits for a limited amount of time a week (leaving plenty of time for searching for a job). I don't object to people taking up volunteer posts e.g. standing in a charity shop, or working in a community garden, as these are not paid positions anyway and can be said to benefit the whole community.

I object to the likes of Tescos getting free workers for up to six months at a time, thereby reducing the 'real' jobs available to other people. I also object to Tescos having their very low real wages (minimum wage) topped up by tax credits. The amount of wages these companies have subsidised by the taxpayer is obscene, as is their amount of tax dodging.

I don't think it's simple "not knowing" on the part of the DWP, MoreBeta.

This is idealogically driven, like setting up Free Schools and restructuring the NHS during a time when we're supposed to being saving money - both intrinsically expensive exercises.

Honestly, I sat and wept through the last-but-one Tory conference, where they said, "We must end the something-for-nothing culture of disabled people who've paid National Insurance contributions expecting ESA; but Child Benefit is sacred."

CB is the ultimate something-for-nothing benefit. National Insurance

Gah. Stray National Insurance

I take heart from the fact that even Daily Mail readers react with horror to the workfare schemes. Read the comments on Ian Duncan Smith's nauseating attempt to put the scheme in a good light: the best-rated comment (at time of writing) concerns the thought that stacking shelves for pay is fine but not for no pay at all.

When the government loses the support of Mail readers on a scheme that is out to diss benefit claimants, it is f*ed.

Not even your average Mail reader is thick enough to not get the fact that if people are to work for nothing, it could affect them.

But let us not just blame the 'Condems' for this: Labour's 'New Deal' scheme did the same but not to the same level. I think the time was much briefer (every 18 months claimants did 13 weeks 'work experience'?). Perhaps they had the sense not to push it too far.

I think the reason the public are now getting worried about this is that in bad economic times, shelf-stacking may be all that is available to the middle classes (at least on a short-term basis), it is frightening to think that a person could be forced to work for no pay. People are selfish in that it is only when the possibility of the middle classes being affected they react, but the negative reaction is needed.

Iv'e now got the DM article, Little John is unable to formulate a cognitive argument and instead shows that he has little understanding of left wing politics and resorts to Trotskyist dope smokers watching tv jibe.

"Many employers say that they would rather employ foreign staff who are used to hard work and accept lower wages" this actually trashes every other argument he makes and actually strikes right at the heart of the problem as we vicious lefty activists would say.

Foreign workers have landed on our shores because big businesses were able to dodge taxes, provide goods and services without transport costs and have lobbied for open borders so they can exploit people on low wages.

Why are foreign workers so keen to come here? because other countries do not have work for them, will not top up their wages with tax credits and they are already an exploited workforce on the run from even greater deprivation and poverty.

Littleprat goes on to comment " British applicants some of whom have never worked and can barely read or write"

Again this is a non argument because you can not make state dependant people (the education act is misleading and most people believe they break the law if they don't subject their children to it) responsible for the failings of the state to provide adequate education to them. If they are unable to read or write that is because our system of state funded education has let them down and hasn't given them any aspiration.

For the record Mr Little John I do not smoke dope, draw benefits or watch TV and neither did Trotsky.

I'm sure the general working and tax paying public do support the idea of people on benefits (who are physically capable of work) being forced to take a job if a job is available. The Condems do have it right in that sense but they are dead wrong if they think that anyone supports people being forced to work for nothing - especially when they the tax payers are still paying the benefits!

I do not even like the idea of voluntary internships that seem to have become the norm in some industries. It is just exploitation, especially of young people and undermines minimum wage legislation.

But people on JSA are already forced to take a job if a job is available.

IIUC, their JSA is cut if they refuse to take a real, paying job unless there's a very good reason.

The Guardian is now reporting:

"Tesco offers paid placements and jobs to people on work experience scheme. Supermarket says it will make sure programme is voluntary after claims that it was using unpaid labour sparked protests"

"Tesco said the 1,500 unemployed people on jobcentre work experience schemes referred to the company over the next six months would now be given a choice of staying on benefits and completing the placement unpaid, or accepting a four-week paid placement with a guaranteed offer of a job at the end if the trial goes well.

Tesco said it was still signed up to the government's work experience scheme but would continue its dialogue with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to make sure the scheme was voluntary and that no jobseeker was penalised for withdrawing from it.

Currently access to the scheme is voluntary, but if participants leave without "good reason" after the first week, they can lose two weeks' jobseeker's allowance. A Tesco spokesperson described the negotiations with the government as "constructive"."

"...think the reason the public are now getting worried about this is that in bad economic times, shelf-stacking may be all that is available to the middle classes (at least on a short-term basis), it is frightening to think that a person could be forced to work for no pay. People are selfish in that it is only when the possibility of the middle classes being affected they react, but the negative reaction is needed."

Indeed well put.

its the re-writing of society thats eating up my very soul.

these jobs are real jobs - that people on a real wage could do.

not jobs CREATED for feckless one toothed cousin fuckers who go on jeremy kyle.

minamathsmouse "For the record Mr Little John I do not smoke dope, draw benefits or watch TV and neither did Trotsky."

quote of the week

Has IDS been cribbing from Littledick?

Choice IDS quotes from today's DM:
"'Stacking shelves is better than dreaming of stardom on the X Factor', says Iain Duncan Smith"
?It is because of such attitudes that we have seen British businesses bringing in large numbers of foreign nationals to do jobs for which they cannot find people at home,? he says.....

'...armed with an unjustified sense of superiority and sporting an intellectual sneer, we find a commentating elite which seems determined to belittle and downgrade any opportunity for young people that doesn?t fit their pre-conceived notion of a ?worthwhile job?...'

'..so much of this criticism, I fear, is intellectual snobbery. The implicit message behind these ill-considered attacks is that jobs in retail, such as those with supermarkets or on the High Street, are not real jobs that worthwhile people do...'

chestnut alert
'..Lest we forget, Tesco?s former chief executive officer Sir Terry Leahy started life scrubbing floors at a Tesco store in his school holidays...'

'...Anyone who is gulled by those who believe in the first path is in danger of creating a society with a twisted culture that thinks being a celebrity or appearing on The X Factor is the only route worth pursuing in life.
The belief that you can just sit at home or wait to become a TV star and that work simply lands in your lap, in turn, feeds the pernicious idea that success is not related to effort and work...'
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104027/Stacking-shelves-better-dreaming-stardom-X-Factor-says-Iain-Duncan-Smith.html

Humble suggestion from non-elite commentator fao: IDS, and every bastard who voted Conservative in the previous election:
YOU LOT SHOULD TRY SURVIVING UNDER THE CURRENT WORKFARE SCHEME
[ANGRY]

Seriously, my next thought is that people should boycott newspapers which obediently pump out propaganda on behalf of the Government and its wealthy chums.

Or, more to the point, boycott the companies which advertise in these publications.

?It is because of such attitudes that we have seen British businesses bringing in large numbers of foreign nationals to do jobs for which they cannot find people at home,? he says.....

that's not the issue at all

its shit all to do with the issue in any form

I've had to skip a kazillion pages of this thread, so forgive me if this has been mentioned before...

There is a National Day of Action against Workfare on 3rd March

So far, it seems protests have only been organised in the big cities, but I guess there's nothing to stop us organising little full trolley-abandoning parties in our local Tescos.....

Really IDS??? It seems to me that there is little chance of getting a paid job at the end of this scheme just as there is a one in a million chance of winning the X Factor so i would say the two are very similar.

Can i also just point out that if Tesco are going to provide 4 week paid placements that is NOT a permanent enough job to be able to apply for tax credits so people are still going to be on very low pay. I think a job has to last for a minimum of five weeks to get tax credits to top up the low wage.
Also the paperwork and bureaucracy involved in signing off and signing back on again in a short space of time means a delay in benefits so im guessing the food banks will be busy providing food to people just coming off placement.
From what ive heard a Rapid Reclaim is anything but!

I will be attending on Mar 3rd, but I would say not to do trolley dumping. As it will Tesco's workers not the decision makers who have to sort it out.

It's even in The Daily Mash Today...