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

Upthread someone mentioned the increase in suicides.
What if theres an increase in murder/suicides.
What happens if someone snaps after spending months on workfare and decides to take some company up to heaven with him.
Everyone has their limits.

Just caught end of Newnight segment. Let me explain something.

People who would previously have received Incapacity Benefit are being divided into three groups.

Group 1 The bar for being found Fit to Work has been moved. It used to be those who could not earn their living or were by employers' standards unemployable due to illness/disability. Now those who can do some work, eg 2 hours a day at NMW if sufficiently drugged up, are being designated Fit to Work.

They are now considered Ordinary and 100% fit. They will naturally be forced to do everything all other 100% fit people are required to do, including workfare or whatever, although a lot for them are being turned down for JSA because they're not fit enough for JSA. They do not feature further in govt discussions of the Disabled - because they're not Disabled.

Group 2 These are people who are found too sick or disabled to be able to realistically do any work, but whose conditions may one day improve. Or who are near the Fit to Work threshold even if they are deteriorating or dying. This is the Work Related Activity Group. They must already attend mandatory programmes to teach them how to write CVs and understand the morality of being a worker.

This group is still described as Disabled or Sick. And this is the group being mooted for mandatory retail work as part of their preparation for working again. (Note the assumptions first that they will ever work again, which for terminal or degenerative conditions is false, and second that temporary retail work is an appropriate preparation for returning to work as, say, an accountant at a specially adapted workstation.)

Group 3 Ivan Cameron (not being personal but need well-known illustration). Yeah, there are some people even the DWP can't manage to describe as able to work.

IIRC, about 11% of original Incapacity Benefit recipients are being put in Group 3 - that's about half what the guy who designed the system intended. (Sorry, figures from memory, not exact.)

It is disgraceful, I am glad I have already been boycotting tesco for a year anyway, I chopped all my clubcards up as well, never will I hand them my money again, and as for the others, ha they will now be added to my list, they should feel utterly ashamed

I work for a charity that has one workfare employee. She is guaranteed her job once workfare has ended.

I work there on placement. It is necessary for my course. I like it. I need it and there is a high rate of interns getting payed positions on qualification. It also provides a much needed service for some of the most needy in society. It benefits me, my charity and the community that some work goes unpaid.

But Tesco, Boots, Asda and the rest of the profit making giants?
I mean fuck me with a fishfork!
Not only is it slave labour, it's contributing to unemployment and lack of economic growth. Workfare used in this way fucks us all.

Have signed the petition and will boycott profit making companies that use it.

Tesco et al are the lowest of the low, the shittest of the shit. Oh, how I despise them.

Thank goodness this issue is beginning to get some media coverage.

YANBU.

It is shit. Tescos are shit for implementing it and I hope they go under, the greedy fuckers.

Have signed petition and am joining Labour Party. The sooner we get rid of the Tories and their little yellow friends, the better.

Its just one thing after the other, and I have had enough of just sitting here and getting angry. I want to get up and fight for what I believe is right.

The difference between a charity and business is that a charity saves the money and uses it to do good generally; a business pays to shareholders. So IMO charity better than business (though far from good)

The list is abd but T K Maxx, waterstones and I just learned Sainsburys withdrew so there IS a precedent if pressure is applied.... and between those two and Lidl I can shop fine.

WRT to the panic buttons etc don't think that's just that 'the poor'- in the early nineties I did FTA at VAT office, we had bullet proof glass screen to get behind at first sign of trouble.

Cake the Labour party were the ones who first drafted these cuts, the current government are not only implimenting it but making it more than it was first off.

To me, they are just as much to blame and the other 2 big parties.

Oh and any of you that twitter- Dr Owen from QT is represented on labourLeft and DrEoinClarke is a similar person to follow.

molepom I agree and was about to defect but the advent of Labour Left / red Labour has given it a chance in my book: tehre is a breakaway part of the Labour party.

if that fails, then it is Plaid.

Plaid?

That as maybe, but the Labour Party is the lesser of two evils as far as I'm concerned. Plus, I think rather than moaning about the Labour Party, people should become a part of it and create an element within the party that can get its voice heard.

Plaid?

I can't vote labour on principle. Tony Blair did more harm to socialism than Stalin.

Unless labour are prepared to stick their necks out and get back to basics all is lost, there is simply no one to vote for.

Come back labour left! (seriously considers actually joining party).

(Don't think Plaid can actually help me in the East Midlands )

It's beggers belief to be honest. All of these different parties should be shouting about these things, especially with local elections coming up in May, but they haven't said a word. If they got their act together they could really win some votes as the current mood that I see from the general population is that they are sick of the 3 main parties and the constant lies.

The past 2 weeks alone has shown the country what the gov is capable of and it's not pretty. There are alternative answers everywhere to each and every one of these cuts but they are being ignored.

Well, I'm giving it a go. :)

And I will continue to lobby my right-wing, idiot, backbench Tory MP.

(I think he hates me )

What I'm finding really heartening is that a year ago when some of us on MN discussed workfare and the big society, cuts to LAs and library closures many people supported the CONDEMS but support is waning. More and more people are looking to the left.

Shame at the moment there is nothing on the left

Huge corporate businesses making millions and employing staff that the Government are paying for through JSA.
Surely someone, somewhere in the Government realises this does not make sense.
I just don't fucking get it.

I wonder whether anyone in the government has ever been on JSA or in genuine hardship?

Mini - at first I agreed with the cuts and the workfare in principle but now I know what it really means, I'm disgusted and scared for those who will affect and their families.

At first they all seemed a good idea on paper but there is a moral line which they have not just crossed but shit all over on the way past it and it's the lack of thought, fairness, morals and now everything else which has me outraged and ashamed.

Exactly Lady, nothing they are saying and planning makes any sense what so ever, not just on this but on many, many other policies as well.

Agree that this shit started under Labour.

AIBU to be glad the Tories are in at the moment? Because Labour might just decide to jump the fence and oppose cuts/restructuring when they realise there are votes in it? Whereas a Tory opposition would cheer all the way to the bank.

But listen to what Labour actually say, not just the tone. Noticed Miliband or someone last week weaseling on that it was wrong to restructure NHS at same time as trying to make savings. He didn't say he opposed the restructuring per se.

molepom, the small parties thing scares the shits out of me. This is exactly how extremists get in - when everyone's voting None of The Above. And once in...

I will be doing all my shopping in the Co-Op, Lidl and Sainsbury's/Morrison's and avoiding Tesco/Asda/Boots/Superdrug until they abandon workfare. I have already stopped shopping at Topshop and will avoid ever linking to anything in the Arcadia group of stores(Dorothy Perkins etc) from now on, would love to see Mumsnet telling them where to stick their advertisements too.

Tap, MN wont do anything about this, you know that like they haven't supported the disability campaigns with as much force as they had with other less important things. Like the childrens clothes one for an example.

Moving the disability campaign threads out of mainstream threads and into less used ones are proof of that.

I doubt very much that MN will tell the arcadia group what to do with thier ads as it's a source of income for the site...