to be pleased that one of my employers has taken on a "workfare" person ...

[TalkinPeace2]

And please read before flaming me.

We are a very small non profit organisation.
We've taken on a trainee who stays on benefits for those weeks and works for us 30 hours a week.
She brings our workforce up to 5 FTE.
we are paying for her to get sector specific training from week 1
our sector has a HUGE staff turnover due to poor candidate calibre in the past.
we genuinely hope that she will leave us for a job in our sector (£18K pro rata) within the 14 weeks

and if this works, we'll keep a steady stream of people coming off benefits.

The girl we've got is a graduate, but her degree has been useless for getting a job.
No way can we afford to pay her until she's qualified.
workfare may make our lives easier
and her life much much better

maybe Workfare should be banned to companies with over 100 employees .....

Aaaggh
I find the fatalism of MN posters SO depressing.

What this country desperately NEEDS is a MUCH higher input from women / mums
I've tried to suggest going for city non exec jobs
I've tried to suggest going for quango jobs
I'm trying to suggest going for Parish jobs

but there is this mindset that says sort the risk before the reward.
BLAAAAH
GO FOR IT - then sort the childcare. And go to the press with any sexist organisation not up to it...

what "technical sacking rights"? What do you actually mean?

Like I said, you can get outsourced HR depts for very small monthly fees. Why on earth if you ran a company that employed staff would you not make sure you had good HR advice. it's as important as accountants!

and where are these parish council vacancies?

in my area, there have been two recently, both offering only 10 hours per week, which is not enough for anyone to live on and both only paying just over the minimum wage. the job description for this 10 hour a week job ran to three pages of required tasks and stipulated that there was evening work involved.

the volume of tasks (and skills needed) was ridiculous given the pay rate and number of hours a week, and evneing work is hardly family friendly... is it?

I've got quite a few acquaintances who have these types of clerk jobs that are from between 8 hours a week to 15, I think they often fit in quite well to family life, but really only if you have an earning partner.

Mystery
10 / week - we're working on federating those - our CiLCA clerks pan out at 27 - 35 a week

sacking - sadly unions regard public sector as for the picking and chalenge every one - look up Lymington and New Alresford ....

i find ill-informed statements and unsupported sweeping statements frustrating.

How exactly is taking a 10 hour a week job as a Parish Clerk in LittleArse Bending, or Nether Wallop going to help women to break the glass ceiling?

or working for free?

and then in the next breath, (after saying small businesses can't afford to fight tribunals against employees), you recommend that any woman sexually discriminated against goes to the press.

talkinpeace No the Unions don't!

What they do is protect employees from ill-informed, law-breaking employers...

see Birmingham City Council's pay scales for female/male staff doing similar jobs.

you are also aware that less than 10% of tribunal cases find in favour of the employee, aren't you?

Why does a convenient, family friendly job have to be about breaking the glass ceiling

It's just a job suited to families who don't expect it to be their main source of income.

dunno about parish council clerks but I'm a school governor and our council supplies clerks for our meetings. Most of whom are men, as it happens. (Maybe men are more likely to opt to cover evening meetings?)

I've applied for several part time public sector admin positions and haven't been granted any interviews. There's no point in harping on at people to get jobs when there aren't enough to go round.

OP, I'd agree that your scheme does appear to be what workfare is about: taking someone on and training them up when you genuinely couldn't afford to do it.

"I'd rather any person on benefits is actually doing some work experience, whether that is at Tescos or a tiny local office is moot in my opinion. But then I would rather work at Tesco than be on benefits. I realise I am in the minority on MN to think this though."

Most people who disagree with you probably understand what's going on. Say you are working for Tesco under workfare, you are still on benefits. Your labour is paid for by the government at £2 per hour. Tesco therefore *do not have to employ someone else whos labour is paid for by Tesco at £6 per hour.

So in summary, it's rubbish for the average jobseeker and rubbish for the taxpayer. It should be rubbish for the government, but I expect some big corporate donations might offset that. Obviously the scheme is a Tesco finance directors wet dream.

These companies doing workfare get paid by the government. Tesco for example get paid to take on people on JSA. People are losing their jobs or getting their hours cut so companies can bring in JSA people. It happened at my sisters work.

Workfare isnt a good thing.

Workfare costs the tax payer at least twice.

Tax payers pay the benefits that the workfarer stays on throughout.

Tax payers also pay a not insubstantial sum to the employer per workfarer they take on, plus additional bonuses for training them or managing to stop them leaving after a week.

Thrice - because the taxpayer is also funding benefits for people who aren't employed or lose their jobs thanks to workfare. If Tesco can get workfare people on benefits to stack shelves, they aren't going to actually employ shelf-stackers on a real wage.

workfare is awful, it just replaces the need for real workers with cheap labour.
no matter how small a compnay you CAN provide HR services remotely.

Or you could end up like me, working part time eve and weekends for 3 years in a job that is a temporary seasonal position that conveniently lets you go for 4 weeks of the year invalidating the rolling employee rights you would expect.

No paid sickness no nothing, just the hope they will do well with no job prospects.

life is shit.

Mystery Cat 'Future Jobs Fund' wasn't better for the workforces of small businesses and charities whose bosses took on the generally workshy, lazy disinterested and irresponsible people. We were forced to watch as they broke every rule of behaviour, things that would have gotten us sacked. This went unpunished because if they were sacked the business didn't get paid for having them. Future Jobs ruined staff moral and created a horrible atmosphere at my work place. Over the course of the scheme we had dozens of future jobs bodies and only about 4 were even remotely employable.

Sorry for the rambling post but i'm still a little pissed off even now.

that wasn't my experience.

the FJF staff I know were interviewed and selected by the business and put on proper contracts which meant that they became a member of staff responsible to the organisation and if unsuccessful they left and the company didn't have to pay back any funds.

i know of several that were taken on to full time jobs as well.

in any scheme working with people who have been long term unemployed you will undoubtably have some that don't succeed, but the programme wasn't faulty.

it gave people paid work experience, companies the chance to fill a staffing gap that they perhaps could not afford to do without the government support for the post and gave young people a chance to build their careers.

it sounds like your company didn't manage the process of all of their staff well - leading to resentment from existing employees and poor selection and management of FJF staff. that can't be good for anyone.