Boris wants your children

[Sparrowp]

Boris wants your children for the gulags.

He wants to punish teach them skills of rock-breaking and oakum picking!

Bring your children to build the great nation!

Even if they have studied hard at school, achieved their expensive degree, and volunteer ten times a day, they must not expect payment until they get experience are working get paid.

At the press conference, Boris, with one arm oddly twisted behind his back, confirmed that it was a tough job market, and employers were crying out for prisoners free labour something for nothing work experience.

But unions used to deserve respect. Nowadays they seem to have their own agenda.

I have a DS who is 17.9. He worked really hard at school, got very good GCSE's, so stayed on to do A levels. He has just found out he passed all four with flying colours so on Monday will return to school to start year 13.

For the past 6 months he has had a Saturday job in a garden centre, and has worked extra hours when offered. This morning, half an hour before his shift was due to start he found out they have gone bankrupt. He knew things were ropy and had, in his own time, delivered leaflets and canvassed for extra business for them, but it was too late. He loved that job.

Instead of moping he has been on the phone and Internet, and I have driven him all over the county today looking for jobs. He has managed to apply for four, which is no mean feat considering we live in a very rural area and all the big supermarket chains have just, in the last couple of weeks, taken people on.

DS went to school with a boy who couldn't be bothered to turn up for lessons, was rude to the teachers and has not done a days work since he left in June 2011. He brags about not applying for any jobs and spending the day on the X box! Why should he, and people like him, get money for nothing? What message does that send out to all the hard working kids out there?

I agree this proposal is not ideal, but I really do think that something needs to be done.

Here is some extra variety for you:

Argos

ASDA

B&Q

The heartless British Heart Foundation (supposed to be a charity! )

Cancer research :(

Greggs LOL

Hilton and Marriot hotels (yuck)

Macdonalds (yuck)

Poundland, Poundstretcher

WHSmith

Matalan (?)

Tesco's is just an example. I'm happy to slag off the shop of your choice

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.

Above is an old post of mine from a previous thread.
Ive pasted it over to this discussion to illustrate the huge conflict of interest involved when charities get involved in this kind of coercion.
Its why Shelter pulled out of these schemes a long time ago. They could have caused someone to get a benefit sanction by reporting them to the Jobcentre.
Then that sanction could have caused the claimant to become homeless.
Shelter were quick to recognise the irony and the conflict of interest and pulled out.

Why is the OP starting this same thread in lots of different sections today?

Start one thread and let the debate run.

Carernotasaint, if you are a registered carer why would you think they would make you work in a bhf shop? This scheme is not for carers, it's for young people claiming jsa.

What about those already in employment LOSING HOURS because the govt has put a JSA claimant into a PROFIT MAKING BUSINESS for FREE?

This is happening.

It could be the difference for a parent between being eligible for WTC and not being with the new 24 hour rule.

There are a few more charities participating - scope, barnardos and RSPCA :(

This campaign group are organising a day of action against it:
www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=1544

Its just such a very uncharitable and nasty scheme to be involved in - and what a way to treat your charity workers - putting them at risk of destitution and homelessness.

But surely those in employment will already have a contract that sets out how many hours they work, so how can the employer reduce contracted hours to give them to the free JSA worker?
I can see your point that it may affect their overtime but it shouldn't make any difference to their basic hours.

sunflower - in the last few years some employers have been using short hours contracts and then getting people to do overtime. Bad for the worker but the employer saves money when they don't need staff, or can get someone in for free.

A lot of retailers (I know for definite the T word that has been accused of being a conspiracy theories) have now made their workers take zero hour contracts.

That's legal. And shameful.

nancy it is going to be extended to some carers under the Universal Credit.

My son has recently been "promoted" to a five-hour contract. He usually does about 30, but there's no guarantee.

My lodger has a contract which guarantees him 'no less than 0 and no more than 40 hours a week'. Modern life, innit, sunflowers.

News to me. We've always been self employed. What sort of businesses offer these contracts? Why would you work for them?
Going to bed now, but will be back tomorrow.

Very large, well know businesses. It's a retail specialty. Those that offer fixed hours contracts might only guarantee eg 12 hours when the person regularly works 30+ a week.

In my son's case, a well-known fast-food outlet. Why would he work there? Because there are precious-few other options round here. Better to work at all than not, yeah?

Of course he can't afford to leave home, just as well we can support him.

That sort of contracts is nothing new. When I started in retail 30 years ago I was given a 20hr contract. I worked 40/50hrs a week in real life. The 'overtime' wasn't paid,but to be taken in 'time for time',so when the business was quiet in the winter they could send you home.

After doing this for 3 years,and getting fed up with it,I found myself a contracted 40hr a week job and handed in my resignation.

Somehow they could all of a sudden find me a 32hr a week contract which I had asked for (just so I had a higher guaranteed income) but was always deemed 'impossible'.

I have been self employed for the last 11 years now,wouldn't have it any other way.

As Oldlady says,it's often a matter of having to take whatever is available.With a 0-hour contract there is unfortunately no way you could build up an independent life though.Maybe there should be a law where businesses would have to give you a contract for a minimum amount of hours when you can show you have been working them for a certain amount of time.Let's say you have been working a 30hr week on average for the last 12 months then that should result in a contract of at least 20hrs guaranteed.

It would work very motivational too,as an employee would make themselves available and work to the best of their ability so as to be rewarded with a more extensive contract.The slackers would be easy to pick out and as a result of their lacking input not be given extra contracted hours.

Unfortunately I'm sure the 'Big Boys' would find a way around that too.

What sorts of businesses, Sunflower?

All sorts. Retail, catering, and (in my lodger's case) teaching in the private sector.

Why would you work for them? Because nothing else is available and you want to work. There are a lot of people (some of them on this thread) who seem to believe that all the jobless are jobless through choice. Possibly they believe everything they read in the right wing press; possibly they exist in a middle-class bubble. Perhaps they just prefer not to acknowledge the truth, so they can look down on another sector of society. I don't know. But zero hours contracts exist in a multitude of industries and only ever work in favour of the employer.

And that's why my lodger is a lodger and not living in his own flat, as he would like. He is in his mid-forties. Zero hours contract was all he could get, so he took it. No proper contract means he can't get a tenancy. Even if he could, he'd be worried about taking it, as he has no guaranteed income. So he lives from week to week, never knowing what's around the corner...

Its really sad. Even the crazy US republicans think that people should be able to move out by their 20s and have a life.

That was exactly my problem at the time twofingers. I needed a contract of a minimum of 32 hours to enable myself to get my own place.I feel very sorry for your lodger.I would hate to live with the insecurity of a contract like that.

epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/29356 - Help abolish this nonsense.