Workfare versus Work Experience

[rabbitstew]

How important is prior work experience, normally, to a job as a shelf stacker? I would have thought that anyone taking that on via Workfare who then failed to get or take the job at the end of it would be ringing the death knell to any future employment as they would be assumed to have been too slack to even get that sort of work when offered to them on a plate. And I know that unpaid work experience is more or less compulsory to anyone hoping to get into publishing, for example, but I'm sure that nobody would get to keep their benefits if they got themselves a bit of that sort of work experience.

So, basically, I'm a bit unclear as to whom Workfare is supposed to really benefit, apart from those people who wanted jobs in Tesco in the first place, but who now find they can't access them unless they are on a Workfare scheme?????

" I don't think many people on workfare will gain any skills whatsoever by stacking shelves at Tescos."

The main skill a long-term unemployed person gains by doing a relatively simple job is 'how to work'. When we have some families that are second generation long-term unemployed, there are people that have not experienced the workplace either first or second-hand.

What about those who are already doing work experience/voluntary work (relevant to their desired career) & have to stop it to do workfare?

Can't see that happening, can you? Job Centre staff are trying to get people into training, work experience or actual work. Would be pointless to drag them out of one scheme just to enrol them in another.

I was discussing this with a manager in Tesco the other day (he had no idea of workfare etc) - now I can see that a young 17-18 year old who is unemployed may have a short spell of 'experience' in Tesco or wherever doing a 'basic' job (for the record I have 10 GCSEs and a NNEB and Ive worked for Tesco stacking shelves for a wage)-and when he applies for work he is able to say that hes worked at tesco and it may help him get a job..... but if someone doesnt want to or isnt able to use this 'placement' then surely its not a positive way to get people to want to work?
If Tesco have vacancies for shelf fillers they should be advertising on their boards and getting people who want to work applying and pay them a wage to do it.

As I understood it someone on JSA is limited to hours they can 'volunteer' they have to be available for work and attend interviews etc etc.

What I cant understand is why,if its 'free' labour the people who are unemployed cant help choose somewhere to 'volunteer' for example Mrs A with 2 young children but both aged over 5 would find it difficult to work outside of school hours/holidays etc etc ....she is a crafty/arty person who is energetic and enthusiastic .......could she not volunteer at the old peoples home and do craft and basic care with them and see how she likes it- someone keen to work would use these advantages and it would help them decide future goals ......

At the end of the day if someone is working they incur extra 'charges' lunch money,a haircut to make them more presentable,a pair of tights,a bottle of aftershave etc etc and to make people not perceive work experience as a punishment some financial gain would help.

"AND they have both paid in to the pot while employed so they are in effect paying twice.
Will they be abolishing National Insurance then?"

Contributions based JSA lasts for 6months, and during that time you do get some latitude to limit your job seeking to work similar to that you did previously. You would not get steered onto a scheme until you are in phase3 (is over 6 months unemployed), by which time everyone's contributions based JSA has expired.

Quote from The New Statesman are they left wing extremists too? "The element of compulsion involved (keep working or you'll lose your benefits) offends against basic fairness. Unless ministers concede this point, they could soon have a workfare programme without any work."

It may offend against basic fairness but so does the idea that someone takes up a placement and walks off the job half-way through.

I would want to work off a scheme halfway through if I had been wrongly informed by Job Centre Plus staff that a scheme was compulsory when it wasn't; then not informed that I could leave within the first week without penalty; and if I found that my "work experience" was the sort of shelf stacking job I had done in my spare time in order to earn money while at university and that it involved being left entirely on my own to get on with it while paid staff got on with their work.

And it seems that most people who have been on the work experience schemes to date have been on the genuinely mandatory ones, of which there appear to be at least two. So why is the Government pretending the work experience schemes are largely voluntary, or pretending the fuss is only about one of the work experience schemes in operation? The way it is all being handled is just deeply confusing, because, in fact, different people appear to be thinking about different schemes, so one person complains about one scheme and another person comes along to justify it by talking about another scheme entirely.

jollyoldstnickschick, not only that but if you are not seen to be getting a hair cut and buying appropriate interview clothes you can face sanctions, so your benefit can be cut until you conform.

Cant see that happening can you?
Cognito what you really mean is that you dont want to see it.
It happened to Cait Reilly which if i remember rightly you slagged off in a previous post so its not as if you didnt know that it has already happened.

i dont disagree that there are soft skills - well portentially depending on the person regarding working for short periods of time

just pay a decent wage

these are real jobs - they aren't additional 'trainee' jobs

I rarely 'slag anyone off'... and I have no idea who Cait Really is.

Cogito, I have been disappointed to see you 'slag off' the Daily Mail, which is totally unwarranted

Having no idea who Cait is and not caring, anyway, is as good as slagging her off, I guess. She shouldn't really exist. She is very inconvenient. She is spoiling the whole enterprise by pointing out its failings. The project should not fall because of its failings, it should keep going, regardless, unchanged and unimproved, because to remedy its failings would be more than the country can afford. We can afford a few Caits suffering for the general good of getting the great unwashed out to work. Except in an economy where a reasonable proportion of the unemployed are like Cait, it's harder to brush her under the carpet.

(ps who is Cait?...)

Apparently Tesco (or ANother supermarket, can't remember) has had to write to all its managers telling them not to take part in the government schemes because stores are being constantly harassed by A4e (the bunch of fraudsters whose chairman has just resigned).

And the DWP committee that advises ministers pointed out some time ago there was evidence these schemes were actually costing jobs, not creating them - employers involved have cut casual/short term posts and overtime - used workfare instead of taking on extra staff over Christmas.

So it's lose/lose - the person in need of work is being exploited, the taxpayer is being exploited, the only winner is Emma fecking Harrison and some pompous Tory ministers who can't be bothered to look at the detail and have never known what it's like to actually work for your living outside politics or PR.

I have to agree with edam that some of the people who drew up this policy are not as sharp as we might believe. It seems like a public relations nightmare.

How did a supposed ragtag bunch of unwashed Socialist Workers manage to find flaws and lack of fairness where the best educated private school, Oxbridge PR advisers found none?

It's seems like a quite incredible own goal.

Will the car be put into reverse and some backtracking take place to save some face or will it now be full steam ahead and carry on regardless? Will someone echo the words of Kenneth Williams - "infamy, infamy, they've all got it infamy"?

claig, you and I come from very different ends of the political spectrum, and yet so often we agree - for different reasons. It's decidedly weird but very amusing.

Btw, did you see Paul Dacre at Leveson? With your admiration for the Mail, I think you'd find it enlightening. He's such an angry man - managed to rein it in at the first appearance (after MUCH coaching from his staff) but couldn't hide his nature at the second.

Yes, we can both call a spade a spade. It is very weird and the damage may end up being much worse than the entire union strike over pensions, which involved hundreds of thousands of people etc. Quite incredible that no one seems to have foreseen it.

No I didn't see Paul Dacre at Leveson. But I am a fan of his and his great paper.

Claig "I have to agree with edam that some of the people who drew up this policy are not as sharp as we might believe"

No, the people who have the biggest stake in this, did draw up the bill and are likely to make huge profits.

Emma Harrison of A4e, ingeus, Avanta, and two other prime contractors have been in meetings with this and the previous government and through a series of meetings have informed and manipulated policy to their own ends.

I would say the people calling the shots are very savvy it's our elected elite who aren't.

Emma Harrison has been contracted by the government not just as a tsar but has been paid many millions to provide advice on prisons and hard to help families and she has also submitted a bid to contract the work she has created.

Yes, I agree. But it seems like a PR nightmare for the government. Did nobody say "hold on a minute, the Emperor has no clothes"? Di dnobody think it through? What are all the spin doctors and thinktanks paid for?

In the end, it may have been cheaper to pay NMW for these short 4 week assignments than paying some of the tsars and their companies.

What next? Will prisoners be told to do work experience refurbishing supermarkets?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2029437/Jacqui-Smith-defends-use-2-prisoners-paint-450k-home.html

Jackie Smith, for example, is an arse.