I STILL think Tesco should fucking well PAY THEIR STAFF. Workfare is wrong!!!!

[TapselteerieO]

Still angry, I hope the protests on the 3rd of March all over the country really keep this campaign lit, it makes me furious to think people seem to assume it has been sorted.

I will boycott every company that uses schemes like this until they are ended completely.

On the childcare issue - NMW is £45.60 per day BEFORE TAX. Childcare in a Nursery is £52 a day here, for an over 3yo.

Do the maths...

Of course an employer is responsible for what wage they choose to pay. Using your argument Four Quarters then doctors lawyers and surgeons would only be getting paid NMW as well.
Because as you have said yourself the wage is not the fault of the company it is set by the Government right?
I strongly suspect Four Quarters that you are trying to derail this thread from being a workfare thread to a debate about the minimum wage.
But a lot of us will still continue to discuss and object to WORKFARE WORKFARE WORKFARE WORKFARE WORKFARE.

Government funded schemes should not be used for free labour for major profit making corporations.

Anything wrong with that statement?

I'm not against work experience per se - as long as it's appropriate. The scheme as it stands really is not appropriate.

Terminally ill people, people with disabilities deemed not fit to work and carers are expected to participate. On a mandatory basis, not voluntary as the govt keep insisting. Documents have been provided on previous threads backing this up.

Glitter someone has just tweeted to Boycott Workfare that they had benefit stopped for refusing to do a "placement"
Voluntary my arse.

www.cesi.org.uk/welfare-work-uk-convention-2011-presentations these are the powerpoint presentations from the Governments welfare to work convention.

If you scroll down to no 21 Sanctions and conditionality: an overview of new provisions it explains in detail the sanctions that will be used after 2013 for anyone claiming universal credit (replaces JSA and tax credits)

For anyone doubting that this work experience,participation in the work programme and therefore workfare, be it for young people, people with disabilities and people on very low incomes with children is voluntary please read.

Watching Question Time. Someone has just said that the head of Greggs bakers has had a go at the bankers greed and yet Greggs is one of the companies who signed up to participate in workfare. Hypocrisy on a mind boggling scale.

That is a good link minimaths, is there a way to copy and paste from that?

Fourquarters who are the right targets?

Emma Harrison, head of A4e - one of those lovely private companies 'helping the unemployed back into work' has just resigned as a government adviser. Because it turns out her company is under investigation for fraud - and not for the first time - by, amongst other things, claiming 'success fees' for people who were allegedly in work for just one day. Other entertaining practices include making people on benefits work for free in A4e's own offices.

She paid herself an £8m dividend last year, out of more than £100m the taxpayer kindly donated to her dodgy company.

And yet we still have people on MN bitching about benefits fraud and backing workfare.... the real benefits fraud is being carried out by Emma Harrison, Tesco and the other fat cats exploiting the unemployed and taxpayers at the same time.

FourQuarters is there a reason then for the disparity between the NMW and the actual amount in real terms people need to live on and why might our government opt to institute a low NMW that doesn't cover the actual cost of living?

MANDATORY WORK RELATED ACTIVITY and the WORK EXPERIENCE SCHEME are NOT targetted, sensible interventions that help people to get a job. They are both schemes to increase profits for big businesses by lowering their wage bill to an unsustainable level, whilst at the same time expecting to be subsidised by the state.

Tax Credits are a business subsidy by the state allowing big businesses to pay their employees less than a LIVING wage. Mandatory Work Related Activity and the Work Experience scheme just takes this one step further by adding ANOTHER layer of business subsidy by the state allowing big businesses to get labour at NO cost - and in fact be PAID to utilise that labour. Taken to the inevitable conclusion, will mean LESS PAID employees, and LESS business subsidy by the state - because the workers will not get as much STATE money on JSA as they would on Tax Credits.

Which doesn't allow for the fact that they are PAYING the big businesses to take ON people from these schemes. And that the people ON these schemes aren't paying Tax or NI, despite WORKING.

These people on the schemes ARE WORKING, but they are NOT getting a fair days pay for a fair days work.

And we AREN'T Asia. Do people REALLY want to see poverty like is seen in Aisa, right here in the UK? REALLY? Because THAT is the INEVITABLE conclusion of the 'back-to-work' schemes, and the changes in the Welfare state.

I defy all the people that are arguing FOR the benefits cap, FOR the 'back-to-work' schemes, FOR the dismantling of the NHS, FOR the privatisation of the education system to come back to MN in 10 years time and tell me that we are not WELL on the way to that situation.

I can see it, and I am aghast at the way the poor (working or not), the disabled, the vulnerable, the carers will be treated, and where it will end up. And I can't get my head around the fact that there are people who see this as a GOOD THING.

I bet they won't see it as so good when they are made redundant from their lower-level managerial job because someone has been on a 'back-to-work' scheme for long enough to fill that post...

'FourQuarters is there a reason then for the disparity between the NMW and the actual amount in real terms people need to live on and why might our government opt to institute a low NMW that doesn't cover the actual cost of living?'

THIS I would LOVE to see a rational answer for...

It won't let me paste it here!

If you erode the link between work and wages, even those in "so called safe" jobs they have trained hard to do will not be safe.

Response to Custardo about banning advertisers from mn that use workfare type schemes i.e coerced free labour at taxpayers expense,

"JustineMumsnet (MNHQ) Thu 23-Feb-12 23:06:40
Evening all,

I do think this issue is actually a bit more complicated that meets the eye, as evidenced perhaps by the difference of opinion seen on this thread.

First, I don't agree that unpaid work experience is wrong per se. This is because it does seem to work. In fact I gather that it is pretty much the most effective scheme of many and various tried by the DWP to help young unemployed people into work. And given that it works, and that long term unemployment is so hugely debilitating for young people, it seems odd to be against it in principle.

That said, I do agree that were there evidence that a company was systematically abusing the scheme to avoid hiring people to permanent roles, and to merely to benefit from "slave" labour then we would most likely agree that they were right buggers and wouldn't want their presence on Mumsnet. I do think the new Tesco position, offering a paid four-week placement with a job if you complete it satisfactorily is an intrinsically better way of doing things because otherwise there will always be a suspicion/risk of abuse.

I also think that the compulsory element of this scheme (I think that if you drop out after the first week you lose a couple of weeks of benefits) does seem too Draconian - I think it's come about because of the idea that companies might devote resource into training etc so there has to be some incentive to stop people just being flaky - but it smacks a bit of it not being something that both parties voluntarily enter into for mutual benefit which is the only way it stacks up. That of course is for government to change, not individual businesses and we'll certainly see if anyone from government would like to come on to talk about that.

By the by we have just started an intern scheme here at MN. Interns are paid £1k per month and do a rotating 6 months around different bits of MNHQ and I really hope we end up hiring some of them permanently and that if not it helps them get jobs elsewhere."

Has anybody been watching Question Time. They were discussing this and AGAIN insisting that
a. its voluntary
b. its only young people affected.
Dimbleby did try to mention Mandatory Work Activity and Community Action Scheme but got shouted down.
Even the Liverpudlian guy on there from UKIP insisted that it was voluntary.

They are going to be discussing it on This Week on BBC 1 now.

action against Workfare

epitition Against workfare]].

Poundland have now said that they are dropping out of the scheme WITHOUT taking on a single worker BECAUSE OF THE BACKLASH note BECAUSE OF THE BACKLASH not because they agree that its immoral.
Does anyone else think they are having a little temper tantrum because they are losing their free workers.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/now-poundland-snubs-workfare-programme-7440154.html

Great links, minimaths and carer, thanks.

Protest works.

It's the only thing that ever has.

Funny that, I just added "Protest Works" to our blog post :)