Occupy Mumnset - Mumsnet, i know you are P(p)olitical. Seriously, can't you tell your advertisers to fuck off if they are workfaring?

[Tortington]

i got an e-mail telling me i had % of retailers that are involved in the workfare scheme and it occured to me that Mumsnet is usually on the side of good

oh staff of MN you know me well, whilst i was disappointed that the Maccy D advertising question was even asked, i wasn't arsed tbh. i've always shouted 'its a business not a charity' ...

but this is different - It is very very wrong, and you are perpetuating the wrongness by advertising them.

Sorry, I mean nobody but those at the top of the pile. The pile of people who no longer feel the system is working increases as the gap between the richest and the poorest increases and the proportion of people who can count themselves amongst the richest diminishes - particularly where some of the richest oversee some of the companies which pay some of the poorest....

So if Workfare is slave labour because it's "unpaid". Then should I be reconsidering allowing my 15yr old to do work experience at school?

To me I see no difference. Except one appears to be a good idea, the other slave labour.

How sad for you.

So, you would like your 15 year old to stack shelves for Tesco for his work experience, then, niceguy2? I would rather my child got that sort of job for his spare time and had something that widened his horizons a bit further for his official work experience.

To me, it is counter intuitive to offer free labour to companies which exist to make a profit rather than to maximise employment, because they will not use the opportunity to create more jobs, they will use it to save costs and therefore increase profit.

There is nothing to be gained in learning these skills if you are looking for work in a completely different field or if you have lost a job in a career you have already trained for and hope to return to.

'There is nothing to be gained in learning these skills'

There is for the employer

Anyone at all familiar with the field of conspiracy theory will recognise the maxim "cui bono?" and that is not a call to the U2 lead singer.

claig, your comments earlier:

"If people were working for teh benefit of the state (i.e. for all of us) then it would seem less bad. We need to create some state businesses and give people some real state jobs that help the entire community with the community's money."

sound really quite anti-capitalist....

Surely there had got to be something illegal about compelling people to work for less than the national minimum wage?

Actually, not quite Tesco since that doesn't appear to be one of the options. But I did say I'd be quite happy for her to do her work experience in Mcdonalds despite the fact she wants to be a solicitor.

Naturally I'd rather she did a placement in a solicitor's office but there doesn't seem to be any who are interested in work experience students.

In the absence of that, I'd rather she did SOMETHING than NOTHING.

I'd rather she spent two weeks flipping burgers in McD's and clearing tables than sitting at home and having nothing to put at all on her CV.

'sound really quite anti-capitalist'

Not at all. They are just common sense. There is no black and white, wrong and right. We don't run everything on capitalism. The health service is not capitalist. If capitalism cannot provide enough jobs, then the community itself (i.e. teh state on behalf of all of us) should do so.

Anti capitalist is about taking industry into state hands, shutting down all private enterprise. I am not in favour of that. That only benefits progressives at the top of the food chain and destroys freedom and free enterprise.

The State has been conned into thinking that work is only worth doing if someone is making an immediate profit out of it (preferably not the worker, however). Employing people to run non-profit making schemes doing beneficial work for the community is not what the State is into any more. Nor is it hugely into investing in schemes or businesses for the long term, because that's a lot of outlay now for a potential gain a long way in the future. It wants private enterprise to take all the risks, but funnily enough, private enterprise would rather stick to what is immediately profitable, too, because those who want to plan for the long term can't get any funding, because everyone wants to put their money on the horse that's winning the race, now, even if it does eventually drop dead of exhaustion because everyone's been flogging it too much. That's why capitalism produces great booms and busts and change only happens when it is forced to happen (eg workers run out because they are all dying of cholera or have been killed off in stupid wars).

The state has been conned into nothing. The state is in charge and has chosen to shut down profitable state businesses and let private operators run them.

We all want clean drinking water, we all want good public transport, we all want good healthcare. The State wants these sectors to be profitable. Unfortunately, they are never profitable for the State, whether it runs them itself or via private enterprise. However, put them in private hands and someone makes a profit out of them - by returning less to the State in tax than the amount they make in profit. More jobs are not created that way (less "bureacracy" means less employment...). A different type of service is created, of course, but it doesn't seem to be a type of service that really offers the promised improvements in efficiency or customer care. Instead, private individuals take advantage of the fact that they provide an essential service, so can behave badly with a certain degree of impunity.

I'd rather she spent two weeks flipping burgers in McD's and clearing tables than sitting at home and having nothing to put at all on her CV.

Then why don't you suggest she work for a charity?

A solicitor's office will be more impressed with doing pro bono work at a charity than flipping burgers at McShittals.

The reason businesses like Tesco employ immigrant labour is because they have a long term objective to undermine labour costs. It is perhaps the only way in which they can now increase profits.

The Worfare programme has handed these businesses the state funded opportunity to undermine paid work and don't think the Tory Toffs will do anything to curb economic migrancy either and get Brits working, that would be counter-productive to their relationship with corporations.

MN has in the past campaigned for things effecting parents, whilst many of us have good jobs and are free from exploitation we must acknowledge that worfare isn't a quick fix, if it becomes embedded it will effect our children's life chances.

Why does the state use outside private contractors to train people to get jobs or to test for disabilities etc.? Do you think these things are rocket science and the state could not do a more effiicent, less expensive job?

And big businesses can squeeze out smaller businesses, because they can start out being able to afford better rates and the State cannot afford taking on risk-taking smaller businesses who may outbid themselves. So, the big businesses can get bigger and bigger and more successful until they are calling the shots and the State has to do what they tell it to, not the other way round. And the State purchased its way into that position by relying on the profit motive being the only motive that gets people working.

Claig it is driven ideology, not by savings or efficiency.

How often does Government offer contracts to small businesses for Government work?... Government privatising everything and then buying back from private enterprise is stifling competition, not increasing it, because Government doesn't want to take risks on small businesses.

"So, the big businesses can get bigger and bigger and more successful until they are calling the shots and the State has to do what they tell it to"

Exactly, this has already happened though.

No. The state could set up lots of profitable well-run businesses that would be very successful, but that would harm private business as they would face greater competition. EU competition laws place great restrictions on state subsidies to business in order to allow private business to thrive.

It is driven by the capitalist belief that we are all lazy, self-serving sh*ts who don't want to get out of bed unless we have to.

'Claig it is driven ideology, not by savings or efficiency.'

I agree, it has nothing to do with efficiency, it is about helping the rich get richer. But don't kid yourself that the progressives are any different. EU competition policy ensures that state subsidies are restricted in order not to harm private business.