Heads up Chris Grayling on QT tonight.

[carernotasaint]

Yes the MP who loves the idea of workfare and who blatently lied to Channel 4 news back in Feb saying it wasnt mandatory will be on Question Time tonight.
Bet it will be edited if anyone in the audience asks him anything too awkward.

What's wrong with workfare?

Wrong with workfare:

1. Displaces real jobs.

2. Pays worker less than minimum wage.

3. Tesco etc's wage bill being paid by the taxpayer.

4. As workfarers aren't employees they aren't protected by employment legislation - in fact no one seems to know what H&S, toilet break, sick leave or any other regulations apply to them, it all seems to be at the personal discretion of JobCentre staff and the person getting their free labour.

5. It's forced work, which iiuc is illegal under international law. If you want to leave a paid job for whatever reason (boss is a bully, whatever), you can do so and will be eligible for benefits. If you leave a benefits-paid "job", you will be penalised with destitution.

On the contrary, the programme makers are looking for good TV so if there are awkward questions they'll be the kind of thing which is left in. Their biggest concern is a bland boring programme with people agreeing with each other- they want fights!

The plus side of workfare is supposed to be on-the-job training and work experience. And if the people involved where shadowing the MD or being posted round different departments to experience what the business does, there might be some truth in that.

But no one needs a 6+ week course in shelf-stacking, which can be learned in hours. In fact, Tesco boss Leahy boasts he spent his youthful summer holidays working in a supermarket - paid. And now he's claiming workfarers need to do that unpaid to learn it.

The big giveaway is that Tesco (again just as an example) were caught advertising night shifts as "work experience". Unless some important part of the business only occurs on night shifts you would never do this with genuine work experience bods - not least because of the problems of supervising them. And if there were some vital night time experience in some industries, you would rotate people onto it for a few days or per their request, not advertise an entire 6+ weeks' of nights from the outset.

Does that help?

were shadowing

I can see some of your points. Let me address a couple of them, though.

Firstly, 'displaces real jobs'. That's an argument only if you accept that the jobs were going to be created anyway.

Secondly, the minimum wage is damaging to two groups - the unskilled and small businesses. The higher the minimum wage goes, the more damaging it is to those two groups. So I'm in two minds as to its value.

Thirdly, the wage bill being paid by the taxpayer - if you're in favour of government intervention in any way, there can't be an ideological objection to this. If you think government should be 'stimulating demand in the economy' for example then you really can't object to workfare on these grounds. As it happens I'm not in favour of government intervention so I do agree with this point. However, somebody has to get these people working again since so many of them are unemployable.

Fourthly, employment legislation. I don't think that's a worry because anyone in the workplace is covered by legislation.

Finally, 'international law'. That's a pretty weasel argument, IMO and I'm sure the lawyers would love to fight it at £180 an hour. But nobody's forcing these people to take the taxpayer's money. But that argument of mine comes down to the value of welfare and its failings and is probably for another thread.

my main concern with workfare is that part time staff on less than 24 hours a week are not able to increase their hours - as the job is being done by someone on workfare - so the part time staff lose entitlement to tax credits.

Sorry, flatpack, that's a total fail.

1. Nothing to do with job creation. Shelf-stacking (etc) jobs already existed, but the work can now be done by workfarers instead of paid employees. These jobs have a high enough turn over that you don't even have to sack anyone to replace them with an endless procession of workfarers.

2. Minimum wage is not damaging to the unskilled. And if you want to subsidise small businesses you don't have to do it through underpaying their labour.

3. Regardless of high-level idealogy, I have a very strong objection as a taxpayer to paying the wage bill of a profit-making company except in very closely defined circumstance. In a zero-sum game like supermarket sales and jobs, all that's happening is that we are subsidising (say) Tesco at the expense of (say) Sainsburys.

But actually your argument is risible: "if you're in favour of government intervention in any way, there can't be an ideological objection to this".

It's perfectly possible to approve of one government intervention (child benefit and state education) and not another (all children removed from parents and raised in state orphanages).

4. When I am in a supermarket as a customer, I am not covered by employment legislation or legislation about how often I can go to the loo. Because I am not an employee. A workfarer is also not an employee (it was noted in DWP papers that they couldn't be employees otherwise they'd be entitled to minimum wage). Someone with more knowledge of employment law on another thread described it as rolling the workplace back to the 1850s.

5. Actually threat of destitution is stated to be use of force by iirc the ILO.

And an additional (6) Anyone who uses "these people" has already lost the argument with me. But that's personal and others can take their own view.

BTW, it's extremely odd to describe unemployed people as "unemployable" in the middle of a recession.

Many unemployed people will have been employed this time last year.

And younger people have left school into the recession. If the economy boomed tomorrow they would be employed tomorrow.

serialkipper, a few points.

2. The minimum wage is damaging to the unskilled. Let's say I want to hire for an unskilled position. It doesn't require any real ability. I want to pay £3 an hour, which is 'the going rate' (in this hypothetical). Government tells me I can pay a minimum of £6 an hour. For £6 an hour I can have a better worker than £3 an hour. So who am I going to hire? The least employable are, thanks to the minimum wage, completely excluded from work. We can see that's happened in the UK where large numbers of eastern european migrants - many of them well educated - have come to the UK and taken on unskilled work such as fruit picking. The minimum wage guarantees those migrants a really good wage for a very easy job, and the farmers love those migrants because they're keen and bright and hard-working. And the least employable are pushed out.

As for small businesses - I'm not talking about 'subsidising' them. I'm talking about a level playing field. Big business can afford all the endless government legislation. They have whole departments to understand and manage it. SMEs don't. It's SMEs who are the real job creators, not corporates. It's SMEs who are the innovators, not corporates. Yet every piece of business legislation and taxation, from health and safety to minimum wage to employers NI penalises SMEs more than corporates. It's too expensive to hire.

3. There are plenty of companies and charities who are almost entirely dependent on state contracts and state handouts. Do you object to paying for them? A good example is RM, the education computer company. Capita is another. BAE systems is another.

4. No, but you're covered by the company's requirements to provide a safe place to shop and workfare workers will still be covered by the health and safety at work act. No, they won't be covered by the same draconian legislation that's preventing businesses from hiring, but saying it's "rolling back to the 1850s" is Guardianista hyperbole.

5. I humbly crave forgiveness for failing to read the 'approved speech' guidelines.

6. So many long-term unemployed are unemployable. They have no work ethic, no motivation, no skills. Who'd want to take them on? I'm not talking about bright-eyed, bushy-tailed graduates here, and nor is the government.

flatpackhamster - I'll give you a hrumph for that - I agree with every word. Until this government realise that creating the conditions which create as many private sector jobs as possible should be their first, second and third priorities, this country will continue to go to hell in a hand cart.

More real world jobs are the only solution.