Work for Your Benefit is Slavery
Post Categories: DWP • Flexible New Deal • Welfare Reform • jobcentre Plus • uk government • unemployment • workfare
Tags: Department for Work and Pensions, Flexible New Deal, unemployment, Welfare Reform, work for your benefit
We recently reported that Work for Your Benefit providers can sell workfare participants to businesses. This post is focused more on the amounts of money the working “slaves” will receive and the providers income; another post will be for the mistreatment and other concerns.
We are using the figures mentioned in Jobseekers Allowance isn’t enough!
Whether or not longterm unemployed people should have to commit forced labour as a condition of claiming benefit is an ongoing debate, however, the higher tier Jobseekers Allowance divided by National Minimum Wage works out at roughly 11 hours.
If jobseekers are to do forced labour to receive benefit then they should do a maximum of 11 hours of work per week. Of course, the entire workfare scheme needs to be scrapped.
Amounts
|
Jobseekers Allowance rate
(to be paid as an Training Allowance) |
Amount of Training Allowance
(includes increase) |
“Poverty Line”
|
Difference
|
Minimum Income Standard
|
median gross weekly earnings
|
|
|
Jobseekers Allowance (under 25)
|
£51.85**
|
£145 (18-21 rate)
|
£112
|
£93.15
|
£145
|
£365
|
|
Jobseekers Allowance (25+)
|
£65.45**
|
£174 (22+ rate)
|
£112
|
£108.55
|
£145
|
£365
|
* Using extremes of the scale to highlight the income levels of different groups of people on the workfare scheme. 30 hours @ £5.80 (22+) and £4.83 (18-21)
** Uprated benefits at time of workfare scheme.
Is it slavery?
As specified in the original post (linked above).. it is. There are worse forms of slavery but this significantly meets the definition criteria.
Everyone has a right to social security – and such payments are designed so low to discourage those who dont want to work. Being completely honest… if I was getting £160 per week in benefits, and I had to work 30 hours or so more to get that after deductions… its not abotu being lazy but there wouldn’t be any point in working. The country would also be bankrupt as everyone would exploit it.
Therefore if Jobseekers Allowance is below the “poverty line” that is fine. As soon as you start working for your benefits you are a worker (even if you aren’t employed by the person you work for and exempt from National Minimum Wage under such terminology).. being paid below a “minimum level” (subsistence) becomes an issue.
The above figures show two different amounts for a minimum level…. the “poverty line” (lowest at £112) and Minimum Income Standard (highest at £145 – same as the 18-21 NMW rate for 30 hours). Which ever figure you use, the Training Allowance is much less than the “poverty line” and considerably less than the National Minimum Wage designed to protect people from working for unfair wages.
Link Summary
- Work for Your Benefit: providers to sell workfare victims to private businesses?
- John Leech MP opposes Work for your Benefit scheme
- Workfare: Work for Your Benefit Sanctions exposed
- Manchester Jobseekers: 40 hours week workfare for 6 months
- Workfare: Why MP's are ok with it
- Jobcentre fraudster steals £24,373 by Giro scam
14 Responses to “Work for Your Benefit is Slavery”
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Workfare is the most insidious piece of media propaganda I’ve come across in years. The whole notion of making people work for their benefit ticks all the right boxes for the Daily Mail set, but by treating it as workfare these ‘employers’ are able to treat people as nothing more than slaves because these slaves are not properly employed. After all if there were jobs available, why not just employ peopel and give them all the rights and a proper wage to go with it.
I was put on the two week gateway to work, then I got a week gap and then put straight onto the 13 week course doing admin and business at a GCSE lower level despite already holding IT and business studies A level and lots of work experience. It was the same old rubbish as the 2 week course, basically lessons for 5yr olds that seemed to get stretched out for 7hrs and little to no sign of job searching.
The “tutor” did butter up their placements though, real work experience he said, I think I shocked him and got everyone in the group thinking when I just said “so we will be working full time hours, for our current JSA not even a minimum wage and there is no guarantee that we will even get a permanent job there at the end”
Needless to say I have just come off JSA now after 2 days on the 13 week new deal, I can cover more ground myself without been held up in a classroom learning what you should wear for an interview or what are the pros and cons of been unemployed.
I remember once in the old Job Club the group was asked to write a list of positive sounding words. One the plus side, we were allowed proper pens (not Pauline’s pens though) and not crayons.
It’s all buzzwords and schemes with these sort these days. makes them feel they are doping something positive: action plans, flow charts, lists, key words, techniques, blah blah blah.
The thing that scares the hell out of me is the fact the slave has no rights. if you work fora company you can join aunion and have certain rights laid out underlegislation
The latest government “Building Bridges to work” report sounds like more of the same from the government with a few words about mental health put in at the start to counter some of their critics. There is no substance to this at all. The government are committed to push these measures through until the bitter end and then the Conservatives will carry on the bad work. If you ever watched the Dad’s Army programme on TV, there was a character whos’ catchphrase was “We are doomed” and for those who are sick/disabled/caring/jobless this is now the position. We have been looking over the news reports from the NYTimes on the implementation of the Workfare program in New York since 1996 and it makes for depressing reading. We intend to gather together the whole sorry tale from 1995-2010 because this is where the UK is heading and as you read the news articles from New York the similarities with UK policy are striking. Forget Wisconsin, New York is the real model. The intention in New York was to meet targets of 70% or more to remove people on Welfare onto Workfare and this included people on sickness benefits using a “Wellness” programme (sound familiar ?) of enforced treatment. (http://unfairworkfare.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/bloomberg-aims-to-move-many-infirm-welfare-recipients-into-work-force/) This news item was from 2003 so we are running a few years behind the US but the Conservatives will speed the reforms up considerably. If you wonder where savings are coming from, this is where they will start. There is so little public opposition to these reforms that no-one can stop them ! The Right Wing press have had a field day with all this and there will be more to come if the Conservatives win outright in May 2010. Our Unfairworkfare petition finished with 374 signatures out of 45 million voters in the UK. We submitted this petition as “Abolish Workfare Slavery” but had to alter the wording to get it accepted on 10 Downing St. All those people on benefits will end up on Workfare. This will happen !
Joanne
Hi Joanne
I am creating and shortly launching workfare.me (“Workfare & Me”) which will shortly be followed by another site which will be an informational website on the Work for Your Benefit scheme.
This will be a community website which will include a forum, links to relevant sites etc.
You are fully welcome to be involved (if you are interested) in helping to create a workfare community portal – where our sites can then be linked from for more in depth information.
I would also welcome for others to become involved.
.-= *** Last post: Dole queue is here to stay: MyGov will not replace signing on *** =-.
Hello,
Yes, we would be interested in the Workfare web sites and portal you are planning. Let us know what you have planned and we can arrange some kind of link up.
Joanne
Have any of you guys and gals thought about joining the facebook group
Stop A4e censoring the internet
On http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2010/ukpga_20100014_en_1
this hypocritical government is suggesting an ANTI SLAVERY DAY ACT 2010. I find it laughable that the government can put up something like this and still do what they are doing to many unemployed, ill and disabled people
Thanks for the new post idea!
There is no need for a law to create an “Anti-Slavery Day”… it would only be applicable if it was a bank holiday which it looks like it wont be. It also does take the piss… I also noted that slavery didnt include Workfare…
I stumbled across this at the tuv. a white paper opposing the governments green paper on welfare reform makes for interesting reading. I wonder what would happen if this was to be sentto every union office in the UK.
http://www.tuc.org.uk/welfare/tuc-15630-f0.pdf
I’ve been unemployed 12 months now and have been told I’ll soon be on flexible new deal with A4e.
I have been on new deal over the years before but always had unemployment benefit to look forward to including the £15/pw training allowance (which had stopped I believe).
The bit I cant take now is I am living with a new partner who is working and I hate having to be a burden on her, my N I contributions have run out while I have been sesperately seeking work. I now have the prospect of working for nothing, no benefits zilch.
What a sick life !!!
To say I’m pi*sed off is an understatement.
Well the short answer to your question is complain complain and complain especiallytoyour local mp, cab, places like this. You should also complain to the DWP and the Secretary of state for the dwp. Paper paer paer is th ekey they hate paperwork and if enough people cause a stink mud will stick. mention this site to people put this site in emails and any comments and replies. the more people we get the better