Work for Your Benefit: Work Placement or Job?
Post Categories: DWP • Welfare Reform • jobcentre Plus • uk government • unemployment • work for your benefit
Tags: work for your benefit, Work for Your Benefits
So, does the Government have a point that Work for Your Benefit pilot is a “work placement” and not a “job”? This technicality allows participants to not be paid the National Minimum Wage and to displaced other jobs. Flexible New Deal Scandal investigates…
Work for Your Benefit… is a job?
We will use outcome criteria for New Deal, Flexible New Deal and Work for Your Benefit scheme to determine this.
New Deal required the following criteria for providers to claim a sustainable job outcome:
- 16 hours a week or more
- Lasting 13 weeks (3 months)
Flexible New Deal required the following criteria for providers to get a job outcome:
- 16 hours a week or more
- Lasting 13 weeks (3 months) for a short job outcome
- Lasting 26 weeks (6 months) for a sustainable job outcome
Work for Your Benefit requires the following criteria for providers to get the 50% job outcome payment (WfYB Q&A: PQQ08):
- 16 hours a week or more
- Lasting 13 weeks (3 months)
So, Jobcentre Plus clearly see 16 hours a week for 13 weeks as a “job” outcome – defined under New Deal as “sustainable” and “short” (“job” outcome) under Flexible New Deal
Work for Your Benefit… is a work placement?
The National Council for Work Experience (NCWE) survey reveals that:
- 49% (approx half) offered less than 6 months work experience – with 27% (very approx a third) of that number offering work placements for only a maximum of 2 weeks
- 63% (approx two thirds) of placements are internships (paid)
- 35% (approx a third) of placements were school work experience and voluntary (unpaid) work placements – most placements under 3 months
- 74% (approx three quarters) paid students for placements and 51% (approx half) of such paid between £10,000 and £14,999
- 19% (approx one fifth) of work experience placements were to cover busy periods whereas only 5% of placements were taken on to promote the sector as a career
It is best to realise in this instance most Work Experience work placements are paid – such as internships etc.
Work for Your Benefit… is it lawful work?
No… the NCWE clearly shows that a half of all placements were for under 6 months – with a third of those placements for only 2 weeks. It also clearly shows that most work placements if not school work experience and in the voluntary sector, are paid work experience placements typically for graduates. It also states that only 5% of placements were designed for careers; with one fifth of placements just designed to cover busy seasonal periods. These figures clearly shows that work placements are a very temporary “unsustainable” option with the exception of paid internships – which are rather like an apprenticeship than untargeted placements designed just for “experience of work”. Work for Your Benefit is designed for the latter and not on-the-job training for a career.
Government has clearly defined that 16 hours work for 13 weeks or more is a job and also you can’t do 16 hours or more activity a week without being classified as not Available for Work (AfW) therefore it is impossible to attempt to justify that 30 hours work for 26 weeks is NOT a job.
Can anyone argue against my points raised here?
10 Responses to “Work for Your Benefit: Work Placement or Job?”
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when on new deal i turned around and said to the shop manager “i want a job” reply you’ve got one.
a job is a job,another worrying issue is that participants because of their vulnerable position will be forced against there will to work irregular hours’ those vacancies that they cannot fill and have to rely on agency staff and holiday cover for permanent staff as this causes more workload as such a bulling situation arises.
workfare will do nothing for joblessness,new deal has proven this even when so called “placements” have been participated on,new questions arise as to “volunteering” how did you survive,the truth being i was really receiving the dole,forced into unsuitable unrelated to past roles’ raised more questions the truth being i was forced to do it even though i was also forced to wear a “volunteers” badge,workfare will undermine in the workplace also those “customers”,it is pointless trying to brand someone as a troublemaker for speaking out concern’s raised about these proposals,reality a sub class workforce with no protection.
Can FND participants arrange their own placement instead of leaving it to the provider?
There’s no telling where you could end up if you leave everything to them rather than trying to make the best of a bad job by taking a more active role!
What’s to stop you getting a placement on a radio/TV station for 4 weeks instead of staking shelves at your local Tesco.
My New Deal provider was so crap (YMCA Training) I had to use my initiative of visiting every half-decent admin or retail business within 2 miles of Ipswich town centre that I thought might do work placements.
They had a policy that everyone had to start in the “YMCA” charity shop until they found people a placement. Reality was people stayed there for 13 weeks… as nothing was done. I found this out and decided I would have to find my own placement. Took me one and a half days – most were like “No, Sorry we dont…”, others I had to explain it to a manager in detail who then decided they dont. free labour ffs and I am sticking this much effort in! wtf?!?! The ironic thing was after having a few offers, and choosing one, literally the first offer (others called me with an offer later on) … going to London Road YMCA Training Detention Centre and trying to find someone on the work placements team (several people, neither worked fulltime, or was ever available in the centre) to suggest it too… this wasn’t before threats of dismissals, sanctions and being sent back to Jobcentre Plus for being AWOL from the YMCA shop and the detention centre (those without a placement had to attend there for temporary doing nothing if not staying at the charity shop – I assume pending “exiting”)
Anyway, I got a placement… signed off later and received a job at the place… although temporary. It is vital that you target a placement if you really want to get something out of it (be it real experience, and/or a potential job at the end of it).
In theory, it is your right to choose a placement. You have to do 4 weeks mandatory… thats clean cut. As long as you do such 4 weeks in the 12 months thats not a problem. You, however, have no enforcement powers… they hold the discretion. You need to make it clear that you are willing to do a placement for that length and that your choice is solely to better improve your job prospects – be it for the opportunity for employment afterwards or a great environment you can learn a lot or gain good experience in.
Any disagreement of this at an appointment… stick it in writing… send it recorded delivery to your advisor (unlikely to personally sign it but there is no reason an administrator wouldn’t pass the letter on – and if they don’t its their fault – as the letter is addressed and therefore targetted).
Most providers probably will give you the choice/opportunity to find a placement yourself. Firstly, it saves them the work. If you are happy with the placement (or think you are) they are more likely to get a job outcome bonus… and your adviser is likely to be getting a bonus themselves for meeting targets..
I don’t blame reputable companies for not offering “work placements”. Would you want to be known as a company that profits from slave labour?
re: YMCA Training. I think I would have religious objections to working for nothing for a religious organisation.
Thanks for your advice, and sharing your placement experience, FND. Definitely gave me a few tips.
Michael too raises a good point about many reputable companies not wanting to get involved in taking people on unpaid placement. Ironically if they at least paid the jobseeker lunch and travel expenses, you would probably get more reputable companies coming forward to offer a placement, and the jobseeker doing the placement would be a bit happier, know I would.
The workplacement would I be right in thinking if a chaity was setup say. Scrap JSA
Does that mean I coul spend upto a month campaigning against The dwp and the crap they are shoveling
CSV Media gives travel reimbursements for volunteers if I recall correctly (wont be applicable on Government schemes where provider/Jobcentre Plus will reimburse instead). They also pay for your lunch if you are volunteering all day.
So perhaps its something the business could offer instead? I predict roughly £8 maxmimum a day for most people… much cheaper then paying for NMW.
But the problem is its not a volunteer-for-profit scheme… loophole around the NMW… its a Government enforced scheme where jobseekers have to take part. This means £40 per week expenditure per person is £40 a week too much.
.-= *** Last post: Jobseekers’ Work Experience: a bad deal *** =-.
What with talk of introducing means tested child benefit, freezing public sector pay and increasing income tax over the next 3 years to try and reduce the huge public sector debt. I think the whole idea of paying private sector providers to run workfare looks less and less viable.
Yes it doees look like it is becoming more unafordable, but the question you gotta ask is will it be or will it be an excuse for the government to step up it’s witch hunt or re-evaluate the use of these third party companies.
I QUITE honestly wouldn’t like to bet on which one it will be but im sure the unemployed people of britain will not like it.
In the mean time I encourage more and more people to use the rsources being made and to make sur ethey are getting travel, costs for haircuts, mnew suits whatever you can get your hands on.
If these suppliers start to leak money hand over fistthey will wantto renegotiate or walk away.
TUC PAPER
One of the strongest reasons for opposing this proposal is that workfare is an ineffective
employment policy. A comparative review of workfare programmes in the U.S. Canada, and
Australia, published this year by DWP, concluded that subsidised transitional job schemes
paying a wage were more effective and that:
• There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work
• The requirement to work for benefit can limit job search activity
• Is least effective for those with multiple barriers to work
• Workfare is particularly ineffective where unemployment is high.
The report concluded that “there is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of
finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job
search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers.”8
Furthermore, there is no good evidence that most unemployed people are avoiding work. All
the evidence we have is that unemployed people desperately want jobs – when a programme
seems to have a good chance of getting people into decent jobs it is immediately swamped by
unemployed people desperate to get a place.
Workfare is not only inefficient; it is unfair too, because:
• It exploits the unemployed people forced to take part. If a job is worth doing it is worth
being paid the rate for that job. Unemployed people on workfare schemes would be paid
less than half the national minimum wage and the evidence does not show that workfare
improves their chances of getting real jobs. It is important to remember that unemployed
people are the victims in this story, not the villains.
• It is unfair to workers who would otherwise be employed at the rate for the job to do the
work done by workfare conscripts. It therefore acts to hold down the wages and reduce the
employment opportunities of all workers, and has its worst effect at the bottom end of the
labour market, which is where free workers are most likely to find themselves in
competition with workfare workers. As the Nobel prize winning economist Robert Solow
pointed out in a famous lecture, “the burden of adjusting to any genuine replacement of
welfare by work will fall primarily on low-wage workers, especially those virtuous ones who
have been employed all along. The burden will take the form of lower earnings and higher
unemployment, in proportions that are impossible to guess in advance.”9
• When workfare workers are offered to for-profit businesses other firms that do not use
unpaid subsidised labour are at an unfair disadvantage – workfare is a threat to good
employers, as well as to workers with jobs and unemployed workers.
The Green Paper indicates that around 2% of those on JSA become long term claimants (over
24 Months). It is reasonable to expect that this proportion may rise in the different labour
market conditions now forecast. With higher numbers in the JSA claimant count, this proposal
implies a work for benefit scheme involving over thirty thousand people.
It is very likely that a high proportion of those forced on to workfare will be disabled and
other disadvantaged people, who will be more likely than non-disabled people to reach the end
of the flexible New Deal without having obtained a job; workfare, in addition to all its other
drawbacks, thus has the potential to be discriminatory in its impact.
It is an extreme form of exploitation to require someone to work without pay and the TUC is
fundamentally opposed to compulsory unpaid work experience for extended periods in jobs
that would otherwise be taken by workers paid the rate for the job. This would exploit
8
claimants, unfairly provide free labour to certain companies and undercut the pay and conditions of existing workers.