IDS was incredulous at claims that working without recompense from the employer was equivalent to slave labour: “She was paid jobseeker’s allowance by the taxpayer to do this.” Actually, if you want to get all technical about it, and rather unhiply insist on words being taken to mean what they actually mean, jobseeker’s allowance is an allowance paid to people in the process of seeking a job (as Reilly was).
The appropriate remuneration for people who are working in Poundland is a wage paid not by the taxpayer but by Poundland. Poundland gets the benefit of Reilly’s labour, after all. The taxpayer gets … nothing.
I don’t often find accord over at CiF but this is precisely right. IDS is wrong. And working at Poundland for JSA is slave labour. That is what enforced servitude is, after all.
Incidentally, my rather unpleasant stint at Sainsbury’s stacking shelves three nights a week will never find itself on my CV. It was necessary, that is all. It was also the most deeply unpleasant, humiliating, unedifying and dreadful work I have ever had the misfortune to undertake. And that is quite apart from the incompetent target setting that was impossible to meet, failing as it did to recognise that people vary in their physical capabilities and unlike the computerised system that set them, are not robots. Had I been forced to do this as “work experience” given that I already have work experience spanning thirty years, what precisely would I have gained that would have been useful to my future employment? Zilch. The employer would have gained my labour for nothing.
Sure, there are some folk who would benefit from workplace experience and there may well be a place for such a scheme in the toolkit available to those helping such people. But the work should always be relevant, useful to their CV and importantly, paid by the employer at the going rate and the experience actually beneficial in the job hunting process as opposed to hindering it. The current arrangement quite rightly criticised by the court of appeal does not. It is slave labour by any other name.
I struggle to make sense of the BBC’s reporting of this case but I think the judgement related to the advice given to the claimant i.e. that the work experience was voluntary but she had been led to believe it was compulsory.
The work might be ‘beneath her’ but another response could be to show them that you are ‘the best damn shelf-stacker’ they ever had. The first response might be thought by others to show that you are not even fit to be a shelf-stacker whilst the second might just get you on the fast track to retail management. Retailing has got to be the most class divided occupation, half the staff on buttons and the other half on bonuses.
Who says that Poundland benefits from this scheme? Sounds more like they get people who don’t want to be there and the extra supervision workload that that might entail. The taxpayer might just get ‘free’ training for the unemployed. The unemployed gets ‘work experience’ and an ‘ear to the ground’ in the workplace or being fancy ‘a networking experience’.
There are probably better ways to do these things but I don’t see much else on offer. I fancy bringing in payments for honours, not in cash but in job creation, ten gets you a CBE a thousand a ‘K’!
The job centre people have a habit of talking bollocks to people claiming, strongly implying that things are not voluntary when they are. Not exactly lying, but just as bad really.
They do the same thing with that new computer system of theirs. Imply that you’d lose your benefits if you don’t sign up to it and give over all your details to God know who.
The benefits system does need sorting, but for christ sake, it’s like they picked the worse way to do it so it would be doomed to fail 🙄
We are talking about the political voluntary here – where in effect. it is not really voluntary at all. if you stand to lose the benefit if you fail to comply, then it isn’t really voluntary at all.
We are talking about the political voluntary here – where in effect. it is not really voluntary at all. if you stand to lose the benefit if you fail to comply, then it isn’t really voluntary at all
Yes, the same as Labour’s “voluntary” ID Card. It was voluntary unless you wanted a passport.
Your comments about retail tend to fit my experience. The targets we were set were impossible to achieve as they bore no resemblance whatsoever to the reality faced by the stacker – not least, you couldn’t achieve the target and effectively rotate stock. And, they failed to take into account varying levels of fitness.
Any attempt to point this out was simply blanked. Computer says, being the usual response.
“Who says that Poundland benefits from this scheme? Sounds more like they get people who don’t want to be there and the extra supervision workload that that might entail. “
Quite! I’ve always thought this must be a disadvantage for them!
Jim is stretching a point here. Firstly, this role requires very little in the way of training and supervision. I had one shift and part of that I was alone while the trainer (another shelf stacker) took a break. Secondly, the supervisor is on duty anyway, so there is no extra cost. The reality is, that after a shift or two at the most, the new trainee is on their own working. Any supervision is likely to be minimal.
Given that the store’s costs are already fixed, what Poundland was getting was their shelves stacked by people they didn’t have to pay. So, yeah, they were getting a benefit courtesy of the UK taxpayer. That is not what I expect to pay taxes for.
Who says that Poundland benefits from this scheme?
Perhaps the fact that they are cutting the hours of their permanent staff, the fact that they can say that they have “no vacancies” but still find space for workfare shelf stackers, the fact that they continue to take on workfare staff. Businesses aren’t charities and do not take on workfare “trainees” for the good of society.
“working at Poundland for JSA is slave labour. That is what enforced servitude is, after all.”
Not it is not. Even if one ignores the fact they are getting paid their JSA, there’s no coercion to claim JSA. It may or may not be decent, moral, or various other things, but it is not slavery.
As for the work experience arrangement, all the court said was that IDS had overreached his powers because he should have put more detail of the schemes before parliament. The court did not rule against the principle of requiring benefit claimants to engage in ‘unpaid’ work activity.
More generally, I doubt such work experience would be of any use to you LR, given your experience, but then it’s not really targeted at you. The programme is aimed primarily at younger workers, who don’t have any experience. And, given that the most common complaint amongst employers is that young people lack the softer skills – from people skills to even being able to get up on time – it is an opportunity for them to get something on their CVs that shows that they are reliable, trustworthy, etc.
XX More generally, I doubt such work experience would be of any use to you LR, given your experience, but then it’s not really targeted at you. The programme is aimed primarily at younger workers, who don’t have any experience. XX
Has any one bothered telling the imbicilic morons at the Job center this piece of news?
They are public sector workers, conditioned to a ‘one size fits all’ mentality, with their judgement bred out of them.
They tried it on me at age 63, when I asked if I really needed to sign on once a fortnight, to make sure of my pension @ 65, the bastards!
It’s pretty clearly set out. There are other schemes for other groups, such as the Community Action Programme which the lorry driver in the recent case had been directed towards. However, Work Experience is explicitly targeted at 16-24 year olds.
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/welfare-reform/get-britain-working/#experience
“Work Experience helps young people gain the experience they need to secure a job before they become eligible for the Work Programme. For some young people a lack of understanding of the world of work or simply not being given a chance to prove themselves can prevent them from finding a job. We work with employers to offer 16–24 year old jobseekers the opportunity to overcome these barriers through offering them a Work Experience placement lasting two to eight weeks.”
As I mentioned above – it may well be useful for some claimants. However, it would need to be of benefit to the individual, so tailored to their needs – not much point if they worked through university, for example as they will have developed the requisite skills that menial work may provide – and the employer must pay the going rate.
XX “Work Experience helps young people gain the experience they need to secure a job before they become eligible for the Work Programme.XX
Aye, right! Because ALL those 14 year olds that went down the mines, into the mills, or into the ship-yards, or where ever, (To say nothing of Flanders and Ypres!) in the last 100 years or a bit more, were SOOOO totaly experienced in the work beforehand,….. right?
Most of your points were covered in the OP. But, to reiterate; there is nothing wrong with providing an opportunity for job seekers to gain useful skills that will help their search. However, that experience needs to be relevant. If it’s soft skills you want, forget shelf stacking. You can spend a whole shift in a store full of people and have little or no interaction with them. You are far too busy trying to meet those computerised targets.
Secondly, if people are to be doing a job of work, then they should be paid the going rate by the employer. That is the underpinning principle of commerce after all.
Well, no, of course not. There’s always sleeping on the streets as an alternative… Coercion comes in many forms. I claimed JSA because I was at the end of my limit having tried everything else. No one coerced me into claiming it, but circumstance did. The taxes I pay into the system are there to provide a safety net for people who go through what I went through. I expect them to keep their end of the bargain – seek work. I do not expect them to do work for it that should otherwise be paid at the going rate by an employer.
Replying to Lerxst (someting WORNG with computer-interface)
What utter shite!
that young people lack the softer skills such as?
OH, arse-licking, bending over wehn required, singing the comany hymn, being FORCED INTO SLAVERY.
At Sainsburys, we had enforced jollity leading up to Christmas 2011. Went down like a bowl of cold sick
I managed three weeks at my local Bejam’s (yes, I’m dating myself) when I left school. It taught me I really preferred working on my own. I’ve been a contractor or freelancer almost continuously ever since.
(Also, I’ve never understood why we even *have* shelf-stackers in supermarkets given that the job could trivially be performed by a machine. Even 20 years ago, I could see that.)
My experience suggests that supermarkets believe that they are.
You may think it’s shite, but unfortunately plenty of employers clearly believe it, and they’re the ones doing the recruiting.
For example:
“Even at a time of record youth unemployment, firms lack confidence in our education system’s ability to deliver basic literacy and numeracy skills. But employers also want to see young people with a strong worth ethic, and those ‘softer’ skills like timekeeping, and communication, which are fundamental in the work environment.”
http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/news/management/1663138/smes-suffer-skills-shortage.thtml
“Low business confidence is largely the result of poor levels of soft skills in school leavers. This often includes poor levels of literacy, punctuality and ability to concentrate.”
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmeduc/141/141we20.htm
“A local report from the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce last year surveyed 400 employers and found that school-leavers often lack essential “soft skills” such as teamwork, punctuality, willingness to work and ability to work on their own initiative.”
http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Soft-skills-vital/story-16152358-detail/story.html#axzz2LMiFLKZ2
Or then there’s this study:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18162433
Eight weeks shelf stacking won’t solve these fundamental problems, though. That’s a whole bigger issue. If someone is illiterate or innumerate, workplace experience won’t even scratch the surface.
On illiteracy or innumeracy I agree, but on the other skills mentioned, such as punctuality and just getting into the habit of getting up at a set time, I’m less convinced.
But also, a lot of this is just about signalling. Employers are wary about employing young people because they’ve been burnt with past employees (plus the minimum wage means they’re less likely to take a chance when there are more experienced alternatives available).
Work experience gives those young people who are willing to work, turn up on time, etc the opportunity to get some evidence on their CV. It’s not necessarily about developing new skills as much as giving people the opportunity to demonstrate their reliability, and indeed, their willingness to work hard at something that might not be their long-term ambition, but which they are capable of seeing as a stepping stone.
It’s easy to be dismissive of some of the schemes, but work experience – any work experience – plays an important part in recruitment. It’s only one example, but take this report from 2011 which found that employers put having “any full-time work experience” ahead of qualifications when recruiting to entry-level positions:
http://newsroom.axa.co.uk/media-releases/2011/work-experience-%E2%80%98worth-the-equivalent-of-two-a-levels%E2%80%99,-say-employers/
Even if one ignores the fact they are getting paid their JSA, there’s no coercion to claim JSA
Unless you want to ward off starvation by steal food from bins or going to soup kitchens, it is compulsory. And the JSA is not pay. It is a subsistence payment to keep you alive while you search for work. It is not pay for 30 hours of labour a week. That requires real pay at at least the minimum wage.
Considering that JSA does not pay enough for someone to feed themselves adequately, it is certainly not enough for someone expected to do 30 hours of reasonably strenuous activity. Labour requires extra calories, even if pontificating from a keyboard requires none.
The point is it’s not slavery. Unless we happen to come into inherited wealth, we all have to find a means of funding living. if you’re going to say that working for JSA is slavery, then you might as well say the same about anyone doing any low paid job they don’t like, just to pay the bills.
You can argue perfectly legitimately about whether the level of JSA is sufficient, whether or not it is moral to require people to work for it, or indeed, whether it is counterproductive – personally, I would have a great deal of sympathy with those suggesting it merely results in claimants being substituted for other workers. However, describing the result as slavery is just unhelpful hyperbole, and devalues the term. It’s like a leftwinger claiming that anyone to the right of Ken Livingstone is a fascist.
Well, no, actually. If you force someone to work for you, then you enslave them. It’s not hyperbole, its an accurate description and needs to be made repeatedly to drive the point home. The amount of remuneration is moot – be it nothing or a decent wage. If coercion is involved, it is wrong. There are no shades of grey. When taking on a paid job, there is always the option of resigning and taking another one – quite apart from the employer paying the going rate for the work. A decent shelf-stacker who doesn’t like Poundland can tout their expertise to Tesco or Sainsbury’s, for example. The difference between the two situations is a contract of employment and a market in their labour.
No-one from the state is coming along and ‘forcing’ anyone to work, whether at gunpoint or otherwise. It is a choice, admittedly probably driven by circumstance, to claim JSA rather than face the alternative. But in exactly the same way if your skill set, combined with local labour market prospects, means that you face a choice of starvation or cleaning toilets, it doesn’t make the latter slave labour.
And with JSA, if you don’t like it, you can walk away. No-one from JCP is going to come running after you saying you must claim JSA.
Anyway, I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on that, but I am curious on a related matter. Part of the current JSA deal – the “Jobseeker agreement” – is that the jobseeker will do their best to improve their chances of getting a job. The longer someone is unemployed, the more likely that is going to include mandatory training of some kind.
Now, apologies if I’ve misunderstood but I think you’ve said elsewhere in this thread that you see your taxes as providing a safety net and all you expect from JSA claimants is that they seek work. But for how long? At what point, if ever, do you think more active intervention is justified? For example, if someone has been on JSA for 5 years, and has met the criteria of trawling the vacancies, submitting applications, etc but is either applying for the wrong jobs or is genuinely unemployable, at what point do you step in? Or do you just keep paying regardless?
For example, if someone has been on JSA for 5 years, and has met the criteria of trawling the vacancies, submitting applications, etc but is either applying for the wrong jobs or is genuinely unemployable, at what point do you step in? Or do you just keep paying regardless?
According to the ONS there are only 5,000 people who have been drawing JSA for more than 5 years. You wouldn’t think that from all of the lies in the right wing tabloids about “benefit dependency”.
In fact, the problem we have isn’t unemployment as such but under-employment, with people on zero hours contracts, who are technically in employment but who make so little money that they must claim benefits to survive. Of course this is rarely reported as the right wants to promulgate the lie that poverty is caused by idleness. In this country, it is caused by work not paying enough money to keep an adult alive.
Of course if someone is long term unemployed, then intervention is reasonable, provided that it is real help and not punishment in the guise of help, as workfare so often turns out to be.
The benefit dependency issue goes way beyond JSA. It’s far more about the 2.5 million people on IB/ESA, though that’s a completely different debate.
Zero hours contracts? Well, to put them in perspective, as of last year, there were 161,000 people on zero hours contracts. Given there are 29.73 million people in work, that’s 0.5% of all people in employment.
http://www.jobsite.co.uk/worklife/zero-hour-contracts-what-are-they-sign-up-10649/
More generally, the majority of people working part-time, do so because they don’t want a full-time job.
Bottom right of table 3 here gives reasons for pt working:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_297429.pdf
To be fair, other benefits and taxation is a whole other conversation.
I agree we have probably flogged the slavery thing to death.
On your second point the short (and possibly trite) answer is; as long as is necessary. Providing the claimant is keeping up their end of the bargain, that’s fine by me (and, yes, it can take years – it took me two of ’em from start to finish, although I only claimed JSA for around three months). I have no problem with intervention if it is relevant and helpful to the claimant. Nor do I have a problem with sanctions if the claimant is taking the piss.
The point being; any help should be relevant to the individual’s needs, not merely box ticking – shelf stacking because it is easy even if it is going to serve no useful purpose to a claimant who already has demonstrated the ability to get to work on time, follow instructions and interact with customers.
Secondly, and the point that really aggravates me about this scheme; they should be paid by the employer at the going rate for the work they do. This should be a non-negotiable issue. We don’t pay taxes to subsidise the shareholders’ divvies of multi-million pound businesses and we shouldn’t be expecting the most vulnerable people in our society to do so either.
However, describing the result as slavery is just unhelpful hyperbole, and devalues the term. It’s like a leftwinger claiming that anyone to the right of Ken Livingstone is a fascist
I never said that it was “slavery” and I am not interested in sterile debates about semantics. I am interested in the REALITY that workfare destroys jobs, provides no real work experience and is a cynical means of temporarily reducing the unemployment totals.
If workfare was paid at a living wage, if it provided genuine work experience with demonstrable marketable experience then I would not object to its being compulsory. However it still needs to be administered reasonably. That means not threatening people already doing useful work experience elsewhere as was the case recently ruled on.
My original response was to our host, who does describe it as slavery, and my point was that it isn’t.
As for the rest, I suspect you’re right that people on work experience do, in some cases, substitute for paid labour, though as they’re only around for 2-8 weeks, it’s likely to be at the margins – they’ll be no substitute for permanent, trained staff.
Whether or not the schemes provide experience that helps people get into work is an empirical issue. Initial – very preliminary – evidence suggests at least some marginal impact (though granted the source might be biased!).
Work experience “decreased the likelihood of claiming benefit by 6 percentage points after 21 weeks following starting on placements” and “also increased the likelihood of being in employment by nearly 8 percentage points after 21 weeks following starting on placements”.
http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/adhoc_analysis/2012/early_impacts_of_work_experience.pdf
Whether such improvements, even if real, justify the cost of the scheme is, of course, another issue.
As for the rest, I suspect you’re right that people on work experience do, in some cases, substitute for paid labour, though as they’re only around for 2-8 weeks, it’s likely to be at the margins – they’ll be no substitute for permanent, trained staff
The point is that the kind of work reserved for workfare placements is menial low-skilled work that requires minimal training. Having to replace workfare staff every few weeks is no problem for the employer. It is probably an advantage.
XX they’ll be no substitute for permanent, trained staffXX
Ach! Come ON!
How much “Training”, or “maths skills” do they need to realise “OooooK Shelf is now full….must stop filling”???
Not much, but some people can still be useless.
Remember the BBC documentary on what happened when local employers gave their immigrant staff time off and trials to British unemployed? Leaving aside the people who didn’t even turn up on the first day, there were a couple who were allocated to a potato-packing plant, and made such a pig’s ear of it, their work had to be redone… and that was just packing potatoes.
Aside from that, bringing anyone new in there’s going to be admin (and you’re dealing with the state here so you know what the paperwork’s going to be like), induction, the general chore of showing them around, etc. And once you’ve gone through all that, they’re off and you’ve got to do it all again.
Anyway, given it’s supposedly free labour that firms should be rushing to dump their permanent recruitment for, the numbers involved are relatively small. Less than 100,000 people have gone onto spells on Work Experience between January 2011 and November 2012, or under 5,000 per month on average.
Even if you assume they all spend the full 8 weeks with an employer, you’re only talking around 10,000 in post any point in time. That’s out of almost 30 million people in work and compared to an increase of 584,000 in employment over the past year.
There’s a significant flaw in your argument regarding incidental costs to the employer. Businesses cheerfully fork out over and above to hire temps for short term contracts of a few days or weeks to cover staff shortages or increased demand. Not only are they happy to absorb these costs (that incur anyway) but will pay extra for the agency.
Having people provided for them that they don’t have to pay must be manna from heaven. So, we have a situation whereby the claimant on £64 per week and the taxpayer are both subsidising million pound businesses. In what crazy mixed-up parallel universe is this even close to moral? No one here seems to fussed about their taxes being used in this manner. I am frankly incandescent.
On the first point, fair comment. Though away from my speculation on employer motivation, the fact stands that the numbers involved in any job substitution are small. Large numbers of people are not having their jobs destroyed, which was more Stephen’s point (though if all it does in the long-term is substitution, the scheme would still be worthless).
On the second, given the rest of the things the State wastes my taxes on, this comes way down the list. Heck, I’m no fan of subsidising industry, but if it has to, it makes a change for government to be subsidising profitable, productive ones rather than just pissing the money away trying to prop up lame ducks, or erecting bloody windfarms everywhere.
XX Remember the BBC documentary on what happened when local employers gave their immigrant staff time off and trials to British unemployed? XX
No. Point one, I am not in the U.K. Point two, I have not had a T.V set for over twenty five years.
I’m surprised local councils aren’t more interested in hiring jobseekers for work experience. It seems a much more relevant place considering the UK’s service-heavy economy.
1. Local councils offer a huge variety of jobs, from basic clerical all the way to IT administration, along with lots of general administration / management options. This is what you’d expect from any major corporation, including the lousy pay and job insecurity (you are, after all, going to be doing this for peanuts, with all the motivation that entails, not to mention the fact that you can be let go on a whim).
2. Such environments are also a rich source of petty politics, networking opportunities and the like. You’ll get plenty of that in corporate environments too, including the backstabbing, credit-stealing and more.
3. There are plenty of public-facing jobs too, so you get all the dubious joys of dealing with them if you wish. That includes the drunks, the single mums with their spoiled, screaming, brats; those with an overinflated sense of entitlement, and all the rest. Although the genuinely nice people make for a welcome break, given that council offices aren’t usually places people *want* to go, it’s unlikely you’ll see many of those.
So, basically, pretty much any experience someone looking for employment in the UK’s service industries would require is all there, readily available, in your local and regional councils. No need for Poundland and their ilk at all.
If that doesn’t turn you into a surly, coffee-drinking, clock-watching drone, you’re probably too thick to work in any of the UK’s disservice industries. In which case, a career in either middle-management or politics awaits.
XX I’m surprised local councils aren’t more interested in hiring jobseekers for work experience.XX
We have similar here. “€1 jobs” they are called. You get €1,50 per hour (Yes, the logic defeats me too. 🙂 )and you work 7,5 hours per day.
The BIG difference is, it can ONLY be “Council” (Or other “Government” department), OR “Gemeindenützlich”, which is things “usefull to the community.”
Red cross, chartiy’s and that kind of thing.
THAT I do not mind. Having people on “Government” (OUR) money working for private firms, I DO object to.
Given the whiny little cow is now working at a Morrisons apparently, maybe the stint in Poundland helped her get a job after all.
The whole episode stank of a middle class graduate thinking she was above having to stack shelves with the plebs in Poundland and should be allowed to ponce around in an Art Gallery or Museum drinking coffee and reading the Guardian instead.
Given that she was planning a career in museums, her placement seems perfectly reasonable. And she had managed to sort it without the help of the JC, which suggests a degree of self motivation.
That she has subsequently taken a paid job in Morrison’s also suggests a degree of self motivation. I fully support her challenge and am pleased to see the government get a bloody nose. Maybe those who sneer at people on JSA and are cheer-leading for them to be co-opted into enforced servitude might want to try living on £64 a week and be expected to do full time work for the privilege. Jobseekers claiming JSA are not your (or anyone else’s) personal slaves to be used to do menial work for nothing.
Try walking a mile in my shoes…
try living on £64 a week and be expected to do full time work for the privilege.
Yep that nails it.
What fun there could be in any employer using such comments as evidence that a pay cut to £64 a week… with immediate effect… would be perfectly acceptable and meet with no resistance whatsoever from the commentor.
Be careful what you wish for…and especially of what you wish for others. 😐
She was happy to be given £64/week and work in an Art Gallery or Museum. Was that not slave labour too? Or does the slave labour shtick only kick in when the work isn’t to your liking?
The amount of JSA is irrelevant. It may indeed be a pittance and insufficient to live on, I’m not going to argue one way or the other. Would it still be slavery if JSA was £200/week? If she had said ‘I’m not working for my JSA, period, its slavery’ that would at least have had some logical and moral sense to it. But that wasn’t her argument. She didn’t mind working for the JSA, just not work that wasn’t to her liking. Ergo she hasn’t got a moral leg to stand on IMO. Slavery is slavery, not relative to what one person likes to do and another dislikes. To your average council house dwelling teenage girl the idea of working in Poundland would be less like slavery than working in some poncy Art Gallery where they all talk La-Di-Da and discuss the latest Polly Toynbee article in the Guardian about how evil the Tories are. So presumably you want the DSS to have to work out which jobs would be ‘slavery’ to which Jobseekers and allocate accordingly? Council estate chavs get Poundland and Primark, and middle class graduates get the local museum or organic farm shop?
A very Victorian class based attitude indeed.
XX If she had said ‘I’m not working for my JSA, period, its slavery’ that would at least have had some logical and moral sense to it. But that wasn’t her argument. She didn’t mind working for the JSA, just not work that wasn’t to her liking. Ergo she hasn’t got a moral leg to stand on IMO.X
Then tell the previous …..how many Dictatorships….. that their ever increasing preasure to get “degrees” or “Higher education”, and the BENEFITS this degrees brought, were worth the effort. And we are not yet discussing the LOWERING of the value of degrees, because every imbecile can get one.
If it ain’t to your liking, then it’s coercion, so yes, then it become slave labour. The JSA rules allow individuals to do voluntary work if it is useful to them. In this case, she believed that it was.
The £64 per week is relevant and your decision to gainsay it doesn’t change that. Try living off that and doing 35 hours a week in a physically demanding job and then get back to me.
Your ugly inverse snobbery regarding this woman’s preferred options isn’t really worthy of further comment other than to point it out – much as Stephen has below.
“Or does the slave labour shtick only kick in when the work isn’t to your liking?
Slaves must be happy in their servitude and…paid or unpaid…humans don’t ever take kindly to being dictated to and they really don’t like being threatened.
Exactly what ‘servitude’ is she in then? For all of her 23 years she has put nothing in to society and taken loads out. From the NHS that oversaw her birth, to the free education from age 5 to 18, and subsidised further education thereafter, to all the child benefit (and possibly Child Tax credits too) that she has attracted, the State (ie the rest of us poor benighted taxpayers) has provided for her every need. And the first time we ask for a tiny something (a few weeks work) in return she gets on her high horse and screams ‘Slavery!!!’.
How about what I (and millions like me) have to do? Paying over thousands of pounds in tax out of our hard earned income, with no ‘rights’ to say ‘No, I’d rather not do this actually’, unless we fancy a few years in jail for tax evasion. Working for approximately 5 months of the year for nothing, all to keep ungrateful little cows like this happy. Now that IS slavery.
Oh, good grief! Over the next twenty or thirty years, she will do as the rest of us have done – pay it all back and more. That’s how it works.
Enforced servitude is slavery and it is always in every circumstance wrong. We rightly outlawed it 200 years ago.
And no, you are not working to keep “this ungrateful cow” happy. She is paying tax just as you are, so please spare us the snobbery and bollocks.
And, to remind you and everyone else who thinks that JSA claimants should be slaving on your behalf for the pittance they are claiming – their “work” in exchange for JSA is looking for a job, not doing menial work for the benefit of an employer who is paying fuck-all for the privilege or to satisfy your petty spite, because childish and petty spite, frankly is what I am seeing here. The only one coming out of it badly is you, not her. She, after all, took on hmg and won. What have you done?
It’s at times like this, when reading the nasty, misanthropic self-centred and spiteful comments from my so-called fellow travellers, that I realise that the leftists sometimes have a point about libertarians and I cannot in all conscience defend them. There’s a case to be made about our tax and benefits system, but you are not making it, you are just confirming the anti-libertarian stereotype.
“Enforced servitude is slavery and it is always in every circumstance wrong. We rightly outlawed it 200 years ago.”
OK, how do I get out of having to work for the State for 5 months of the year then? Or is only people who are in receipt of other people’s money who can claim ‘slavery’? Why can’t I get the courts to uphold my desire not to be forced to work (by law) for free for other people?
OK, how do I get out of having to work for the State for 5 months of the year then?
Fuck off to Somalia? I hear the tax regime there is pretty light.
Absolutely. And the whiny little cow didn’t have to claim JSA. So if my freedom to f*ck off to Somalia means my being forced to pay taxes is not slavery, then her being forced to do work for her JSA isn’t either, as she is free not to claim it.
Thank you, you just made my point for me.
I never mentioned slavery you pedantic little gobshite. The point about workfare that useful idiots like you seem unable to grasp is that it destroys jobs by giving feckless employers like Poundland access to free labour. Keep licking the boot that kicks you. Moron.
Okay, we get it, you don’t like paying taxes. Welcome to the club, neither does anyone else. It is not, however slavery. You work for whoever pays you for your labour – an arrangement you have entered into voluntarily for an agreed fee. The state no more enslaves you than the mugger who takes your wallet at knife-point.
Yours, of course, is a nice problem to have. If you pay taxes, you have an income, so can afford to sneer down your nose from your high horse at the less fortunate who is struggling to get by on £64 a week.
Having been in that position, and having been sneered at by folk sharing your lofty perch, I can assure you that my sympathy for your whines about the tax you pay is in very short supply. The dividing line between where you are now and where I found myself three years ago is not only a fine one, it is very fragile. Going from £60k per annum to nothing suddenly with no advance notice is a shock to the system as is facing off insolvency. Everyone I met who was likewise claiming JSA was in a similar situation and wanted to get back into work as soon as possible. I’m not going to apologise for claiming a fraction of the money I have paid in to help me survive those few months.
As I said earlier, you try walking a mile in my shoes before complaining about people scrounging your taxes, because most of them don’t and don’t want to be taking it in the first place.
I never said she was a scrounger. Not once. I merely took umbrage at your agreeing that being forced to work for 6 weeks as part of the conditions for receiving JSA is slavery. If my being forced to pay taxes merely for earning enough money to live on is not slavery, neither is being forced to do a few weeks unpaid work for JSA. In both cases there is an alternative, Somalia apparently in my case, or getting a job/emigrating in her case. Slavery, in case you haven’t noticed, doesn’t allow the slave to leave.
Pretending that a few weeks work in Poundland is akin to millions of forced labourers working for years until they drop dead in Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Gulag, demeans the memory of those who actually have been enslaved. Whether or not you agree that JSA claimants should or should not be forced to do work, it is NOT slavery. And the High Court agreed by the way. It expressly stated it was not disagreeing with the principle of the scheme, merely its legal implementation.
Dictionary definition:
And
No, you didn’t specifically call her a scrounger, you called her an ungrateful cow, if you want to play semantics. You also engaged in some pretty reprehensible inverse snobbery about her choice of voluntary work. You have also clearly chosen to ignore the explanation I gave regarding the difference between enforced servitude through the workfare programme and paying taxes. I don’t care about you taking umbrage at my position. Your attitude summed up precisely why many find libertarianism so unattractive – selfish, misanthropic and spiteful. As Stephen said; charming. Any empathy I might have had for your arguments evaporated at that point.
When in a hole, stop digging.
She is an ungrateful little cow. She’s 23, done nothing but take out of society for those 23 years and now has the ingratitude to complain about the conditions imposed on her in return for her being given someone else’s money. I have more sympathy for the other bloke in the case (who is hardly mentioned) was was a 40yo ex-lorry driver. At least he had paid something in to society, and as such gained some right to complain about being made to work for his JSA. She had no built up no such right. She should have shut up and got on with it and been grateful.
Jeebus, you don’t give up, do you?
You don’t know that. Indeed, you have no idea what she has contributed or not. If she worked though university (and it is likely as she said that she already had stacking experience), then she will have already started paying tax and NI.
At twenty-three, no one has put much into the tax system. Her parents, however, are highly likely to have paid in over a lifetime. By the time she is forty-three, she will have. She has no reason to be grateful to the state for forcing her to work in Poundland when she had already demonstrated the self-motivation and aptitude to find voluntary work through her own resources. So, no, she is not an ungrateful cow as she has no reason to be grateful to you or anyone else. Just who the fuck do you think you are, demanding gratitude from others who owe none? Your authoritarian streak is showing through.
That hole of yours is getting mighty deep by now and your sulky whine is beginning to match the average jet turbine.
Given the whiny little cow is now working at a Morrisons apparently, maybe the stint in Poundland helped her get a job after all
Almost certainly not. The number of people who secure work through these schemes is almost non-existent. In fact, the servitude at Poundland probably made it more difficult for her to find work, as it substantially cut the amount of time she had available to look for work.
The whole episode stank of a middle class graduate thinking she was above having to stack shelves with the plebs in Poundland and should be allowed to ponce around in an Art Gallery or Museum drinking coffee and reading the Guardian instead
The politics of spiteful envy. How charming.
Been thinking. (…Oh oh!!!)
1940 until 1945, hundreds of thousands of people were “extracted” from Poland, and other countries, that had been occupied by the Germans, to work in the defence industry, among other things.
They were, PAID!!! They recieved “The exact sum that the Government have decided you need to exist on”.
Sound familiar?
(Not talking here about Concentration camp inmates, I am talking of “civil population” who were forcibly “placed”.)
But at Nürnberg, THAT was classed as “slave labour!”
We have legal PRECEDENCE for the term and the TERMS!
Reply to Lerxst
Good God, no! I agree that our taxes should not be wasted on the kind of rubbish you mention, but neither should they be subsidising businesses that should only be financed via the sale of their products – i.e via their customers. No, absolutely not.
No, I agree. I’d happily abolish BIS and all corporate subsidy. My point wasn’t that I think we should be subsidising profitable firms, just that while the Government insists on the policy, I’d rather they went to firms that might actually be doing something productive. Lesser of two evils…