Something was brought to my attention today that I find intensely disturbing. I have spent roughly the last 6 hours discussing this with friends, colleagues, classmates and some complete strangers. I am talking about the government’s current Workfare scheme, brought to the forefront of public consciousness recently by The Job Centre’s posting of an advert for a position at Tesco in which the wage was “[Jobseeker's Allowance]+Expenses”.

I would like to share, verbatim, one person’s experience of the Workfare scheme (the irony of the homophone is not lost on many).

Here is what the Work Fare scheme was originally set up to do (from a government website). ” The ‘mandatory work activity’ scheme requires claimants to carry out work on community projects in return for receiving unemployment benefit”. Nothing was ever mentioned about working for Tesco or Sainsburys. I was on a so-called “work experience scheme” last year, working for Sainsbury’s. There was some mention of a “possibility” of a job at the end of the scheme, but this was just a bluff to make us work harder. The point is that I worked for four weeks, doing the SAME job as a paid employee, often filling in for seomeone who was either off sick or on holiday, but without pay, I also found that I was given all the unpleasent jobs that none of the paid employees liked doing. The company even sent staff off for training courses out of town, and let us take up the vacant position whilst the staff were away, tis was a clear case of abuse of the system. If we failed to turn up for work, we were warned that we could lose our benefits. Now I have no personal problem with working on a community project, in fact I did so a year earlier, and we knew there was no job at the end of it, but we did learn something new. Working for Tesco, Sainsbury’s or any company, which should be paying a wage, is very wrong as it is open to abuse and will lead to the big companies making profit out of unpaid (slave) labour.

This experience sums up my main problems with the idea. I say problems – I mean it makes me feel physically ill thinking about it.

  1. Workfare in its current form is open to abuse and unpaid labour should not replace paid jobs in the private sector unless it brings value to the workforce.
  2. I am happy for able-bodied jobseekers without dependents to have to take on work in the public sector, with the intention of reducing the public wage bill. It’s clear from the above example that this would also be more fulfilling to the people involved.
  3. I am not against any company legitimately making a profit, but I believe that any scheme in which the net result is unpaid work being favoured over paid work is bad for the individual, the country and ultimately only favours those businesses fortunate enough to be involved. (The pessimist in me suggests that money talks, and those taking on are large businesses for a reason)

To summarize, my disgust stems from the fact that on the surface, and probably indeed below the surface too, the Workfare scheme is being used and abused largely by big-name retailers. The type of businesses whose profits suggest that they could comfortably pay the work which is currently being given to them for free. This stinks of a scheme that serves to skew unemployment figures, rather than one that has any real benefit to the individuals involved. If you feel in any way the same as me, please lend your name to this petition.

What this really served to do is to get me thinking. What if I end up in the same position? I have a long-term job on a part-time basis while I’m studying. There’s no guarantee I can make this a full-time endeavour when I finish university; there’s no guarantee that I would want to do so. What happens if I can’t find something else? My mind wandered back to the words of Mike Press and particularly the title of a report from The Creative Society: Make a Job, Don’t Take a Job.

I’m beginning to think that this is the path to fulfilment. How can I, whatever the outcome, be unhappy with something that I create from scratch? Money issues weigh heavily on everyone’s mind, and I don’t have the best record when it comes to money management personally, but I also don’t think this should stop me pursuing something I have enough belief in. Money management in a business sense would appear to be something that can be learned. The beginning is a really good idea, one that I can be passionate about and make others passionate about. Ideas should be my forte, so what’s stopping me? Fear of the unknown?