Campaigns, trade unions, voluntary groups and all those who oppose workfare are invited to a national conference on Saturday 26 May at the Brighton Railway Club.
Full details are on our conference page:
http://brightonbenefitscampaign.wordpress.com/saturday-26-may-national-conference-how-do-we-break-workfare/
Conference supported by:
Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition
Brighton Solidarity Federation
Brighton Trades Council
Brighton & Hove Unison
Tomorrow is the big day! We’re looking forward to meeting all our fellow activists, trade unionists & others who find workfare as abhorent as we do & sharing our ideas for breaking workfare.
See you tomorrow!
Who are the real Benefit Scroungers?
At a time when we are told, ‘the country is bankrupt’, the government has found a way to give a massive handout to companies. This is workfare – forcing the unemployed to work for their benefits.
The government tries to divide us by pitting those in work against ‘scroungers’ who supposedly need to be forced into work. But it has recently emerged that the real scroungers are the private firms paid millions of pounds to deliver workfare, and A4E is first in line.
In mid January 2012 four A4E members of staff were arrested on allegations of fraud dated back to 2010 – for faking job placements at the expenses of the public purse. Faking placements is not new for private providers to the DWP such as Working Links, who had already been caught in fraud investigations. Yet A4E’s chief executive, Andrew Dutton, tried to convince the media that the fraud was an isolated case.
Isolated indeed! By the time Dutton delivered his speech new creative and more widespread abuses emerged. In February The Guardian revealed that A4E received public money to find unpaid work placements, while they obliged the unemployed to do unpaid work in their own offices! This abuse has taken place in a significant number of their offices across the country, not just a few ‘bad apples’.
And if A4E’s employees fake placements in the interest of their company, if A4E’s offices abuse the scheme to squeeze free labour from those put in their hands, what do we expect from their millionaire owner Emma Harrison, if not more abuse of public money, millionaire style?
In February 2012 it was revealed that Harrison received around £1.7m over two years from leasing out her own properties, including her family stately home, to… A4E! These payments were in addition to her £365,000 annual salary and the payment of an £8.6m shares dividend.
Fraud and Corruption
A4E has nothing to fear from the government – after all former government ministers like David Blunkett are on their payroll. Despite the revelations about fraud and abuse of public money, Emma Harrison was chosen as ‘family Czar’ by David Cameron and in February 2012 A4E was chosen as the preferred bidder for a £15m prisoner rehabilitation contract with the Skills Funding Agency.
The crisis has been a blessing for them. It was Emma Harrison who declared in December 2010 that she was delighted by the government cuts:
“The coalition government’s cuts are, in fact, fantastic!… Cutting benefits will put a stop to people making a profession out of being unemployed”.
In fact the one who made a profession out of the crisis and the attack on benefits was herself.
While A4E has been involved in £224m contracts, it has not created a single new job – it has only squandered money that could be spent to save public jobs and prevent redundancies. It has helped the government in their attack on wages and working conditions for those in work, by obliging unemployed people to replace jobs for no pay.
Cameron and his cronies say that we are all in this together. What they really mean is that they are all together, helping each other make even bigger fortunes. We are asked to stab each other for a crap job, to blame each other for the crisis, and to accuse each other of being scroungers.
They are the real scroungers – they make millions out of our misery and cheat and lie to do so. Let us join together to stop them.
Meet 11am, Friday 4th May, Clocktower, Brighton
Although media attention has recently quietened down, the campaign against workfare continues. Following on from the hugely successful actions on March 3rd, today marked another National Day of Action Against Workfare, with protests up and down the country.
The target of the largest number of these protests was Holland & Barrett. Anti-workfare campaigners have consistently pointed out that unpaid labour schemes allow bosses to engage in job substitution. What company would want to hire people they have to pay wages and provide benefits like sick pay and holidays, when they can get the unemployed to do the same thing for free?
Holland & Barrett have provided the most flagrant example of this job substitution, by announcing their plans to exploit 1000 young people in the next year through workfare schemes. To put this into context, Holland & Barrett’s entire paid workforce is around 3600. This brazen use of the unemployed to bolster their workforce by over 25% clearly shows as nonsense any claim that workfare is a way to help people get work, and reveals it for what it is – a massive handout to bosses and a massive transfer of public money into private profits.
The impetus for today’s demonstrations came from the Solidarity Federation, who first called for another National Day of Action. Brighton Benefits Campaign has always worked very closely with Brighton SolFed, so we were only too happy to support them in the same way they have always supported us. As previous actions have shown the strength of the anti-workfare movement in Brighton, it was decided that we would hold two pickets, one outside the Holland & Barrett store in North Street, and the other at their smaller shop in London Road.
The North Street picket took up position with banners and leaflets shortly after 11am, and almost immediately we were confronted by the manager, who demanded to know what we were doing and insisted that the store was not involved in taking unemployed people on work experience (showing how successfully media reporting has confused people into thinking that work experience is the only workfare scheme, without mentioning that this is only one of five schemes).
It may be the case that this specific store did not use workfare – although we subsequently learned that they had previously taken one person on work experience and interviewed others, so they clearly have no objections to workfare nor commitment to the idea that people should be paid for their work. But Holland & Barrett is a national chain, and local branches cannot simply wash their hands of what the company is doing at a national level. All Holland & Barrett branches, for example, benefit from advertising – which will, if the company’s plans go ahead, be funded with profits made through large-scale exploitation of the unemployed. We urged the manager to write to their head office to express opposition to what the company is doing nationally, but he was having none of this and stomped back inside.
Shortly afterwards security guards employed by local retailers – now known by the ludicrous misnomer of “City Centre Ambassadors” – arrived and began to harass us as we handed out leaflets to shoppers and passersby. Claiming that we were blocking the entrance and that our standing in front of the store’s window was somehow a violation of private property despite the fact that we were on the public pavement, those of us holding the BBC banner were told we would need to move forward, away from the shop.
When we stood our ground and challenged them to point out exactly where the private property began, one of these heavies reached into his handbook of threatening clichés and informed us that we could do things “the easy way or the hard way”. A potentially interesting incident was then cut tragically short by the arrival of two police officers, who had apparently been informed we were harassing customers. They quickly established we were not doing this, however, so they pulled the “Ambassadors” aside for a discussion, then confirmed to us that there was nothing wrong with where we were standing before departing. Deprived of an opportunity to assault people, the Ambassadors went to sulk on the street corner and watched us in silence for the rest of the demonstration.
We distributed leaflets with great speed, with some pedestrians stopping to ask for leaflets even before we could offer them one. Many were clearly aware of what workfare was and why it should be opposed, but were unaware of the scale of the exploitation that Holland & Barrett proposed.
During lulls when not many people were going into the store, the manager came out to entertain us. The company’s liberal, hippy image notwithstanding, the manager was keen to inform us of his deeply reactionary opinions. These included such considered insights as that the unemployed are simply lazy and that, if they don’t want to be exploited as unpaid labour, they should go and get jobs (of which there is apparently a plentiful supply), and that he was not going to criticise the company for using workfare as he simply felt lucky to have a job in a time when many businesses are going under. A more perceptive person might have realised that these views are totally contradictory, one suggesting a booming labour market and another, more accurately, reflecting the ongoing job insecurity brought about by the economic crisis, however this did not occur to him.
As we began to run low on leaflets, some SolFed members brought out instruments and livened things up with old labour and protest songs like Solidarity Forever and the Diggers Song. The spirit of the songs, expressing the determination of working class people to stick up for each other, was a welcome relief from the purely self-centred viewpoint of the manager, who then made a last play for attention by making himself a sign suggesting that no one is made to work for free, coming out to argue with us again and ironically blocking the entrance to his own store with his placard.
Giving up on this he decided to put it in the window instead. If the sign had acknowledged this was only applicable to this one branch and that the company the branch was a part of was actually planning an enormous use of unpaid labour, we might have let that pass, but as it didn’t we simply held up our banner to block the sign.
Altogether the day was a great success. BBC supporters at the picket in London Road reported a similarly good response from the public, though less in the way of levity. We went away determined to continue the campaign against workfare and to keep bringing the fight to those who exploit unpaid labour with further actions to come.
As part of the International Workers’ Association days of action, Solidarity Federation Locals across the country will be taking action against workfare on Saturday 31st March. Brighton Benefits Campaign will be supporting Brighton Solfed in their action.
There are now two pickets taking place:
London Road – meet outside Costa at 10.30am
North Street – meet at the Clock Tower at 11am
Target to be confirmed, as firms are pulling out regularly at the moment.
The following Monday (2nd April), there will be a communications blockade of the same target to keep up the pressure.
See you there!
There are now two pickets planned to take place on March 3rd in Brighton!
Following our successful picket of Poundland, resulting in the store withdrawing from the ‘work experience’ scheme, Brighton Benefits Campaign will be picketing Tesco in Jubilee Street Brighton as part of the UK-wide day of action against workfare.
https://www.facebook.com/events/252223388191094/
Brighton Youth Fight for Jobs & Education will be picketing Tesco in St James’s Street Kemp Town from 11.30am.
https://www.facebook.com/events/192768120824784/
Other actions around the country can be found at Boycott Workfare
http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=359#comment-336
The government would have us believe that the growing army of the unemployed – including over a million under twenty-fives – are ‘scroungers’ who will avoid work at all costs. They conveniently ignore the fact that for every job vacancy there are tens or even hundreds of applicants. And that at the same time, increasing numbers of sick and disabled people and single parents are being forced into the job market.
In the right wing media, workfare is portrayed as a way to prevent the ‘lazy’ unemployed getting ‘something for nothing’ by forcing them to ‘volunteer’ or face sanctions. To those signing on, particularly young people, it is promoted as work experience that will improve their chances of employment.
Of course in reality, workfare provides free labour for companies such as Poundland and other large retailers, enabling them to make yet more massive profits, and to cut the jobs, wages and conditions of their paid workers. Last Saturday activists from Brighton Benefits Campaign, together with members of Brighton Solidarity Federation and other supporters, took part in their first picket of the Poundland store in Western Road Brighton, in protest against this misuse of the unemployed as unpaid labour under the workfare scheme.
Over a thousand leaflets exposing the truth behind the government’s propaganda were handed out to shoppers outside the shop. Many showed interest and stopped to discuss the issue. Some shared their own experience of workfare. We were told by one woman that her daughter worked for a Tesco store where workfare had resulted in paid staff being told ‘no more overtime’.
The Poundland manager came out almost immediately and tried to argue the case for workfare as ‘work experience’. Within a short time a whole group of Poundland employees were standing just inside the doors either joining in or listening as we explained how exploitation of the unemployed as free labour is an attack on those in work as well as those without, and that all work should be properly paid.
Interestingly, although the store manager obviously felt somewhat besieged, there was no sign of the police, not even community officers who have turned up at other pickets. Or maybe they were all too busy at the Brighton match!
More pickets are planned as the campaign hots up. Hopefully this kind of action will be taking place in many other places, as unions and anti-cuts groups join the fight against workfare.
Saturday 28 January, meet 12 noon at Norfolk Square
Join us in saying NO to Workfare!
As most people tighten their belts, Poundland announced another year of record profits, raking in £31.7m – a whopping increase of 34% – in 2010/11, and boasting of their ability to compete in ‘turbulent economic conditions’.
The shameless scroungers who run Poundland already rely on the state to top up miserable wages with tax credits and housing benefit, rather than doing it themselves from their ever-increasing profits. Now they have leapt to gobble up another handout, in the form of free labour from the government’s workfare programmes.
Workfare does not lead to employment. In fact it does the very opposite. It is an assault on jobs, wages and conditions, and it affects ALL working people.
Brighton Benefits Campaign calls on Poundland to stop their reprehensible exploitation of the unemployed and the poor. We will continue to campaign against Poundland until they abandon the use of workfare and instead employ people to do the work they need on a proper wage.
At a time when, we are told, ‘the country is bankrupt’, the government has found a way to give a massive handout to companies making millions in profits. This is workfare – forcing the unemployed to work for their benefits.
The government tries to divide us by pitting those in work against ‘scroungers’ who supposedly need to be forced into work. But workfare is as much an attack on those with jobs as those without them. What boss would want to employ a worker they have to pay, when the government will give them someone off the dole to do it for free?
The aim of workfare is simply to drive down wages.
the cycle of workfare
What can we do?
If you learn that a workplace near you is using workfare, let us know. Brighton Benefits Campaign is campaigning against all forms of workfare and all those who profit from it. We will be focussing on both the companies profiting from dole slavery, & the private providers of the work programme who are raking in millions in public money.
Write! Challenge workplaces to reveal whether they are using workfare. If they are, demand that they stop. If they’re not, challenge them to publicly pledge not to use workfare.
Demonstrate! No employer likes the pressure and negative publicity brought by a protest against them. BBC will be organising regular protests against those using workfare. Join us, or organise your own demonstration and we will support you.
Organise! Only independent organisation can give workers the strength to keep workfare out of their workplaces. If there is a union in your workplace, raise the threat of workfare at a branch meeting and invite your branch to join the campaign. If there’s no union at your workplace, talk to your colleagues and start to build one. For support in organising, contact Brighton Trades Council at brightontradescouncil@gmail.com
Know your rights! If you’re unemployed, there are a number of workfare schemes, which have different rules and some of which you may not have to comply with. There are details about your rights at http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=280.
For further advice and support, contact the Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre on 540797.
PUBLIC MEETING
7.30PM on THURSDAY 8 DECEMBER
FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE, SHIP STREET BRIGHTON
ALL WELCOME
While David Cameron and his cabinet of millionaires live it up in their multiple luxurious mansions, they propose to hit those who have only one roof over their heads with an all-out assault on housing benefits and social housing.
The Government’s proposals include:
The government seek to divide and rule by claiming that these cuts are being made against ‘scroungers’ who are out of work, in the interest of those in work. This is nonsense – in reality, 80% of those in receipt of housing benefits are in work. Most people need to claim housing benefit because of low wages.
According to the Chartered Institute of Housing, 750,000 people across the UK will lose their homes because of the cuts. They will throw households into spiralling debt and will ‘cleanse’ large areas of cities like Brighton of ordinary tenants on a low wage.
While the rich continue to rake in enormous bonuses and obscene profits, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has predicted that the living standards of ordinary people in the UK will decline until at least 2013/2014. But rather than changing course, the government has begun to crack down on those who oppose them. The families of those involved in August’s riots have been threatened with arbitrary evictions and other collective punishments, while the disgraceful Hove MP Mike Weatherley has led a campaign pressing for draconian new legislation against squatting, to further punish those who will be made homeless and to forestall effective opposition to the cuts.
We need to fight back now. Only a large, determined, and organised campaign can force the government back and defend our wages, living standards, and homes.
