BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 08:25 AM

Well, if you are the real Eliza not a troll claiming your name, you are a stupid Daily Fail reading bigot. The benefit claimant who would not take a decent job if offered is very rare.

I ask again. What about your husband?

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,Peter
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 08:22 AM

@Eliza
Are you suggesting that I failed to pay my tax and NI for the 20 years working between leaving school and the 6 months that I spent on the dole in the recession of the early 90s?

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 08:12 AM

Since you ask, I am indeed stereotyping the average benefit claimant as a lazy waster. Because they are. Their 'entitlement' presupposes that they've paid in and contributed with their tax. They haven't. I on the other hand have paid in all my life (as have you, presumably) and therefore claim my State Pension 'as a right' (and indeed my professional pension, which cost me an arm and a leg in superannuation over a full lifetime of work). Ditto my healthcare. I paid in for forty years with NI contributions. As long as people take out but don't pay in, the whole system will eventually grind to a halt and break down. Then there'll be nothing for anyone. Over to the young generation, as I shall be long gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 07:53 AM

And by the way, on this theme, one of my abiding memories of the Olympics is of the 70,000 or so voluntary workers. If they had been paid the minimum wage it would have cost in the the order of £35m. That's hadly small change, but as a proportion of the money spent on the Olympics it is small change. For comparision, the management fee for G4S for not actually getting round to providing security was £57m.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 07:49 AM

Yes, Eliza, I come from a family of farm labourers and fishermen. But my grandfather, after leaving school at 12, worked to self-educate himself and got a job as a railway clerk. But you expect me, at the age of 64, to go out and do hard manual labour for £7 an hour, or my son, after 3 years' hard work to get a good degree and amass debts of over £20K, to do the same? Or are you just stereotyping the 'average' benefit claimant as a lazy waster? Benefits are not a privilege, as this government would have us believe, they are a right, just as much as free healthcare or the old-age pension. If you use the NHS or have a pension, why do you try to deny others their rights?

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 07:45 AM

That depends on whether people will actually do them for the money.

Hmmm, that's not as straightforward as it seems, either. I know a goodly number of young unemployed who would happily take those jobs for the minimum wage - many have applied to be cleaners and such - but there are enough holes in the legislation to enable less than the minimum wage to be paid and still abide by the legislation. For example I know some whose contract states that they agree to to be paid less than the minimum wage. I know others where their 'employers' insist they have to self employed and engaged that way, which also enables less than the minimum to be paid while abiding be the letter of the laws.

So what the phrase 'for the money' means is not as obvious as it may seem. I can see a logical basis for a minimum wage, both for the individual and for the economy as a whole. I can also see the case for no minimum wage, although I happen not to agree. What I cannot see is any rational basis for a minimum wage that employers don't have to pay.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 06:23 AM

I'm too old to do very much nowadays, theleveller, but both my grandparents did just that, hard labour for low pay, one down the pit and the other on fishing boats, both jobs dangerous and exhausting. And here in Norfolk, my dear neighbour's husband works outside on the land, cutting and trimming in the bitter cold. I'm wondering if Jobseekers could be 'persuaded' to do those sort of jobs, for a fair wage of course? (I have a theory that if one drove up in a coach to the local Jobseekers Centre and announced that anyone could jump on board and be transported to work immediately for £7 an hour, there'd be a stampede, not onto the bus, but out of the back door and away. The ones I've seen down there look as if the last thing they want is a blooming job.)

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 06:20 AM

Let me check, Eliza. Does your husband displace someone more entitled from a job, or does he claim benefits? Or is his case different and if so why?

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 05:54 AM

Just found this in a report by the Centre for Economic Performance:

"There are potential economic benefits associated with migration, especially to fill gaps in the UK labour market – where there are shortages of workers, whether high- or low-skilled. While there may be costs to particular groups, there is little evidence of an overall negative impact on jobs or wages."

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 05:48 AM

That depends on whether people will actually do them for the money. Perhaps they should be forced into taking them. Hey, Eliza, do you fancy going out into frozen fields to pick potatoes for 8 hours a day? No? Why not - it's good honest labour? Do you the world of good! Might be better if companies like Poundland paid people a proper wage to work for them.

Even the Daily Fascist has to admit that there are some positive benefits to immigration:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2147976/Influx-Polish-children-schools-helped-improve-British-pupils-grades.html#axzz2Km

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 05:47 AM

Radio 4 prog a couple of days ago stated that numbers of native jobseekers outnumber immigrants 2.5 to 1
(though I don't know how soon an immigrant officially belongs here)

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 05:39 AM

But theleveller, those jobs they're doing... er...shouldn't they be given to the resident population here?

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 05:34 AM

Eliza, that's another fallacy propounded by the right-wing reactionaries. On my fortnightly visits to the Jobcentre, I rarely come across any Eastern Europeans in there. I do, however, meet them doing hard manual work on the farms around me, working in care homes, cleaning hospitals etc. Also, the Polish population in this area is decreasing as they are now returning home.

You might get a more balanced view from this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/26/immigration-eastern-europe-jobs

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 05:21 AM

And coming soon, to a town near you, many thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians, to join the many thousands of other Europeans, all either seeking jobs or claiming Benefits, housing, schooling, medical treatment ...

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 04:50 AM

Richard is right in what he says. Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to spend time in a Jobcentre will know that, although there are some wasters (there are in every walk of life - especially in this government), most people, from every age group and walk of life, actually want work. It's sometimes quite heartbreaking to overhear people asking their advisers for help and they almost always come away empty-handed. The answers they get are, quite simply, that there aren't the jobs out there, there's no help available, and the goverment is constantly urging more harrassment of the unemployed so that people will just give up and they can massage the unemployment figures.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 04:15 AM

I was under the impression that the slave labour scheme itself was not found unlawful, merely the current regulations pertaining to it. The government is rushing through new regulations to seek validly to operate these vicious schemes.

There are several vices to these schemes, layered on top of this government's determination to demonise the less fortunate.

Primarily - there are not enough proper jobs to go round. Every person on jobseeker's allowance who does get a proper job prevents another jobseeker from getting that job. But it is worse than that. Every person forced to work for nothing at say Poundland displaces a person who might be properly paid (well, at least the minimum wage) for working there.

But the government does nothing to stimulate the economy. It created the recession and now as always visits the worst effects on the least fortunate.

Meanwhile the likes of the Daily Express runs headlines like "No benefits for shirkers" - misrepresenting the effect of the unanimous Court of Appeal judgement and parroting the vicious government lie that those receiving benefits do not want to work. There are hardly any unemployed who do not want to work. The vast preponderance want hardly anything more than a proper job. And as the leveller points out, those who most want a proper job and would put most effort into seeking one are most trapped by this doctrinaire scheme.

This government is nauseating.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 03:58 AM

It's a totally stupid idea from a government that just doesn't understand how the real world operates. Here's two personal examples:

My son left uni in July and signed on. He receives around £50 a week. He's spent almost every day filling in long and complex application forms, taking extremely difficult online tests, having phone interviews, going to assessment days. Now, thankfully, he's found a good, well-paid job that will allow him to pay tax and pay off his considerable student loan. If he had been forced onto the government's slave labour scheme as would eventually have happened, he would have been unable to spend the necessary time searching for a job and would probably have been on the dole for years.

Example 2: I was made redundant in April last year after working for 44 years. If I'm still unemployed by this April I will be forced onto the slave labour scheme. Now I am one of those terrible wasters who have paid, I calculate, over £600K in taxes and national insurance in my life. Oh, and here's the real joke, I don't actually receive any jobseekers allowance as I have a small pension that puts me just outside the minimum level. So am I going to work in Poundland for nothing....stick it up your arse, Cam-moron.

The sooner we get rid of this stupid government with their overpaid cronies milking our society the better.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: DMcG
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 06:05 PM

So why, Nigel, do you think the work found should not pay the minimum wage in exchange for the jobseeker benefits? Not the legislation, by the way, as there are are huge loopholes in that, but the minum wage itself?

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 06:02 PM

True BW, and as I understand it, some jobseekers have been forced to work two weeks for nothing and had their benefits cut as well. That's serfdom.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 05:58 PM

Leeneia, Poundland is one of three companies who have established shops in the UK where all itemas cost either £1 (in two of them) or 99p (in the third).

Apparently they source bulk quantities of goods from China and other cheap sources, at rock bottom prices per item, and ship them hear in container loads to make a profit even with a 99p price tag.

Since so many firms are now manufacturing in China to save labour costs, quite decent quality items can be bought very cheaply.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 05:38 PM

More to the point, the government's Minimum Wage is something over £6 per hour. That's at least £240 for a 40-hour week. Anything less is slave labour.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,John J
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 03:03 PM

Job seekers allowance (per week):

under 25    £56.25

aged 25 or over    £71.00

JJ

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 01:40 PM

"Compulsory unpaid work"
I thought it was a case of finding work for those claiming benefits. If you don't do the work, you don't get paid the benefits.
As such I find it hard to understand the description of "unpaid work", even if the payment is coming from the government (us taxpayers) rather than from the business getting the benefit of the worked hours.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 11:59 AM

And where is Poundland? Anywhere near Newfoundland?

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: DMcG
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 08:09 AM

'Twas I, posting above.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 08:07 AM

Voluntary work is allowed while claiming jobseekers provided you are always available for interviews, attending the jobcentre and do enough actual jobseeking. Of course, that means your 'voluntary employer' can't rely on you, but that's the consequence of not actually paying you.

Govement site about this.

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: JHW
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 06:45 AM

My understanding was that voluntary work was prohibited anyway to UK 'jobseekers'.   
A freind did do such work obviously to make good use of his time but very much to gain vital experience. However this was always at the risk of losing unemployment benefit due to being allegedly 'unavailable for work'

Subject: RE: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 06:15 AM

*won*

Subject: BS: Compulsory Unpaid Work Found Unlawful
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 06:14 AM

A graduate who was forced to leave her voluntary job working at a Museum in order to do unpaid work stacking shelves at Poundland, has one an important court battle with huge potential implications for the DWP's "back to work" scheme:

QUOTE: "Ms Reilly said: "I am delighted with today's judgment.
"I brought this case because I knew it was wrong when I was prevented from doing my voluntary work in a museum and forced to work in Poundland for free for two weeks as part of a scheme known as the sector based work academy.
"Those two weeks were a complete waste of my time as the experience did not help me get a job.
"I wasn't given any training and I was left with no time to do my voluntary work or search for other jobs.
"The only beneficiary was Poundland, a multimillion-pound company. Later I found out that I should never have been told the placement was compulsory.
"I don't think I am above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/graduate-wins-claim-that-making-her-work-for-free-at-poundland-was-unlawful-8491345.html