Work Program officially does more harm than good; only 3.6% of participants secured a steady job compared to a predicted 5.5% if the program had never existed.
The Work Program is one of five government ‘workfare schemes’ that force unemployed people to work usually menial jobs for no money. Benefit claimants are threatened with poverty and sanctions if they refuse to participate and given the vague promise of a ‘real job’ at the end of it. The statistics for the first year of the program shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, least of all the government, whose own research predicted this outcome! Getting people to work for free during a time of high unemployment means the few jobs that would have been available to unemployed people are instead given to workfare placements. Sure, you get a bit of ‘experience’, but after your six months of unpaid work, will your employer really want start giving you a wage when they can just rely on the government to force more people to do the work for free?
Workfare isn’t cheap either: the Guardian recently reported how it was costing more than the entire bill for Jobseekers Allowance. If you already have a job you can still be affected, as the surplus of free temporary labour that workfare provides allows employers to cut down on staff overtime, give less work to those on flexible contracts, and drives down wages for everyone.
With all these bad points, why would the government start the scheme in the first place? Well one answer is rigging statistics; if someone is on a workfare scheme they are no longer ‘unemployed’, so the employment figures look a hell of a lot better. More than that, though, it’s simply a con. The private agencies running the schemes get millions in taxpayers money, and whilst one or two have faced charges of fraud, it’s far more widespread than a couple of bad apples. All the free labour for large companies is certainly saving some fat cats a lot of extra money to go towards their bonuses as well.
Of course all of this hasn’t gone unnoticed. The scheme has been wildly unpopular and attracted massive negative press, and hundreds of demonstrations around the country. Boycott Workfare, SolFed, Afed and others have all played their part in forcing large companies out of the scheme with pickets and occupations, and we think its time to kick the scheme while its down and end workfare once and for all. Keep your eyes peeled for updates, and see you on the streets soon!
