Workfare - good or bad?

[cdd]

I singled out scrubbing the floors as it's not "experience" which I believe anybody at all needs, and an example of a blatant abuse of the system

General employment experience, surely?

Basically this is the free-market/socialism debate again. I have nothing against welfare but only where that benefits society and the wider economy as a whole rather than only those in need of it.

Where's the incentive for the poor workplace to improve if everybody piles in to the first door they can?

If you want to do something else, take the menial job offered, and use your free time to learn, study and apply for that other thing. The "Job Centre" should really be an avenue of last resort - the purpose of welfare is not to give people free training and the career of their dreams, it is to stop people from starving to death while they have no other way to survive.

[WillPS]

I singled out scrubbing the floors as it's not "experience" which I believe anybody at all needs, and an example of a blatant abuse of the system

General employment experience, surely?

Basically this is the free-market/socialism debate again. I have nothing against welfare but only where that benefits society and the wider economy as a whole rather than only those in need of it.

Fair enough where there is no work experience - although that isn't the case with me, any of my friends or the quoted Cait.

Does society not benefit from the work Cait performs voluntarily for the museum?

Where's the incentive for the poor workplace to improve if everybody piles in to the first door they can?

If you want to do something else, take the menial job offered, and use your free time to learn, study and apply for that other thing. The "Job Centre" should really be an avenue of last resort - the purpose of welfare is not to give people free training and the career of their dreams, it is to stop people from starving to death while they have no other way to survive.

Easier said than done. And like I said there's a long way between the job of her dreams and scrubbing the floor at Poundland. Again this assumes that even menial work is readily available for everyone right now - which is a massive assumption.

[Gavin Scott]

Tesco have announced they're providing paid placements and guaranteed job offers to those on the scheme, in light of the negative press.

This is a good thing. Although it rather points to the fact that they were recruiting staff anyway.

[WillPS]

Tesco have announced they're providing paid placements and guaranteed job offers to those on the scheme, in light of the negative press.

This is a good thing. Although it rather points to the fact that they were recruiting staff anyway.

I noted Mr Grayling's comment on Channel 4 News that 10,000 people had "taken part" and "something like half of them are no longer claiming as a result". Note the language there - no longer claiming. Note that he specifically doesn't say that this number did not gain employment as a result.

I wonder how many are now claiming ESA instead. Ride the merry-go-round of JobCentre lunancy.


How about, rather than running the JobCentre as the deeply cynical organisation which it has been forever, investing some money in to it to get some real support out of them and get people in to the right positions rather than whatever comes up.

[Gavin Scott]

Oh my, the figure I quoted earlier in the thread about Tesco's wage savings was wrong by a factor of 10 - according to the 10 O'Clock Show.

Probably nearer £20,000,000 they saved - or two days worth of profit, to put it another way.

Trebles all round.

[WillPS]

Oh my, the figure I quoted earlier in the thread about Tesco's wage savings was wrong by a factor of 10 - according to the 10 O'Clock Show.

Probably nearer £20,000,000 they saved - or two days worth of profit, to put it another way.

Trebles all round.

What a wonderful world. Thanks Grayling.