Last week’s celebration of unpaid work turned out to be a dismal failure as almost everyone completely ignored the crude attempt to re-brand workfare.
The week was organised by Fair Train who have been given Government money to rehabilitate workfare by launching a Work Experience Quality Standard.
In order to promote this workfare badge of shame Fair Train came up with Work Experience Week. This would be a celebration of unpaid work which they hoped would encourage employers to adopt their Quality Standard and agree to provide work experience placements for the ever-growing number of workfare schemes.
Prospective workfare exploiters were encouraged to tweet support using the hashtag
In a further humiliating blow, the number of organisations that agreed to adopt their Work Experience Quality Standard does not seem to have changed since the week began, standing at an unimpressive 13. It is unclear how many people signed their pledge in support of unpaid work experience as their promise that we could ‘watch the number grow’ on their website never materialised.
Such is the desperation to promote and normalise unpaid work that real tax payer’s money has been given to these clowns. And like all the rest of the cash handed out on the Welfare Reform gravy train, it is money down the drain. But if last week showed anything it revealed that whilst the number of people on unpaid work schemes may be at a record high, the employers benefitting from free labour are in no mood to shout about it. They know all too well what the public thinks of their grubby exploitation.
Fair Train are on twitter @FairTrainOrg if you want to point and laugh.
