In December’s week of action, Edinburgh Coalition
Against Poverty shut the Salvation Army shop down for over two hours!
The workfare industry annual conference disrupted with a
very
loud noise demo. Salvation Army in Edinburgh – the main users of Mandatory
Work Activity in the city –
blockaded for two
hours. An anti-sanctions
action
in Germany. Solidarity with claimants subject to the
farcical
pilot of Universal Credit. The
petition
for all sanctions to be scrapped hit 10,000 signatures.
Tea
and information outside job centres. Workfare users picketed in
Wales,
Scotland and
England. All this
in
just one week
in 2013 – a year in which ordinary people made workfare’s progress a whole lot
more rocky.
Targeting workfare exploiters
In 2013, your actions online and on the streets meant these brands stepped
back from workfare: Shoe Zone, The Red Cross, Capability Scotland, Marriott
Hotels, Superdrug, Argos, Wetherspoons and Debenhams.
In April,
we
helped expose that at least one Homebase store was using 25 placements at a
time to save hundreds of hours on their payroll, and cutting existing workers’
hours as a result. Thousands of people took action online and outside Homebase
stores across the UK, and just one month later, the company
withdrew from the scheme
(though we’re chasing up reports that it’s since reappeared in their Willesden
store).
Haringey Solidarity Group showed how
effective it can be when local people take on workfare exploiters on their
doorstep. When they discovered
Homes for Haringey was using
workfare to maintain its estates, action at board meetings and local council
meetings stepped up the pressure. The result? Those working for Homes for
Haringey will now be paid.
Disrupting industry events
When the workfare industry has met, campaigners have been there too – to
unpick their doublespeak and make sure the real-life consequences of their
decisions can’t be forgotten. When thinktank Policy Exchange supported sanctions
being extended to people in work on low incomes,
rolling disruption meant
their event was (in the words of its organiser) “ruined”. In Manchester,
delegates to the Welfare to Work Convention were
met with protests at their
lavish dinner at the Hilton.
Iain Duncan Smith and
Mark Hoban have both
faced hecklers during speeches on welfare ‘reform’.
Reducing the number of placements
When the Work Programme was launched in June 2011, it was promised that those
finishing it would be directed onto a six month long workfare scheme, the
Community Action Programme. However,
no such scheme was launched in
June 2013 probably because it was not feasible after we persuaded so many
charities to end their involvement.
In
the government’s
appeal against the Information Commissioner’s ruling that it must reveal
those using workfare labour, the Department for Work and Pensions argued: “The
activities of campaign groups and the results of negative publicity meant that…
“a great many placement organisations” had ceased to offer placements. That in
turn reduced the numbers of opportunities available across both programmes with
a loss of many placements and prospective new placements being at risk.”
The DWP’s appeal revealed that one subcontractor has complained about a loss
of 100 placements per week in its area alone. The cost of each Mandatory Work
Activity placement
has
doubled since we made it so much more difficult to find placements.
They know the public don’t want to see jobs replaced by
workfare
The Taxpayers’ Alliance felt the need to slander Boycott Workfare in its
‘Work for the Dole’ “report”,
commenting that because of our success in persuading charities to withdraw, it
is vital that “the public case for the morality and the economics of the
[workfare] scheme is very strongly made”. The government has used our
campaigning as the explicit reason for turning down Freedom of Information
requests about who is using workfare.
We know that the government and workfare industry see our activities as a
genuine threat to workfare’s viability. This means that in 2014, we have the
opportunity to make sure the schemes do indeed become unworkable.
Every success against workfare is because ordinary people take
action
The Cardiff Tea Tent share tea and know your rights
info outside the job centre
Workfare has the backing of the three main political parties, their
thinktanks, the welfare to work industry (which only exists because of the
public money handed to it), and the companies, charities and councils who are
able to cut their wages bills by using unpaid work. Some
professionals
e.g. psychologists also make money from supporting workfare, while others
e.g. some public health professionals, remain silent instead of speaking
out.
But against this stand the people who face the impact of workfare in our
lives: the threat of sanctions and the hunger they bring for people sent on
workfare; the loss of paid work as workfare is used instead; the threat of
workfare with no time limit for people found ‘fit to work’ by the disgusting
Atos assessment; and the toll all this takes on our wellbeing. With workfare
even
touted for people on low
incomes in part-time work, few people can afford to ignore its threat.
The actions of Cait Reilly and Jamie Wilson in the courts deserve special
mention here. These two people pursued justice to the Supreme Court – where
workfare schemes were
ruled to
have been unlawful. Faced with this challenge, the government, supported by
Labour, enacted
unprecedented
retroactive legislation to rewrite history. Being found unlawful hasn’t been
enough to stop workfare, but our actions can be.
For workfare to succeed, it needs companies, charities and councils to
co-operate. We’ve shown that we can make sure it’s not worth their while to do
so. Osborne wants
6 month
workfare placements in charities and the public sector to become the norm
from April 2014. We can make sure they don’t.
Take action in 2014
