boycott workfare (UK)

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http://www.boycottworkfare.org/

Everyone in the UK who isnt a scab, sociopath or venal social elite-type should read this.
Ive stopped going to sainsburys as of today, and ill email them and explain why.

Well work experience is certainly something good to have. I'm guessing the "benefits" are the pay?

The benefits that a person receives work out as slightly under a quarter of the legal minimum wage.

In addition to this if a person is employed working for minimum wage they are automatically entitled to working tax credits, a kind of negative income tax that would give them several thousand pounds a year more on top of their wage.

If you are on workfare you are not entitled to working tax credits.

There are currently one million people (1.5%) of the population on workfare many are people who have worked for decades or have just finished university. Capable people that do not need any work experience, they need jobs.

The government doesn't seem concerned about the slight problem of there being no incentive to create new jobs if you have access to a million slaves for free.


If you are having trouble understanding this you need a little bit of background information on the UK.


For the last decade the press has systematically upped hysteria about 'scroungers' the unemployed and the disabled at the same time as the government operated a complete open door immigration policy. We have a new phrase - chavscum to describe people who used to be called working class and a particular nasty old phrase has come back into fashion 'useless eaters', that one was a favourite of the Nazi propaganda machine when seeking justification to exterminate people.

To cope with the immigration and also the arbitrary government target of getting 50% of school leavers to go to university, funding for further education was diverted to pay for university and the massive expansion of English as a Second Language courses that were offered free to immigrants. The ESOL department at my local college went from a staff of 4 to a staff of 70. Nope not exaggerating, I wish I was. So British born students could not get any non degree qualifications like plumbing or electrician qualifications because the waiting lists on the courses shot up to 4-5 years on the courses that hadn't been cut to provide immigrants with free English lessons.

The net result is that we actually have people with doctorates working in our fields to pick potatoes, while large amounts of our youth have no qualifications and no future while employers openly refuse to employ the feckless, idle, lazy, work-shy, thieving, chavscum that were born in this country and instead operate jobs fairs in Eastern Europe because they can import labour literally by the truck load who can be exploited easily. Meanwhile many disabled people will not leave their homes alone because attacks on disabled people have gone up so much. People in wheelchairs won't go into pubs in the evening because they will definitely be verbally abused and quite often physically attacked.

Where does workfare fit in?

Well the political party that has been apoplectic in it's tirades about the chavscum and useless eaters is now in power and will do every it can for ideological reasons to punish the poor at every opportunity.


So to recap:

Banking crisis causes unemployment to sky rocket.
Government carries out hate campaign against the poor.
The poor become slaves.
Unemployment figures go down.
The bankers get record bonuses and the corporations get record profits from the free forced labour.



Arbeit Macht Frei.

another aspect that i think gets overlooked is giving such a boost to the chosen corporations will help to wipe out small independant businesses who get turned down for the scheme. or for that matter, any business with a sense of social responsibility.

I wasn't arguing for it in any sense.

It's slavery with a new name. Any politician who voted for such a thing deserves a hard labour prison term, 15 years.

I generally agree with DC.

Just a few points, though. Before the expansion of ESOL, one of the most common complaints was that immigrants no speak the English. You do have to pay for ESOL now and there are in fact waiting lists for most places on courses. I used to teach free Adult Literacy classes aimed at aformentioned 'chavscum' and people who were old and have no quals, but I ended up teaching a lot of immigrants because they couldn't get on an ESOL course.

I think it's a bit of a red herring to blame immigrants for this problem so much. Most of the Eastern European migrants have gone back now that our economy is boobs up. We do have an immigration 'problem' but that is mainly caused by non-EU nationals bringing (non-English speaking spouses over from abroad and then having lots of kids. That's a cultural problem and there isn't much we can do about it.

The government has declared war on the poor and the further education sector is dire. I actually think the skills gap and the decline of industry in our country are the main culprits. The business culture in our country is also whack. I went into my profession in order to help people upskill but found out that it was bs and left. I won't go into detail about why FE and Adult Ed in this country are BS, because that's another thread.

Do supermarkets in the UK really throw outdated food in the trash?
I know that large supermarkets here donate such food to the Gleaners Food Bank in Indianapolis or to local food banks.
I would like to visit the UK someday, but if they are attacking disabled people, I may revisit Germany.

I certainly hope the US is not on the same course as the UK.
I know the benefits for the unemployed here aren't generous, either. It's not unusual now to see older adults working at fast food restaurants, dollar stores, and Wal-Mart. Many factory jobs were lost here in Indiana because of the recession, so people take whatever jobs they can find.
I'm probably quite sheltered living here. The largest city is Chicago, but it's 200 miles away. Indianapolis doesn't have a big city image. I wouldn't be too worried if I was in one of the poorer neighborhoods.
Perhaps some of you in the UK would like to come live here to live. We don't enslave people. We gave that up a long time ago.

Reading this has left me feeling something I can only describe as a cross between great dread and seething anger, and I sincerely hope that through the peaceful yet stalwart efforts of myself and others that this dystopia never takes root in the United States of America.