Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare. Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage. We are a grassroots campaign, formed in 2010 by people with experience of workfare and those concerned about its impact. We expose and take action against companies and organisations profiting from workfare; encourage organisations to pledge to boycott it; and actively inform people of their rights.
Rachel Overfield, Chief Nurse at Sandwell and Birmingham Hospitals trust – who are using workfare on their wards – was interviewed as part of a call-in radio programme on BBC Radio West Midlands today, and said that people sent to them by the job centre could face sanctions if they decided that this work experience would not be right for them.
You can hear the full 45 minute phone-in segment of Adrian Goldberg’s show on iPlayer, right from the start of his show. Rachel is on at the end, after around 40 minutes. Tom from Boycott Workfare is interviewed at around 25 minutes.
When asked if people would face losing benefits if they said no to workfare in the hospital, Rachel said that she supposes it is possible that someone could be there on pain of losing their benefits.
All through the show, people were talking about volunteers – but anything where there is the threat of benefit sanctions, which means taking away the money people need for food, electricity and even housing, cannot be considered to be voluntary. The threat, or perceived threat of homelessness is more than enough to consider these to be forced schemes, not volunteering opportunities.
Rachel also called the scheme a success story, on the basis that 2 of the people who attended the scheme found work elsewhere afterwards. Rachel said the scheme had 8 people on it, although the trust press release says 6. While this low rate is touted as a success, there is no evidence that this was as a result of the placements. Indeed, earlier in the week the Work Programme was shown to be failing in a report from the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA) who represent A4e and the like:
According to the ERSA just 22% of people bullied onto the scheme under threat of benefit sanctions have found work so far. This shatters Chris Grayling’s deluded claims that 36% of people would find work on the Work Programme. In fact it is quite likely the figure represents people who would have got work anyway without any help from the Welfare to Work industry.
The overall rate of 22% of people finding work compares unfavourably with the 28% that would be expected to find work without help, but we pay hundreds of millions of pounds to fraudulent companies like A4e every year. The work programme alone, which is failing to deliver results, is costing a staggering £5bn. And none of that takes into account the extra benefits and lost tax that comes from people on workfare being used in place of paid positions.
There is a very real threat to jobs, as raised by Ravi from Unison on the programme, and also by one of the callers who volunteers at Cannock Hospital and has been told by Nurses that they feel the volunteers are taking paid jobs away. it is a shame that the unions which were consulted didn’t block workfare at the door – they were consulted to allow this pilot to take place.
It is one thing to have the risk to jobs with volunteers, who can leave at any time with no certainty that they can be replaced, but to have rolling workfare placements, knowing that every 6 to 8 weeks you will get a new person in, and at a trust facing £125m of cuts and 800 job losses, the temptation to replace paid work in order to cover for gaps being left by the loss of funding must be huge.
Today it has been revealed that hospitals in Birmingham are using workfare to do work that would usually be paid. This confirms Boycott Workfare’s fears that an approach which began with the previous government’s Flexible New Deal, where people were sent by A4E to work at the Whittington Hospital, is being further rolled out. This is a dark day for anyone who believes in welfare, hospital care, the social contract or the basic principle that that people should be paid to do a job. This article was written by Birmingham Against Cuts in response:
Sandwell and Birmingham Hospitals trust have begun using unpaid workfare labour to cover for £125m of cuts to the “ringfenced” NHS budget.
6 people, forced under threat of having their benefits stopped, have taken part in a trial scheme, which has seen them undertake a number of duties including cleaning and running errands but also extending to patient care in non-clinical areas, helping with meals and drinks.
Campaigners set up their party outside A4e with cake, rhubarb crumble, party hats, party blowers and horns, music, and Boycott Workfare leaflets which detailed claimants’ rights regarding workfare schemes. Campaigners sang ‘for they are jolly good fraudsters’ and gave speeches to Emma and A4e reflecting on the ‘something for nothing’ culture that is pervasive in the ‘welfare to work’ industry which takes millions of pounds of tax payers money for bullying unemployed people and forcing them onto workfare.
Unemployed people and welfare rights campaigners will hold a leaving party for ‘welfare to work’ provider A4e and its former chairperson Emma Harrison on Thursday 17th May [1]. The leaving party follows a DWP statement on Wednesday [2] which announced that an A4e contract for delivering workfare in the South East has been cancelled due to inadequate documentation, erroneous claims and non-compliance with guidance. Yet, the cancellation of this one contract may well be the tip of the iceberg for fraud at A4e – the National Audit Office released a report today which was highly critical of the DWP’s fraud investigation noting that it failed to collect key documents [3].
Emma Harrison recently left her positions as chairperson of A4e – a ‘welfare to work company’ that looks to make money out of unemployed people through bullying and strange cultish practices amongst other things – and Cameron’s ‘families’ czar’ after allegations of systematic fraud at the company. Depending on the results of the investigations – will Emma be on her way to prison? Will this be the end of A4e’s Department of Work and Pensions contracts worth £200 million of tax payers’ money? We feel a party is in order to see Emma and A4e on their way.
Workfare: doesn't work and not fair. Photo: Howard Jones
Across the UK people are finding creative and effective ways to bring down workfare. Here’s a flavour of some of the things that have happened recently:
Campaigns, trade unions, voluntary groups and all those who oppose workfare are invited to a national conference on Saturday 26 May at the Brighton Railway Club, called by Brighton Benefits Campaign.
Saturday 26 May, 11am to 5pm, Brighton Railway Club, 4 Belmont, Brighton BN1 3TF.
At the National Union of Teachers’ (NUT) conference in April, a motion was passed congratulating Boycott Workfare and other groups for our “successful campaigning against workfare which has helped persuade a number of major companies to pull out or suspend involvement in such schemes.” Agreeing that “these schemes largely serve to provide participating companies with cheap labour”, NUT policy now reads:
“No to workfare and the work programme. For all placements of unemployed people on work experience schemes to be genuinely ‘voluntary’, without threat of loss of benefits, and to at least pay the minimum wage.”
This follows a commitment from public services union, PCS, to offer its support to anti-workfare campaigning in February, when PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said:
Grayling stated on the 29th February that the Work Experience scheme was now voluntary, however a recent Freedom of Information request has revealed that the government’s suspension of sanctions extends to two other workfare schemes as well – the Work Experience element of the sector based work academies and work experience in the Work Programme. In theory this means that claimants can leave work placements in these three schemes without the threat of sanctions.
The released document includes a set of temporary instructions to staff to ensure that sanctions are not used:
A couple of weeks ago, Kings Heath Against Workfare, a group campaigning to end workfare on their local high street in a Birmingham suburb took their first action – a Workfare Walk of Shame. This action was very successful, and is something they felt should be repeated in other places. In fact, there will be two more walks of shame in Birmingham in April – on Easter Monday in the city centre, and on Saturday 28th in Acocks Green. Here is a guide to repeating the action on your high street, from Tom who led the walk in the video above.
The walk of shame works really well because you are visible up and down the high street for a good hour, and as shoppers move from shop to shop, they see you time and again outside different places – this helps people to realise how widespread workfare is, and understand that this isn’t a little problem or isolated example.
The first time they walked past you, they might not take a leaflet, but the second or third time, they will.
As you move from shop to charity shop you can explain the workfare schemes and problems with workfare, which gives the people who came along a much greater knowledge of the subject. Choose what you will talk about outside each shop and relate it directly to that place.
The step by step guide to running a workfare walk of shame (pun most definitely intended!):
