Boycott Workfare call for sanction stories

Boycott Workfare outside Policy Exchange after “ruining” their event

With your help, Boycott Workfare would like to highlight the devastating impact that benefit sanctions are having on people’s lives. Collecting together your experiences of benefit sanctions we will be putting together a sanctions zine. Email us your words, however many or few you want to use. Things you may want to include may be:

- the length of the sanction

- the ‘reason’ the Job Centre gave for imposing the sanction and how they told you this ‘reason’

- how it affected your life, including its impact on your physical and mental health, your family and friendships

- how you coped during this time

- and how you are doing now e.g. still claiming JSA, stopped signing on, signing on to a different benefit, stress/worry about further sanctions etc.

- perhaps you have not been sanctioned, but have been bullied and threatened with sanctions

Email us at info@boycottworkfare.org

Feel free also to submit drawings and get in touch if you have any other ideas or suggestions. We also welcome submissions from those who are indirectly affected by benefit sanctions, such as welfare activists, welfare advisors and those involved in the Civil Service Rank and File Network.

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Government abandons new workfare scheme

Time to start combating the hit squads

Unfortunately the government are planning to go ahead with their other plan of intensified Job Seeker Agreements and pointless activities for when we finish the Work Programme. They are threatening daily meetings with advisors and referrals to Mandatory Work Activity (which is already struggling to cope with current placements) – all coordinated by the sinister sounding “hit squads”. On top of this they are planning to throw another £30 million at the likes of A4e to provide “training schemes” which normally involve little training, and just provides another opportunity to sanction us.

Pushing people out of the welfare system is what this new scheme for people finishing the Work Programme is all about. As the Department for Work and Pensions admits:

“The programme comes after Jobcentres involved in a trailblazer found that claimants targeted by an intensive approach were much less likely to stay on benefit.”

They do not even pretend these measures are there to help people into work. Instead they are there to provide more opportunities to sanction us and to take away our only financial support.

Stop G4S’ Annual General Meeting

Last years’ Stop G4S protest outside G4S’ AGM

G4S are in the business of force. As well as making claimants lives miserable through coercion and bullying, G4S also profit from detention, imprisonment, and the exercise of force on behalf of oppressive regimes. Join the Stop G4S demo next Thursday in London and link up with others to stop them ‘securing your world’.

Read the call out from the Stop G4S campaign here

Join the facebook event here

Combatting The Lies – Day 7 Of The Workfare Week Of Action

Workfare demonstration in Bristol

At the start of the week of action, the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA) put out a “myth buster” in defence of workfare. The ERSA is the trade body for welfare to work companies like A4e and JHP Employability, so it’s no surprise that their myth buster continues to propogate myths about workfare.

Yesterday demonstrations and pickets took place around the UK.  Today we are back online, and asking you to combat the lies ERSA is telling about workfare, and spread the simple truth that workfare doesn’t work. So firstly we explore the five “myths” about workfare, and then five truths that you can help share.

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Open Letter To The YMCA

The YMCA have published this report from their Policy and Research department which was written around the end of January. The report contained a page on their participation in workfare, and we have sent them this letter in response to some of the points they raised.

Dear Jason and Mary,

We read your Policy And Research Update document (2013 issue 2) which talked about your involvement in workfare with interest and would like to respond to some of the points raised in the document.

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Sue Ryder Rolling Online Picket

Join an online, rolling picket of workfare exploiters Sue Ryder.
Starts: Now
Ends: When Sue Ryder pull out of all forms of workfare.

Update: This action has had success! Sue Ryder announced today 25/2 that they will be doing a phased withdrawal from workfare.

Since Sue Ryder became the first and only UK charity to admit they will use claimants on sickness and disability benefits as forced unpaid workers hundreds of people have contacted them to express disgust at their activities.

This followed the revelation that Sue Ryder are part of the Mandatory Work Activity scheme and also accepted free workers on the Community Action Programme. This is one of the nastiest workfare schemes which involves 720 hours forced unpaid work simply for being unemployed. This is over twice the maximum Community Service punishment which can be handed out by the Courts.

Sue Ryder are unrepentant about their use of mass workfare and have even boasted about how much money it makes them! They sought to justify this and them calling people forced into their shops as volunteers in a Question and Answer response to criticisms they received online.

We urgently need to keep up the pressure and ensure that Sue Ryder know exactly what the public think about forced unpaid work. Join the hundreds of people who have already said they will boycott the charity and send a message not just to Sue Ryder, but to any other charity considering the Government’s vile offer of forced free labour carried out by sick and disabled claimants.

Contact info

Telephone: 0845 050 1953 (they also have a freephone number for shopping online at: 0800 917 8123)

General contact form
There well staffed PR office can be reached on: alice.clements@suerydercare.org
To let them know you no longer wish to donate use: paul.martin@suerydercare.org
To find locations and contact details for individual shops visit

Sue Ryder have a youtube channel here
Join the facebook bombardment and tweet them here using this button:
Tweet to @sue_ryder

Sue Ryder shops with individual twitter accounts include:

Tweet to @SueRyderFarrell

Tweet to @SueRyderMoreton

Tweet to @SueRyderLiscard

Tweet to @SueRyderMond

Tweet to @SRBrockworth

Tweet to @SRyderDewsbury

Tweet to @Sueryderlitmoor

Tweet to @SRHaworth1

Tweet to @suerydervandr

Tweet to @SueRyderSandbac

Tweet to @SRReadingRetro

Tweet to @SueRyderKH

Tweet to @SueRyderWinch

Tweet to @SRHeadingley

Tweet to @SueRyderVintage

Sue Ryder shops with active facebook pages include:
(search for “sue ryder” shop on facebook to find more)

Scott Arms Birmingham
South West
Arklow
Reading
Leicester
Pimlico
Bourton on the Water

We urge people not to contact hospices run by the charity or clinical/care staff. This is about ending workfare, not disrupting people’s care.

Whilst it’s well worth trying to speak to a manager or senior individual if possible please bear in mind most people taking calls/emails will be low paid retail/admin staff and could even be on workfare themselves. Be aware that is an offence to make telephone calls or send communications which are threatening, indecent or offensive.

Workfare a quick update

We are being informed that Job Centre Plus advisers are wrongly informing claimants that following the High Court ruling ‘nothing has changed’. This is in fact incorrect. As things currently stand following the ruling by three judges in the Court of Appeal on 12th February, our understanding is that:

1) If people are currently under sanctions from the unlawful schemes, these sanctions should be lifted immediately and they should be put back to first tier sanctions. If you are currently under sanction from one of the unlawful schemes but it has not been lifted, please get in touch.

2) Unless people have been sent updated notices under reg 5 of the new regulations then there cannot be a requirement for them to attend any of the schemes they have been sent on (except Mandatory Work Activity). As Public Interest Lawyers put it:

“The DWP made it clear in submissions to the court that the immediate effect of the judgment was that they would be unable to require people to attend affected schemes and that must be the case. Until lawful Regulations are passed and new notifications are sent out I struggle to see how attendance can be required on the affected schemes.”

3) Unless the government wins the right to appeal to the Supreme Court and wins that appeal, then people who were sanctioned on any of the unlawful schemes should be paid the benefits that were withheld. The government has indicated it will not consider paying this until the appeal decision has been made and has issued misleading guidance to Job Centre staff to tell people that they cannot appeal before then. This is not the case and in some instances you can lose your right to appeal if you do not do so within a month. See the very useful update from Child Poverty Action Group here. As soon as a model letter to appeal is available, we will share it here.

So, for anyone say on a 6 month sanction that sanction should be immediately lifted, their benefits reinstated and they should then go back to the first tier of sanctions (they cannot impose the longer sanctions until there has been the repeated failure to participate).

This week workfare has been judged to have been unlawful. The following companies and charities are involved in workfare:
Poundland, Argos, ASDA
AGE UK, YMCA England, Salvation Army, Sue Ryder, RSPCA, PDSA

There are many more organisations which are profiting from people forced to work on unlawful schemes on this list here.

We hope this helps clarify the situation for people, and we ask them to remind these companies and charities of their shameful behaviour.

The new regulations are available here.

Government Lies In Response To Workfare Petition

An anti-workfare petition setup on the governments petition site reached 10,000 signatures, meaning that the government has to issue a written response to the petition. Their response begins with a barefaced lie:

We do not have Work for Your Benefit or Workfare schemes in this country. Workfare is an American term used to describe employment programmes which force all jobseekers to work at a certain point of their claim in order to continue to receive benefit

So according to the DWP, Mandatory Work Activity – which if you say no to the “offer” you can have your benefits stopped for up to three years – is not forcing people to work in order to continue to receive benefits. Or maybe it also isn’t workfare when on your first day of signing on your are forced to work for 3 months unpaid or be threatened with up to 3 months of withdrawn benefits?

But we’re dont just take our word that the DWP are lying. Take the DWPs whose own guidance states that:

.. mandatory work programmes, such as the MWA and ESE schemes fall within the
meaning of “Work for your benefit” schemes

It is typical of this government to respond to a petition with a lie, after all they have been lying about benefits all the time, and both Ian Duncan-Smith and the former employment secretary Chris Grayling make a habit of it. Perhaps they think that lying about the existence of unemployed and disabled people being used as forced labour is the only way they can stop protests from bringing down the schemes – this is the reason they gave the information commissioner for refusing to tell us which organisations take part in workfare schemes.

If you thought that this petition would change the governments mind over workfare, it should be clear that it won’t – instead, why not follow the DWPs instructions, and join groups around the UK taking action against the charities and companies that take advantage of free labour from these schemes.
This Saturday sees Bradford Against Workfare demonstrating, meeting at 12noon in Centenary Square. Actions happen every weekend in different places, and there will be a week of action in March.

Make Workfare Redundant – Leeds Unemployment Action Group Protest

On the 8th of December Leeds Unemployment Action Group took part in a national protest against companies and charities involved in workfare. We headed onto the streets of Leeds protesting outside various charities like the British Heart Foundation and Scope to companies like Shoe Zone. Talking to members of the public we raised awareness around how exploitative Workfare is not just for the unemployed but those in paid work as well.

Boycott Workfare’s week of action continues today with demonstrations in Kings Lynn, Brighton, York and Staines.

The Conservation ‘Volunteers’ Who Are Forced To Work Unpaid

Keeping up the pressure on British Heart Foundation in Brixton on Wednesday 12th December

Oxfam, Marie Curie and Shelter, who all refused workfare in their stores, have now been joined by others. Scope say they are ending mandatory work schemes as have Age UK (though not necessarily in their independent stores). Cancer Research UK have said they are pulling out of mandatory work activity placements. Meanwhile British Heart Foundation have said they are ‘moving away’ from mandated work, though have continued to take placements in their stores.

It now seems that the largest providers of mandated workfare are likely to be conservation and environmental charities such as The Conservation Volunteers (TCV), a mis-named charity who have been quietly building an army of unpaid workers.

TCV (formally known as BTCV) , have previously boasted of employing 20,000 unpaid workers on various government schemes since the 1980s. They currently hold lucrative contracts with the DWP to deliver Mandatory Work Activity. The so-called charity have forced 589 people into unpaid work, often for private companies on this scheme alone.

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