Workfare is preventing people finding jobs

Work programme is preventing people finding jobs

The government’s outsourced back-to-work scheme for the long-term unemployed is not only not working, it is holding back jobseekers, the PCS union points out in a press release in response to figures released today (27th November).

The Department for Work and Pensions’ own data shows the work programme, which has handed multi-million pound contracts to companies such as A4e and G4S, is failing to get jobseekers into sustainable work.

With providers only managing a 2.5% success rate in the first 12 months, the performance is worse than the government’s own assessment of what would happen if it did nothing and allowed jobseekers to find their own jobs.

The PCS calls for the work programme to be scrapped and the work done by Jobcentre Plus staff.

Anti-workfare campaigners in Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ) today vowed to continue the fight to end the government’s so-called welfare-to-work schemes.
Paul Callanan, YFJ national organiser said:

“Today’s figures have confirmed that the government’s welfare-to-work schemes have nothing to do with getting people decent jobs.

“They are really about demonising the unemployed and punishing them for economic problems caused by the banks and big business.

“Under these schemes, less than 3.6% of claimants found a job in six months, worse than even the government’s paltry target of 5.5%.

“Rather than being helped to find work the unemployed are being forced into modern day slavery: workfare.

“Claimants often work full time jobs (removing incentives for employers to create any actual vacancies) without being paid a penny! All the while huge private companies like Serco are raking in massive profits for enforcing this, threatening vulnerable people with harsh sanctions and destitution.

“Young, unemployed and working people will not stand idly by as this government seeks to force ever greater numbers onto these dead end schemes.

“We say scrap welfare-to-work and invest in genuine job creation, providing secure employment paid a living wage!”