The Socialist 25 May 2011

Unite to stop the cuts

National shop stewards conference - Unite to stop the cuts

As the cost of living soars...: 'We are going to fight back'!

An offer we must refuse

Why Liverpool needs a needs budget

Showing an alternative to cuts in Dorset

Battling to defend the NHS

NHS demo in London needs to be a step towards united national strike action

Unison leaders failing to adopt the demands of health workers

Challenging Tories' plans to kill our health service

PCS conference: developing strategies for struggle

UCU facing battles on all fronts

Southampton city council workers strike

Three day strike to stop redundancies at Sheffield College

Firefighters discuss strategy to fight cuts

Workplace news in brief

"We are London Met Uni, not EasyMet"

Atos Origin - profiting from pain

'Slutwalk' protests: Women reject sexism

Slave labour schemes must be resisted

Leadership failed print workers in vital battle

Review: The street that cut everything

McNulty's railway report: not 'value for money'!

Care homes privatisation hits the elderly

News in brief

Eyewitness report: Mass youth protests in Spain

Ireland: 'Reclaim the unions'

Greece: Resist bosses' agenda and the far right

PDFs for this issue

PO Box 1398, Enfield EN1 9GT

020 8988 8777

[email protected]

Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/672/12107

Search the site	Printable version

Home | The Socialist 25 May 2011 | Join the Socialist Party

Subscribe | Donate

Slave labour schemes must be resisted

Graham O'Reilly

The supposed training opportunities the government is offering young people are nothing more than a back door way of moving people from the unemployment figures into unskilled work whilst not having to spend any money.

An example of this happened recently in Boots in Southampton, where the manager has agreed to take two people on for work experience. They will receive basic Jobseeker's Allowance of around £45 a week and work a 38 hour week for the next three months, which is equivalent to £1.20 an hour.

When challenged by a member of staff, who is a member of the Socialist Party and Youth Fight for Jobs, about the fact that this will take work away from the fully employed staff, the manager became abusive, accusing him of stirring up trouble.

The manager called him an extremist who has no idea about how the world works and said he was not to talk to other members of staff about his ideas as he was frightening them with his lies.

He also said the people doing the work experience should be grateful for the opportunity.

Over the next seven years between £3 billion and £5 billion of government money will be paid to various organisations to help tackle 'long term benefit dependency'.

This money is to come from the benefit 'savings' made from people getting back to work. The government trumpeted these organisations as belonging to the voluntary sector.

However of the 18 organisations only two are from the voluntary sector, the rest are private companies. But there is no public accountability within the voluntary or the private sector. This is nothing short of the wholesale privatisation of the unemployed.

In this issue

What we think