Two videos have emerged on youtube which appear to represent the reality of the Mandatory Work Activity scheme which Chris Grayling this week announced is to be extended to tens of thousands more unemployed people.
In the two part video diary, the claimant films aspects of the work he has been sent to take part in by the Welfare to Work company Working Links, who are currently mired in fraud investigations. The work involves tree brashing, a laborious task which involves stripping lower branches from trees in heavy forest growth.
Astonishingly, according to the video, the person concerned was provided with no protective clothing or equipment and was even required to provide his own saw. He was also left to work alone and completely unsupervised, despite the potentially dangerous nature of the work. It also highlights the fact that his transport costs to the job had not been met in full and that Working Links suggested he take a 90 minute bus journey followed by a five mile walk to his place of work each day in order to keep his costs down.
On Mandatory Work Activity (MWA) claimants are sent to work for 30 hours on a range of ‘community’ projects for no pay for four weeks at a time. The scheme is used as Community Service for unemployed people deemed not trying hard enough to find work by Jobcentre advisors. Failure to attend MWA leads to punitive benefit sanctions which leave people in dire poverty and facing possible homelessness.
There is nothing in the videos which suggests they may be inauthentic, but even if they were to be an elaborate hoax, they represent far from the worst case scenario that some benefit claimants now face.
All of the allegations made in the videos are perfectly consistent with the rules of Mandatory Work Activity. In some cases the scheme could be even more punitive. The person who made the videos appears relatively young, healthy and able-bodied. Due to the brutal assessment regime for sickness benefits, huge numbers of sick and disabled people have now been bullied onto Jobseekers Allowance. Jobcentre staff, most of whom have no training in sickness or disability issues, can now send sick and disabled people on this scheme where they too could be sent to work in the forests of Scotland, carrying out hard manual labour for the pittance of £67.50 a week.
As noted on the Black Triangle Campaign’s website this week, the Social Security Advisory Committee warned that people with ‘invisible’ disabilities such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, autistic spectrum disorders or those with mental health conditions are particularly vulnerable to being referred to Mandatory Work due to the nature of their conditions.
Previous workfare schemes have usually come with a small top up to benefit payments to help meet the costs of being in full time, unpaid employment. These payments have all been scrapped by the current Government. As the videos point out, substantial costs can be incurred when carrying out physical work, including the simple fact you need to eat more and take more baths.
This is the stark reality of this Government’s welfare reforms. People with serious and life threatening conditions can now be sent to carry out hard physical labour whilst they are barely given enough to pay for food. If the video is to be believed, and there’s no reason not to, they may not even be granted safety clothing, equipment or adequate supervision.
Tragically an increasing number of people have taken their own lives due to the brutality of the current welfare reforms. With Mandatory Work about to be increased on an industrial scale, it is only a matter of time before there are even more deaths due to unscrupulous employers – many of whom are charities – forcing people into unsafe and unhealthy working conditions under threat of benefit sanctions.
The first of the two videos is below, the second can be watched on youtube.
The maker of the video diary recommends those facing unpaid labour find out their rights by visiting the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty website or http://www.consent.me.uk/
I wish i could say i was surprised, But i am not. I think there should be more people who will record the exact type of work on these schemes. If only to protect themselves..Of course he must be a scrounger you know as he is on the work programme, the fact he is on the work programme must mean he is lazy and doesnt want to work… This is the sickening attitude of these dangerous people in charge as well as the scheme creators.
There you have it…open air death camp. They can’t touch me for now…but I kid you not,if I was forced to work in conditions like that,with my illnesses I would end up DEAD. I am not exaggerating. Wet,cold,dark…no suitable clothing and/or tools.
This is breaking the law on so many fronts. Health & Safety should be getting involved immediately.
Will anything be done? Somehow I doubt it. UKplc has morphed into a eugenics nightmare.
Coffins R Us will be a real company any day now.
The ConDem cocksuckers.
Meanwhile,the celebrity jamboree rolls on.
They want us to be slaves. We are expendable. They want us to die. Then they’ll just wheel in the next tranche of cannon fodder.
When do the barricades go up?
Working Links! This is the same shower of shit who sent one of their victims to a dockyard – he was DECAPITATED!
Working Links’ victim at the dockyard – that was in the early days of Employment Zones, wasn’t it? It seems so long ago now… Working Links started out as scum and are still scum now. Common trick in their Welsh operations is to take their victims’ perfectly good CVs and re-write them in the Working Links house style – bad spelling, layout and grammar, lots of typos, factual errors, you name it – most Working Links staff are at best only semi-literate. People keep using their own CVs, as they know there’s no chance of a job using the feeble documents that Working Links provide, then get sanctioned as, apparently, failing to use a CV that looks like it was written by a 5 year old “proves” that they are not actively seeking work! Needless to say any sanction doubt raised by Working Links is simply and immediately rubberstamped by the DM, usually the claimant gets no chance to comment at all before the sanction is applied.
That is shocking if people are being made to do forestry work without protective clothing and proper training, people could be killed or seriously injured. What the fuck are you playing at grayling? It won’t improve the countries workforce at all if they loose their fingers trying to operate chainsaws without proper training you dick head! And he was asked to provide his own saw, where’s he supposed to get that from, his ass?!
What about traps, snares etc. that are very common in woodland; those things can tear your leg off!
The people who sent him to slog away in this forest (Working Links); have probably never done a proper days work in their lives: and they get a nice salary .
There was somebody on Facebook the other day praising Workfare and the proposed extension of it. They worked for Working Links, they ended up deleting their own comments after they were lambasted for their atrocious spelling and grammar. Nice work if you can get it!
Fascism comes to Britain.
a common mistake is dyslexia is a learning difficulty not a learning disability.however you do need to stand up and not be frightened,anyone who has a disability has a case in law of unfair treatment.anyone with a mental health problem who failed to attend should have this taken into account by decision makers.
always appeal
Why on earth is he doing it? Or he has seemingly already completed it now? If the video is genuine and it’s not some hoax, then fair enough for exposing it,
He could tell them (have told them) to stick the mandatory work activity up their arse! Straight off the bat he needs eye protection. Gloves, the lot!
No sanction could be applied, If this is genuine then they are bang out of order, The guy should have been complaining, not doing that crap for JSA.
But when you have that threat of potential homelessness and struggling to eat then you cannot really blame people for complying, even if it is reluctantly. But that guy would be perfectly justified in refusing with good cause. And be given more options in the first place of what he could do with regard to MWRA.
you could sit in the woods smoking all day and do sod all basically as no ones checking up
which is what we did on the same schemes in the 80s, its exactly like the manpower services labouring for next to nowt scheme from 1985
then again if this was me id sit there, ring the local gypsies I know to meet me there and we could nick all the wood and flog it and id get free fuel for my fire
Why is agreeing to this? This is unbelievable!
No supervision, no safety equipment – despite being explicitly promised?
I don’t get this at all. But nothing surprises me anymore with Working Links.
There is a legal case to answer here, surely?
I’ve been going on about this for some time – who is responsible for public and personal liability insurance? If you’re not employed, it’s not the employer; the programme provider is a go-between; the DWP isn’t responsible for the “work” just the benefits and sanctions. So who ensures the participants are safe?
I’ve trawled through as much of the guidance as I can stand, and I can’t find this anywhere. If the able-bodied are being treated this way, what chance has someone in the WRAG got, having already been declared incapable of work but only able to do “work related activity” whatever that is.
What happens if a claimant is injured, or seriously believes that the “work” puts them at risk? Are these placements checked beforehand? If not, why not? What the video shows is working practice that is illegal, and no insurer would pay out for injury sustained in those circumstances.
I can’t find any guidance on people who turn up to a placement, decide it isn’t safe, and refuse to do it – beyond the usual refusal sanctions. I suspect there’s a Service Level Agreement between the DWP and the provider which assumes the placements are safe, but it’s not clear in the DWP guidance.
I’m also concerned about the offices where the providers do the CV’s etc. as it seems to me they are overcrowded and probably not compliant with fire regulations, let alone with reasonable access and adjustment for disabled people.
Even if this video is a spoof, the concerns it raises are ones that some of us have been worried about for some time.
It’s all very dodgy, if not dangerous, generally – never mind this example if it’s true.
If it is, I think the worker/claimant should take this to a lawyer – there are a few doing pro-bono challenges, and the more we get the better.
Does anyone know how the Cait Reilly case is going?
An FOI response just published suggests the employer is responsible (on work experience at least): http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/work_experience_health_and_safet
I am a Degree qualified PE teacher, with 6 years higher academic education. I have worked in johnlewis twice, sportsdirect and for G4S security. I undertake voluntary work once a week. I have been sent on the mandatory work activity and have been claiming JSA for near 6 months..
Basically this millionaires’ government has spunked a whole load of our money by awarding a contract to some of their mates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Links_(Employment)_Ltd who then apply the stick of doing pointless work to maintain discipline among the unemployed when there are no REAL jobs. I wonder if Working Links also receive payment from the companies and organisations that benefit from this slave labour.
In collusion are the DWP job centre staff, but I hope we don’t find that they have a quota to fill to force people to go on these 4 week programmes. Jacky Bafoot remembers the same thing happening in the 80s. Our present day out-of-touch toffs are showing the same Slitherin-like contempt for the 99% as their ancestors did in the First World War when the generals obstinately tried to make trench warfare work, no matter the cost in human terms.
I’m not suggesting that everyone who’s been to Eton/other is trying to turn our country back into a feudal society, but look at the evidence of the first 2 years of this coalition. There’s a discernible attitude, aloofness, call it what you will amongst the cabinet that ONLY they have the answers. They have no effective ideas for rebalancing society or the economy and are backtracking/U-turning/abandoning many of their ideas when they’re proven to be ridiculous. Clearly they are too incompetent to solve the nation’s problems therefore we need a new government that can do this.
The Labour party does not have sufficient credibility so now is the time to think outside the box (or outside the Westminster bubble): “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them” – Albert Einstein
Vote For Yourself is a campaign to introduce an Internet system for the public to use to debate policy (as we’re already doing piecemeal) and then to vote in new laws based on the collective experience of millions of real people dealing with real problems in real life. Given the opportunity to vote on measures to reduce unemployment, I expect the public would see the sense in letting people retire at 60 and giving young people a start in life. It costs about the same, if not more, to keep a young person on the dole than to pay someone’s pension.
What is the coalition’s next “initiative” on this vitally important issue going to be – bring back chain gangs?
“What is the coalition’s next “initiative” on this vitally important issue going to be – bring back chain gangs?”
Probably.
“40,000 ‘problem job-seekers’ will be told to work for their dole in new benefits crackdown
The scheme’s placements include painting schools, cleaning up parks, working in charity shops or picking up litter”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2150953/40-000-problem-job-seekers-told-work-dole.html#ixzz1wSrWGHqa
Hi, the chains won’t be real of course. In principle I have nothing against efforts to get everyone to make a contribution, but paying the private sector to “beast” people isn’t the answer when the very rich avoid paying taxes and are treated with kid gloves. One law for them, one law for us.
Hi, yes no chains…yet. If something needs contributing to society it’s up to society to create a job from that need and pay a fair living wage to do it, but of course these Tory fascists don’t want to do that. It makes them feel sick to their stomachs to pay employees a fair living wage for the work they do, they’d rather institute slavery.
If you own slaves then you need to feed, house and look after them a bit. Far easier to give them the barest pittance to survive upon and then threaten to remove it if you don’t do what you’re told. We could keep this up for ages, I think we’re on the same verse on the same page of the proverbial hymn book, friend me on Facebook – there’s only one DvG!
I went on something similar in the 70s, I was sent to Sharp St in Walkden Gt Manchester. My dole money for the week was around £19.00 for myself my missus and a couple of young sprogs, the same money I got for traveling 14 miles a day there and back 5 days a week. Anyway myself and a few other layabouts were forced to this work camp where we had to make things with wood Welsh Dressers, Picnic Tables, Sideboards etc. I trained as a Mechanic for 5 years. We found out they were selling the goods to Habitat We took to nailing them to the benches with six inch nails and signs attached saying sell these you bastards. My previous employer was an out and out Tory bastard who thought £22.00 a week was a fair wage for the thousand pound a week he made off me. I started work at his garage fresh from school with a good mechanical knowledge he taught me nothing. Apart from how to hate Tories
My parents worked in HR and training and later set up a firm in the early 80s that won the YTS contract in Bournemouth, but they did actually find real jobs for lots of people over the years. I can testify to this because many of them became friendly with the staff and would come to events like barbecues and I would find out from them what help they’d actually received (I was just as “bolshie” then as I am now). Thing is, the south has lots more jobs. Up north (and in this specific case Scotland) it’s much harder to find any decent jobs. I was watching Alex Salmond earlier answering questions and it contrasted with Westminster being on holiday again after a few days back at “work” following the Easter break. Meanwhile the Tories are encouraging everyone to work harder. I’ve reached the point where I’m no longer collecting evidence of corruption, incompetence etc. It’s obvious to everyone that our political system is no longer working. As explained above, Vote For Yourself is my alternative suggestion and if we all used the Internet to vote on X Factor etc we’d understand it straightaway. Best bit is that whichever country does it first will effectively get rid of its political class, the rest of the world will follow and we need a global revolution to introduce a new banking system.
People scared about losing their benefits, thats why they accept dangerous positions, Its the black box system that they have. The provider can do anything to you to “help” you get a job.. If you refuse then sanction time.. There should be a reason about health and safety, but they will no doubt find a reason thats not H&S
this wouldn’t surprise me – I’ve heard similar-ish horror stories in the 80′s & 90′s only people were working cash in hand £1/2 ph + benefits http://eddiegillard.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/queen-put-at-risk-by-workfare-provider/
Just call an ambulance. Say you fell and bumped your head making you feel dizzy. Do it EVERY day. Complain about headaches you recieved from your fall. Then SUE the bastards !!! They are CLEARLY breaking health and safety rules
Have you been the victim of an accident while on a workfare placement? Then call Workfare Claims Direct? J. Void recieved £1 million in compensation. Call Workfare Claims Direct today!
I commented on this vid on youtube, but worth reproducing here:
Probably not much use now, or immediately in any case, but there is one way you can fight back, long term, against being lumbered – excuse the pun – with forestry work. Take a bag of nails and a hammer with you… bang a few random trees full of nails, when they are eventually harvested and sent to the mill it buggers all the saw blades up and the grower of the timber doesn’t get paid anything
Thanks for this post. Truly shocking. Sent UTube link to papers.
Lumber jacking (what this victim of mandatory work activity was doing) is recognised as THE most dangerous job.
It is clear to me that the problems with the benefits system need to be looked at from a service users point of view. I have recently come off JSA, I claimed for 6 and a half months. During that time I had to apply 3 times. I twice had my claim closed because they claim I had missed appointments, I had not. However I still had to follow the process of re claiming, as if I had not attended an interview or refused a job. Each time I lost two week benefit, was forced to claim crisis loans (of which there were many! because of how that system works, also serious problems that should be addressed) and spend hours on the phone calling one dept using another depts phone! attend 3 appointments and have my claim processed by another dept oh and then have the loan deducted by another dept! How much does this cost each time? Lets just say I did miss the appointment….could they not spend 10p in the 15 mins they are sitting waiting for me and pick up the phone and say ‘ Hi, have you forgotten your appointment? 3 strikes and your out!’ Common sense! Please?
“Woe unto them that buildeth their house by unrighteousness, and their chambers by wrong; that useth their neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth them not for their work”.
- Jeremiah 22:13
Hi to Stig of the Skips, Just watched your videos.
I’m 4’8″ tall and weigh around 37kg. Also I have ME/CFS, and epilepsy, and
a number of other disabilities. In 2009 the Work Scheme sent me on a very similar thing. Despite the fact I have no upper body strength they felt I should go to work at a farm and outdoor centre for a month. I was in bad health when I started and worse when I finished. The centre had previously refused me as a volunteer saying it was against health and safety to employ me. But when they joined the scheme they seemed happy to take me on. Unfortunately I was not on my own. I had to get up at 5am each morning and leave around 6am for a 7am bus. To arrive at work there was a walk, more of a yomp, of miles along roads and basically mud. A yomp/run, with all the stuff I had to carry. On even a good day my ME makes me tired all the time, all these were bad days and so when I ARRIVED at work I was completely shattered but then had to get straight into hours of hard labour. The trip back was the same except that because the bus left early, we were expected to sprint carrying all our stuff. And because we were on a work scheme the bus drivers often refused to take us home. I have a pass saying I’m too disabled to drive, but the others bought tickets. About twice I had to walk about 10-12 miles home along the motorway, illegally but the bus had refused to take me even though I beat the others to the stop, the villagers treated us like a chain gang and spat at us. My co-workers were one of the worst aspects of the job, They had just got out of prison and one had stabbed somebody. As well as being around them all day I had to endure them on the trips there and back. The knife guy kept talking about stabbing, and another guy was a total racist who constantly went on about his hatred of P-i’s and n-rs. He also said rape was cool, and on his politer days made endless misogynistic comments. Also they hated ‘queers’. So I was in constant danger of assault. They turned up drunk and high to work. And called me a lot of size related things, which the Working Stinks lot told me I had to put up with. We also got sent together to Group Therapy and asked personal stuff. As well as being nobody’s business I was certainly not about to share my private life with those guys. There wasn’t a toilet, at the farmhouse the accessible toilet turned out to be totally inaccessible for me. I was allowed 1 or 2 trips a day to the bosses’ toilet but wasn’t really meant to use it, and got in trouble as it was a half hour trip. Because I have a compressed spinal cord and numbness and kidney problems, I need access to a decent toilet. And could not drink, regardless of how hot it got. Also I couldn’t eat, my budget for a month of minimum rations was £10 and after that I’d owe myself money. I now had a budget of £0 to buy a week’s worth of extra food, needed for the hard labour, but Working Links wouldn’t help. They sent me on a long bus ride and longer
walk to the one place in the region that sells PPE. Each item cost more than a week of my dole. Working Stinks paid for it but it was pointless.
There was a sort of rubberised 2-piece suit, very heavy. The smallest size was too large, and I had to sew it to adjust it, so it was no longer waterproof. In cold weather it is frozen and clings, in hot weather it is boiling and sweaty, if in a polytunnel under direct sun it burns you unless you take it off. The arms and legs were still too long. The whole thing was so unwieldy and large it made work harder as it got in the way and tripped me up. The boots were not only baking hot and didn’t stay on, they were too large. They were the smallest available in the UK. The steel toe caps dug into my feet. I got blisters and bleeding feet every day. When I tried to bandage my feet I couldn’t get the boots on. I added a hi-vis jacket I had to buy, to stop myself getting run over or hit by machines/diggers. The gloves were so large I couldn’t move my hands, so had to work with bare hands which then froze. The only weather was either cold and raining, or scorching hot. A boss said ‘go to the toilet against the wall’, which my co-workers did. They got sent to extra tasks, one job was using power tools in a woodwork factory, the other was pulling up bracken on a mountain. Apart from not wanting to listen to more ‘let’s kill a jungle bunny or a faggot’ talk, I saw how dangerous both these tasks were. The former, I was excused from as I’m too light to control power tools and have epilepsy. The latter, I refused to do as there was no toilet and the bracken rips up your hands and I’m multiple-allergic. The others got made to throw trees and branches 8-12ft in the air into a chipping truck, it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to do it. I couldn’t lift the smallest branch. So I got the ‘lighter’ (!) job of being sent to climb around half a dozen 20m-high mounds of ‘waste’. That is a euphemism as it turned out. There were all sorts of things in there, condoms and needles. Most was from council gardens. Also there was excrement and dead animals. But mainly there was rubbish. I had to climb using two digging-sticks as pitons, and dig in the muck all day with my hands. Because of my fits I fell off the top loads of times, I got cut on broken glass etc. Any junk had to go down again in sacks and buckets. When I got to the end of doing all 4 sides of hill 6, I had to start over at hill 1.The junk also had to be separated into recyclable and otherwise.
Once I got sent to sort out a tree nursery, picking up trees knocked over. This would have been tolerable except that the day I got sent to do this it was raining and a gale. I had a job in the polytunnels which was sorting out endless crates of plantpots, boring but not too bad, except too hot and I kept passing out. A few times I got to guard the polytunnel and sell plants, but wasn’t allowed to plant plants till the last week, when there was also digging etc. for new/old crops. It was this time I had a bad injury, I had a seizure while pushing a barrow, and fell down, and the sharp edge of a Raised Bed (wood) was what my leg came down onto. The bosses didn’t care. Other times I loaded and unloaded and pushed and tipped, wheelbarrows for hours. The ‘best’ point of the work scheme was the day I came into work (one guy had been skiving off) and asked where the skiving co-worker was. (Oh by the way he was also bragging about the fact he had a girlfriend about to have their next baby, within days, and she didn’t know he had a secret other girlfriend he was having an affair with. Girlfriend 2 may have been unaware of Girlfriend 1. At the same time he and his ex-con friend were making remarks about wanting other women; and were actually coming onto and harrassing a young woman I know who works at the farm. She is a lesbian and her girlfriend works there too. They called her available because she didn’t have a boyfriend, I dropped enough hints to put them off. When the penny dropped, they were actually discussing raping her, so it would cure her of being a lesbian.) It turned out he had been SACKED, because he called an older female boss ‘ugly dyke’, though she is straight. Also for taking drugs. Of course, it is impossible to sack a slave. So he was just banned from the farm, and they got the work scheme involved, and the work scheme had the DWP stop his dole.
A problem is that months later the ex-con guys were following me round
like stalkers. They never, either during the time of the work scheme or when stalking me later, called me by my name. They called me something to do with my size, let’s just say they addressed me (hundreds of times a day) as Midget. They made ‘midget jokes’ a lot.
They barely had 2 brain cells to rub together between them. They called the boss of the polytunnel a queer (he is straight). And said enough nasty things about ‘spazzes’ and ‘crips’. It might have been marginally more bearable without having to work with these people, but… The government didn’t say how they deal with issues like their chain gang bullying eachother or not getting on, or harm by/to third parties. People could attack you on the street if you were ‘litter picking’ for example, or follow you and attack you later when off duty. The things get conflated: the stigma is there as if the poor have committed a crime. When I was leaving I saw the next batch of us were now working alongside a gang of
convicted criminals with Community Payback on orange jumpsuits. At our short ‘lunch’ break where I could not eat or drink even if I had food, I was expected to share a tiny dirty caravan with the others, while they smoked inside it. I soon refused to, and went first to the farmhouse and later to the polytunnel, to shelter. Because of the waste heaps and having nothing but a coldwater sink at home, I constantly stank. My cuts got infected, and I risked tetanus as the booster I was meant to have in 2000 got denied due to NHS funding cuts. None of the tools I was given were small enough to use properly/safely, and my hands got cut and bruised trying. This is even before I get onto the Digging. I was in trouble for refusing to discuss my disabilities with the co-workers at Group Therapy, they sat us round a table and asked us our medical information. (Once at A4E the nasty bitch grilling me was so smug about how she has a job and I don’t, making her a better person and me a failure, I just lost it. I said really quietly, that she assumes it’s not the other way around. She said what do you mean, and I said ‘well you work for A4E’. And of course for saying that, she stopped my benefit.)
The Digging. [There is a book and film called Holes, I have not read or seen it. It may have been based on Tank Girl the graphic novel, which has a scene with the same thing. I think the work scheme had seen these sources and instead of thinking 'how fascist', thought 'what a good idea'.] What we were spending most of our time doing. We got given a 6ft spade or shovel, and a patch of ground. And we spent days each week being forced to just DIG HOLES and fill them in again. In the last week or so we had to load barrows from a giant sack of earth. While I struggled on, the yobs did stuff like stealing my shovel and barrow.
And I got reports on me saying I was not trying hard enough! Um any harder and I’ll die?! I hoped we didn’t see any animals on the way to work, if one turned up my co-workers invariably tried to kill it. I’m pacifist and vegetarian, and got a lot of stick for this from ‘the yobs’. Every night I got back late and knackered and aching all over, couldn’t get the energy to cook, so my one daily meal could be cancelled 3 or 4 days in a row and I’d go to work hungry. I dropped to about 30kg in a month. In
the metalwork factory I was thinking of making a sign with old nails and stuff welded together, the sign was going to go above the work scheme,
the sign was going to say ‘ARBEIT MACHT FREI’. Some nights I would step through the door and pass out in my work clothes and boots, and wake up at 5am to start the next day. People in most ‘proper’ jobs don’t work so hard but they are still wearing themselves out till they die, stuck in jobs with no interest, skill, advancement. Just for something called ‘Profit’, none of which ever goes to you. After a month I was in terrible physical shape on top of my existing disabilities. I’d seen all kinds of things when at A4E (one of the worst) – a man with one leg told to go up ladders and stairs; men with terminal cancer being sent to be bricklayers
and hodcarriers. Working Links sent people with agoraphobia and anxiety disorder to work in callcentres and busy offices. Scout Enterprises stuck me in a Group Therapy with an enemy I used to live with, and asked personal questions during this. Working Links exempted
me at first but made me sit in a kitchen for 2 hours doing nothing, then sent me home (though it was 1 hour on the bus). They wouldn’t let me read or write instead of just doing nothing. Jobcentre PUS (!), it’s actually called that – gold medal to whoever nicked the L!- tried so many stupid things over the years that if they hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it. In 1998 they told me to do a job which was permanent, 7-day, fulltime, teaching English. I’m not a teacher. The job was in South Korea. I suppose this is what Tebbit/Cameron/Moseley
(it’s so easy to confuse them) meant by ‘get on your bike’. 2 weeks ago they wanted me to be a lorry driver (never allowed to drive), or work at an abattoir. Also they did enough attempts at construction work, I don’t have a card and can’t lift stuff or do ladders/heights. Many were sent with no training or PPE in 2011 to demolish a building. Because they were never official employees the foreman decided they didn’t need PPE or training. It was full of asbestos, yum… In the last two years the
Jobcentre forced me to apply for a job at a military academy, as a recruiter to get young people to enlist. I asked how this was appropriate and pointed out the young people of the city keep trying to attack me or put me in skips. Though I applied, Jobcentre called it a refusal and stopped my dole. They keep saying I did benefit fraud but each time are unable to explain what I’m meant to have done, or produce evidence. They stopped my dole for ‘refusing to apply’ at their own call centre a few miles away, though in fact I’d applied, done the exam, got to the interview, and had been told there somebody with no transport should not be interviewed. It was a job to be on the phone and kick people off benefits. Also I refused ONCE, it was ages ago and was to be in a meat packing plant. They said vegetarians can’t legally object to meat jobs. The other year A4E tried to send me to clear all the vegetation and scrub off a disused church. The local papers praised it and called A4E etc. heroes, and called the workers volunteers. I was so angry, the papers didn’t say it was a slave labour force. Many were old, many disabled, and several had cancer. And there were no toilets for miles. I did refuse to go, on health grounds. Scout Enterprises denied they were the Scouts, but online I saw they were. UK Scouts may have changed a bit, still demand oaths to the Queen and Country and God. I can come up with oaths ABOUT the Queen and country and God… In the USA the Scouts ban atheist kids, kids of atheist parents, pagans, people seen as unpatriotic. But mostly it bans gay people. I’d been refusing for years to go, but was then forced to go. When I first saw them there was no disabled access. When I officially started there was a ramp to get in, but
there are stairs to all the toilets, no disabled toilet, no disabled access to the kitchen or sink. They never accepted that there’s a case to answer, where their parent organisation actively discriminates. All of the schemes ordered me not to talk to anyone about what goes on there .
Once, at my 2nd or 3rd time at Working Links (my first was right after leaving hospital, and it badly messed up my recovery, I tore stitches walking there. I wasn’t meant to leave bed!), the woman there ordered me to lie that my blackouts had miraculously stopped and apply for a driving licence, and they would pay for the licence and lessons and tests. She couldn’t stretch to a car, fuel, road tax, insurance etc. In other words I was a forced participant in a government work scheme, and a member of staff in the subcontractors asked me openly to break the law.
I said this was illegal. She said by telling the truth about my seizures, I was ‘making myself unemployable’. And guess what? She stopped my benefit! Though I was STILL recovering from hospital. And they were asking me to be a hodcarrier. The other month Jobcentre told me to carry frozen animal carcases and I said a) No b) They are bigger and heavier than me. c) When I worked in a cheese factory I was in a deepfreeze in PPE and nearly froze to death, I nearly lost fingers and toes. The closest Jobcentre come to specific charges, they have repeatedly accused me of having a paid job. But they refuse to tell me what they are alleging that job is. I got my dole stopped once when I went to a job interview and the people refused to hire me because I’m a dwarf. The dole people said I deliberately messed up the interview. Actually I was trying though the boss said some really homophobic things
and was racist and ablist, but at the time I needed the money to pay my living costs. I didn’t get a job though. I got to a job interview for a department store and they said they won’t hire disabled people. I work now in 2 main places as a volunteer, but one is with a boss who is Christian and rants all day how much she hates ‘homosexuals’. The other year an employment agency got me a job. It was landscaping and gardening at a new shopping centre being built. I turned up for work and they said the agency didn’t say I was a dwarf. Before I signed in or touched a tool, I was sacked on the spot. At my first time with Working Links the man there told all the other staff and service users (many of them dangerous) stuff from my medical records I’d not even told him. Plus stuff about my health. Working Stinks, aka Wanking Links, told me in 2011 to do a forced labour job digging up the roads. With no PPE or training. I refused. Would I even be able to control/lift a pneumatic drill?
I could have a tic or a fit and drill right through my foot. Or the circular saw they cut slabs with: I could have a seizure or blackout and fall on it and cut off my leg. Of course OUR bodies, the poor, aren’t worth anything except as fertiliser. People like ‘justice’ (????!!!!) secretary Ken Clarke should be forced to do these schemes for themselves and see how they like it. Kenneth Clarke looks like a pig. Oh I’m sorry that is so offensive….to pigs. I unreservedly apologise to every porcine mammalian quadruped. (A sentence which, according to the stereotypes about the poor, I could never produce) When it is thirdhand I actually read….the Guardian. Just thinking about that forest: you could get lost, or stuck and die. Branches can fall on you. And somebody could freak out in the dark. If a work party is mixed-sex, unsupervised: when will there be the first reported case of a male slave on Cameron’s chain gang raping a female slave? (This is also a risk in urban settings, people cleaning graffiti in a Community Payback group could use all the
stairwells and other hiding places to rape or beat up somebody else.)
Another ‘job’ they wanted me to do involved climbing into skips, I could
not even get up there to get in it. What if somebody picking litter gets a hernia, needlestick injury etc? Or is it fine if poor people get HIV as they only sleep with other poor people?
If anyone should get a proper job, it is the staff of the jobcentres and work programmes. The other week they never bothered checking the forms I’d spent days filling in. Because they were understaffed. Because they were on strike. How the hell could I support the strike? They get paid, a lot, to sit there and insult us and stop our benefits. They don’t even know us. They don’t even provide anything remotely resembling ‘service’ or ‘help’. Today they believed that just because I am poor, I am unable to fill in a form. I’m the one blamed for not getting a single one of the 7,000+ jobs I’ve applied for in the last 14 years. Many were the same job, most were McJobs, a few were decent jobs I could do in my sleep. People on the dole can’t go on strike. Years ago I tried to start a National Union of Unemployed, and got in big trouble. When you are forced to apply for unsuitable jobs the forms ask things like ‘Why do you want this job?’ The shortest answer would be to say ‘I don’t', but now they check, you have to be more subtle than that. Ironically you then have to pretend you want the job, so the jobcentre make you lie, (they make you lie you’re fit and able to work, but only because most disabled people get shoved onto JSA not ESA/DLA., and there’s no other benefit).
Often the best thing in your arsenal is the truth, you tell the employer in detail exactly how many adjustments they will need to cope with your disabilities, and how much time you need off work. Try doing all the above and being a student as well, funded only by your dole; and you start to crack. (In my case I had to combine major hospital stays and everyday disability, with the jobcentres and work programmes, and being a student.)
During my encounters with Working Links all office staff at my local branch seem pre occupied with turning uplate clocking off early and ensuring that their end of year office xmas party arangements are in place. Futhermore and as a specific point of health and safety little regard is paid to who enteres the offices (Possible anti governmental terrorists) The daily fire/attendance log is not administered adequateley in any way shape or form. Were a potentiol terrorist to seek an opportunity to conduct his activities he/she could do so without challenge. IE He /She could remain within the building either uninvited or remain behind later within the WC to activate any potential threat of their choosing. I am sure that this scenario is not unique to the local Working Link Office I attend which is run by low calibre disenchanted lazy public servants. Frequently the office has been closed whithout notice which represents a lattitude that is not extended to people/clients who do not attend without immediate sanction. One law for one and another for another! Equaly so often Working Links employees alienate their clients by dressing as if they have dragged themselves to work after a night out and smell of overpowering expensive perfume which meerley seeks to highlight how out of touch and un empathetic they are regarding the plight of those seeking work. Futhermore recently when I was starving due to financial difficylties I arrived at my local office to find a birthday party in full swing with an abindance of buffet food paid fot by youir guess is as good as mine! Group 4 regularily attend to replenish petty cash but are nor recieved by any nominated person which may invite the interest of hard up and desperate third parties who are in attendance at the Offices. I believe that Working Links Employees treat thetir clients with contempt, take the money and run and are of a lower calibre of intelect than county borough employees which is saying something. if half of the money spent on this ineffective organisation was re directed in to supporting small buisnesses there would be no need for the same.
Kind regards
Ours is the same. You might not have eaten anything for 3 or 4 days then at Work Programme they are partying. The food is only for staff, not the ‘Dole Scum’ and others sent there. In fact they (though being paid for you being there) resent your presence and want you gone as quickly as possible. So how are you to do the 40 hours jobsearch on bust computers at an often shut WPP, with about 20 minutes given to use the computers WHEN they can be bothered to be open/turn up, WHEN there is a free computer that works? Got told quite often to leave as soon as I arrived. Once the other week I went there (1 hour walk in cold and rain each way), made it up the fire escape to where the ‘classroom’ is. Nobody there. Deserted and dark.
BUT. This is where it gets interesting.
Fortunately for them I’m an ethical nondriver and disabled. BUT: If I had been a driving car/van owner (with phone and accomplices), the word ‘windfall’ springs to mind.
The WPP staff had gone home and forgot to lock the ‘classroom’.
An office with 20+ computers, several printers, photocopier, fax, chairs, tables, other office equipment and furniture. If one were so minded and suitably assisted and equipped, it would not be hard to strip the entire wing of that building of everything worth anything. With gloves etc. the identification of the criminals would be problematic, and every user’s fingerprints are already there from their sessions at jobsearch. So the suspect pool would be ‘all users’.
I later told WPP.,they were shocked the place was left unlocked for that long. Nobody had found out, as nothing was taken. It was left at least one night or up to 4 nights.
Incidentally: Bank that refused me a job, in part due to dyscalculia (number dyslexia), and memory problems from head injury (assaulted for being disabled), gave a job to somebody who cannot add up £17.00 and £2.75 (= £19.75),
and who cannot work out how to find what is 2% of something. Was there yesterday and noticed the irony… She was also not sure how many days are in November (31st November!!! -LOL). She also did not know the basic terms of the bank’s accounts. And could not say when things clear by (important to know in order to avoid bank charges!).
the ironic thing was a probation officer commenting in The Daily Heil Hitler re workfare ….for Community Punishment …he had to do risk assessments , provide PPE , reasonable expenses had to be reimbursed , as well as intervening in arguments and stopping fights amongst the miscreants that had been up in front of the beak …………….and believe or not he got plenty of green arrows in The Daily Mail ….there is some ! morality …play ball with us and we’ll play ball with you …rehabilitation …but there’s absolutely nothing of the sort with the shysters and cowboys …IDS and the Grayling have hired
The Tory Lord was very shaky and stumbled her way through her TV interview re Jubilee Stewards and Molly Prince’s glorified back street bouncer agency CPUK ….she eventually hired Max Clifford after coming under criticism for those sham faux ” apprenticeships ” …people can draw their own conclusions ! …I do wonder who paid for all this ….for some reason
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