Change Of Words Doesn't Change The Reality.

       They can change its name, dress it up in fancy words, and spout the usual pie-in-the-sky benefits, but slave labour is still slave labour. Work placements, workfare, internships, traineeships, blaa-blaa-blaa, a great job in the murky distant future, it still boils down to working for nothing, to make a rich company richer, capitalist exploitation at its worst. What is more, it's the master plan of this bunch of millionaire pompous parasites, sitting in that Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, it's their vision of the future, it's their gift to their millionaire corporate buddies.  

 

 If you exploit us we will shut you down.

This from The Void:

      George Osborne announced before Christmas that young, unemployed people between the age of 18 and 21 will be forced to attend either a Traineeship, other unpaid work experience position or face a Community Work Placement.  That means young people who refuse to work in Shoezone for free will be forced to carry out 780 hours community work instead – for no wages.  Traineeships are workfare, and claimants  who refuse them face a punishment that is double the length of current community service sentences that can be inflicted by the courts.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Who Voted For Slavery?

       How much longer will the people of this country vote in this system of greed and corruption, that works against their interests, how long will it be until they all realise that this is not a democracy, never has been, and under the present system, never can be. We cannot tolerate any longer, a system where by the poor are forced to work for nothing to enrich the profits of large wealthy companies. This, Workfare/Traineeship/Work Experience con, is not a little temporary fix, this is the template for the future, this is the pattern they want to be the accepted route for the next generation. The kids will leave school and be conned into thinking that this is the norm, a crap eduction, then work for nothing, swelling the bank accounts of rich shareholders, with the carrot held out in front of you, that if you humiliate yourself sufficiently for long enough, you might be one of the privileged that get a paid job at the end of it all. How wonderfully gracious of your employer to actually pay you.

       We as a class cannot accept that our kids are here to be forced into slave labour at the dictate of a bunch of millionaires, whose only interest is in the profitability of their shares. We are responsible for the dignity and well being of our kids and grand kids. Standing by and watching them being humiliated and abused by corporations is not acceptable under any circumstances. Nobody in this country voted to bring back slavery, but it has already got its foot well and truly in the door.

       There are so many avenues being used by this government of boardroom directors to attack our living conditions, all of them help big business. The slashing of social services and benefits is necessary to allow them to reduce the taxes that their corporate friends pay, if and when they pay at all. The bedroom tax, ATOS attack on disability allowance, and Workfare/Work Experience/Traineeships are all part of this business friendly agenda. Do we want a society that has only one aim, to enrich the corporate world at the expense of the people? As long as we keep putting rich millionaire business people in charge of our lives we will get screwed. Their businesses come well before your kids, you would be an idiot if you expected them to do otherwise. Can you not hear Osborne's speech to the Employers Federation, "I have a dream, one day all the workers will come to your businesses for nothing, and we will realise that paradise of sweatshop Europe"

      If we want a decent life for all we have to get rid of this festering cancer of capitalism. We shouldn't be organising to ask for some more crumbs from the cake, which we made, or please don't squeeze us so hard. We should be organising to take over the entire running of all aspects of our society, all manufacturing and distribution at the dictate of the people's needs, not driven by the greed of a handful of overtly rich useless parasitic leeches.

This from The Void:

      Osborne will force all those out of work for six months and between the ages of 18 and 21 into Traineeships or Work Experience.  Those who refuse will be sent on a Community Work Placement  – 780 hours unpaid work – or face losing benefits completely.  This is a huge turn around for a Government that in early 2012 were falling over themselves trying to persuade people that unpaid Work Experience – for major employers such as ASDA and Poundland – was voluntary.

     Osborne’s speech yesterday made a laughing stock of companies like Tesco and charities like Barnardo’s who have insisted that Work Experience schemes are not workfare.  Even if you bought that, they are now, or will be as soon as Osborne gets his way.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Action Against Workfare.

       December 4th,  day of action against workfare. The protests are growing the actions do hurt their profits, so keep up the pressure. More information at The Void and Boycott workfare.

 

Marks & Spencer

    Marks & Spencer’s use of workfare hit public awareness when they announced 1400 new placements in their stores and a benchmark of 2% of the workforce to be unpaid. But this isn’t the brand’s first encounter with workfare. Despite their CEO earning over £2 million a year, they are also profiting from unpaid work through another workfare scheme in Scotland, which targets single parents. It’s likely their involvement is much more widespread – we also heard from someone sent on a 4 week placement at one of their outlet stores.

Last time we took action, M&S was forced to disable comments on their Facebook Page. Several pickets and walks of shame will pay a visit to their stores this week. Please feel free to contact them with your thoughts as well:

By email: Using their online form
By phone: See this useful list of numbers
Facebook: Marks and Spencer
Twitter: @marksandspencer

B&M Stores

        In May, B&M won an award from the workfare industry for its involvement. But the reality of this involvement is harsh. One person has reported: “B&M stores have started using workfare Jan 2013. Receiving free labour and stopping overtime for employees with contracts. The people forced to do this free labour are not happy and neither are the employees!” Boycott Workfare has had reports of workfare at B&M stores in Bangor, Glasgow, Manchester, Southend and Northern Ireland. Show them they can’t keep cutting their wages bill with unpaid work!

By email: enquiries@bmstores.co.uk or customerservices@bmstores.co.uk
By phone: 0151 728 5400 or more numbers here.
Facebook: B&M Stores
Twitter: @bmstores

Asda

       Asda has been at the heart of workfare in the UK, helping the government relaunch its “Work Experience” scheme last year. We have had reports that one of their stores in Manchester uses disabled people on workfare on the night shift. They are frank about their involvement here.

Asda contact form: Click here
Facebook: Asda
Twitter: @asda

Don’t forget to sign the petition calling for an end to all benefit sanctions without exceptions.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Week Of Action Against Workfare.

Tuesday 3rd December
Week of Action Against Workfare and Sanctions:

Day Two, Online: Everywhere
 

Organised by Boycott Workfare - Day Two:

     Online targeting of the companies that are profiting from making young people work without pay on Traineeships.
      Traineeships are about providing cheap labour, driving down wages, massaging unemployment figures and conditioning our young people for a life of poverty and jumping through endless hoops in search of a job.
     They're a fairly new scheme that targets 16-24 year olds with more unpaid work. Traineeships involve a work placement of up to six months for which the employer is not even required to pay travel expenses. The promise at the end of six months' unpaid work? You may then be eligible to work for £2.67 an hour as an apprentice.
     Used together, traineeships and apprenticeships have the potential to massively undercut the minimum wage on the high street and elsewhere. The government is of course rolling out compulsory education for 17-18 year-olds and unpaid work looks set to make up an increasingly large component of that education. Benefits cuts for 18-25 year-olds are also threatened. There are many companies happy to take advantage of young people and profit from their lack of opportunity, so today let's take action against them. Contact them by phone, email or on social media.

     Here are some of the companies eager to abuse our youngsters to fatten their shareholders bank accounts.   

Kwikfit
(http://feweek.co.uk/2013/09/19/kwik-fits-unpaid-traineeship-branded-unacceptable/)

 https://www.facebook.com/KwikFit

http://www.youtube.com/kwikfitltd

https://twitter.com/Kwik_Fit

tweet them at @Kwik_fit

Subway

https://www.facebook.com/SUBWAY.UK.Ireland

Tweet to @SUBWAYUKIreland

Toywatch

Let them know your opinion at 

onshop@toy-watch.com,

Tweet to @ToyWatchWorld

Novotel

Difficult to contact without joining their "club" their phone number earns them money and costs you about 10P a minute.

For further information and actions in the coming week contact.

:http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=3123

     There are lots of other firms involved in this legalised degrading abuse of our young people, if you know of them, talk to them, email them, tweet them, telling them what you think of their actions. 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Next Generation Will Be Slaves.

       In the West, as else where in the world, hundreds of years of workers' struggle produced improvements to our living conditions, it has been a slow brutal road to get to where we were 5 years ago. Since then, the employers through the medium of their puppets in government, have slashed at those conditions in a vicious attempt to claw back whatever benefits we gained. Unless we stop this assault on our class, the next generation will not be wage slaves, but simply slaves. The foundations are being cemented in place, decimated benefits and workfare are not meant to be temporary affairs, they are the template for the future. It is not stopping at workfare, this corporate dream system is being expanded to “traineeships”. You get placed in a job for up to six months, but not necessarily with pay, at the end of which you could be offered a job at £2.67 an hour. As this sort of slavery and abuse continues and expands, the next generation will have known nothing else, and it will be deemed “normal”. Normal to leave school/college or what ever, and then go into unpaid employment in the hope that at the end of that, you might get a job with a lousy wage. 

      The corporate world is awash with money, but it still wants lower wages and sweatshop conditions to compete with the Eastern sweatshops. This is not some fiction writer's manuscript, this is the future for our kids and grand kids, unless!!! Unless what, unless we in this generation stop it in its tracks. I'm sure you can think of a better way to shape our society, let's do it.

This week is a week of action against workfare, get involved. Also see The Void

This from Boycott Workfare:

 

     Day One of the week of action against workfare and sanctions was great – with a LOUD noise demo at the workfare industry’s annual conference, hijacking its hashtag and actions in Cardiff and Germany! On Day Two, target the companies profiting from making young people work without pay on Traineeships.

     Traineeships are about providing cheap labour, driving down wages, massaging unemployment figures and conditioning our young people for a life of poverty and jumping through endless hoops in search of a job.

     They’re a fairly new scheme that targets 16-24 year olds with more unpaid work. Traineeships involve a work placement of up to six months for which the employer is not even required to pay travel expenses. The promise at the end of six months’ unpaid work? You may then be eligible to work for £2.67 an hour as an apprentice.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Accelerating To Deprivation.

     This government's eager complicity in the financial Mafia's drive for sweatshop Europe is seen in the number of ways in which they offer their business friends helpings of free labour. They give interviews proclaiming unemployment is falling and the recovery is gaining ground. However, unemployment is falling because thousands of people are on workfare, a government gift of free labour to the corporate greed machine, and as for recovery, well among the ordinary people the recovery is a fairytale. The millionaire's Old Boys network, our government, has now started another way of forcing young people to work for nothing, their “traineeships” scheme. Of course their millionaire buddies in businesses like Boots, Poundland and Kwik-fit, to mention just a few, are more than eager to take on board as much free labour as they can get their hands on. Why employ people for a wage when your friends in government hand you free labour.

       Another smiling comment from the millionaire cabal in charge of our drive to deprivation, is that inflation has fallen from 2.7% to 2.2% and this should ease the pressure on the general public. What a load of bullshit, in that “fall” there is hidden the fact that food has risen by 4.6% and energy bills are set to rise in the region of 10%, how this will ease the pressure on the ordinary household budget has yet to be explained.

     With workfare, traineeships, zero hours contracts, part-time employment, bedroom tax, rocketing food and energy prices, and ATOS killing off the disabled, this government has pressed the accelerator as we spiral down the deprivation road. Sweatshop Europe here we come. 

 

An excerpt from an interesting and informative article by The Void:

Unpaid workers on these schemes are counted as employed, a handy distortion of the figures for a Government that claims they are bringing down unemployment.  With the numbers in part-time work, precarious self-employment or workfare all at record levels, and wages falling far behind inflation, the true picture of the labour market is far from good news. Recent Housing Benefit statistics* show that the number claiming help with housing costs remains at record levels.  Over 5 million people are on this benefit and for the first time, in July 2013, the number of working Housing Benefit claimants topped one million.

 Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk