One of the comments on my piece on Workfare, the DWP and Duty of Care raised a further alarming prospect, that DWP believe their right to impose Workfare takes precedence over a disabled person's legal right to privacy regarding their medical records.
The comment pointed out that a FOI request at the 'What do they Know' site contains the following statement by DWP:
Section 3 of the Social Security Act 1998 allows DWP to reuse personal information relating to social security and employment and training for another social security function. This includes reuse by persons providing services to DWP, such as Work Programme providers, where acting as the DWP's data processor.
In addition, in order to carry out their functions under the Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme, the Work Programme provider may need additional personal information from the claimant. If the claimant does not wish to provide this information it may be the case that, with the provider, they can investigate ways in which they can still participate in the Scheme, without the additional information being provided.
However, there may come a point when the Work Programme provider becomes concerned that the claimant’s withholding of information potentially amounts to non-participation in the Scheme. If this is the case, they will refer the matter to a decision maker who will consider all the facts of the case, including any good cause issues the claimant wishes to raise, and determine whether the claimant has failed to participate. If the decision maker considers that the claimant has failed to participate, their benefit will be sanctioned.
Now the first paragraph is disturbing enough, but clearly falls within the legal powers granted to DWP, however the second and third paragraphs are particularly troubling, both in general and specifically for disabled people, as they seem to show the DWP taking the position that they can insist that any information they feel relevant is provided under threat of sanction, even where that insistence is counter to a disabled person's rights under the Equality and Data Protection Acts..
A disabled person when considering an employment position is forced into the iniquitous position of having to decide whether or not to reveal their disability. Declare your disability and you have the protection of the Equality Act when requesting a reasonable adjustment, but declaring your disability also opens you to the threat of discrimination. Equally there may be considerable privacy issues wrapped up in information that could be relevant to Duty of Care issues, as examples mental health issues, continence and epilepsy all draw considerable negative opinions, if not outright discrimination, in contemporary society.
When we face a new job, disabled people face a whole additional set of decisions over and above non-disabled people: do we declare, if we do declare, then how much of the extent of our disability do we declare, and how widely do we allow that knowledge to be spread. The Equality Act and the Disability Discrimination Act before it provide specific protections for disabled people, we cannot be penalised for not declaring (though we have to declare to make the reasonable adjustment provisions enforceable) and we can insist that the details of our disability are not spread to people other than those we declare to. So for instance, I could declare my disability to HR, but insist that my line managers are told nothing more than that I am disabled and can legally request reasonable adjustments. If those provisions are breached. particularly in instances where that data is passed to other organisations entirely, then I can bring legal action against my employer for violations of both the Equality Act and the Data Protection Act.
The DWP statement above appears to attempt to subvert those rights, by stating that they can insist that information is provided to the Workfare provider, no matter that the Equality Act gives disabled people a right in law to insist that it is not, no matter that the Workfare provider is not an employer in any normal sense. Given the overwhelming disablism in recruitment decisions that disabled people face, forcing people to reveal details of their disabilities is actually going to undermine any chance of them getting a job out of the mandated assignment, the overwhelming advice from recruitment consultants is not to reveal disability until you have the written offer of a full time job in your hand. So DWP are actually shooting the whole point of the exercise in the foot by forcing declaration of disability. Worse than this, however, is the way it tramples over the right of disabled people to maintain privacy around the details of their disability. If I am being forced against my will into some utterly inappropriate position, with an utterly inappropriate company, a company whose data protection measures I have no confidence in and with whom I have no hope of a job at the end of it (and we've seen plenty of those reportedly involved with Workfare), then there is no way that I am willing to provide them with the full details of my disability, and I will be far from the only disabled person to feel that way. It will particularly be a problem for people with Mental Health issues, who are likely to be particularly frightened of being forced to declare details of their disability, and where there is already considerable evidence of them being deliberately targeted as 'an easy mark' for sanctions by JCP staff.
Workfare alone is bad enough, but to combine it with an contempt for the right to privacy of the people with most to lose from privacy and data protection violations, and to do so in apparent contempt for the protections granted by the Equality Act and the Data Protection Act, suggests that this is just one more piece of evidence that DWP consider themselves above such menial issues as the law, particularly laws relating to equality and discrimination.
Campaigning against the government's distressing war on disabled benefit claimants. All posts represent the opinions of their respective authors and not WtB as a whole.
Showing posts with label workfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workfare. Show all posts
Monday, 12 March 2012
Friday, 9 March 2012
Workfare: DWP Don't Care....
A recent Freedom of Information request seems to raise huge concerns over whether the Department of Work and Pensions accept that they have a legal Duty of Care with respect to benefit claimants forced onto mandatory Workfare placements. With DWP intent on implementing new policies which will see disabled people in the ESA WRAG being forced onto indefinite mandatory Workfare placements under threat of sanctions, never mind all of the complexity, risk and privacy concerns that disability adds to the existing Workfare farrago, this is obviously hugely concerning.
The DWP have apparently stated "If however, a work placement is considered appropriate then the responsibilities of the individual, the provider and the organisation accepting the placement must be discussed and made clear (including liability)." and pointed their respondent at the generic guidelines for workfare, which state "All participants involved in any way with DWP Provision are entitled to train and work in a healthy and safe environment with due regard to their welfare. Under Health and Safety Law they are regarded as your employees, whether they are paid by you or not. You must, therefore, comply with your Duty of Care under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Act’s associated regulations in the same way as you would do for any other member of your workforce"
This may seem quite responsible on the surface, however the implications are anything but. The Workfare situation is an unusual one, in which people are being forced to work by (or is it 'for'?) a government agency, the DWP, at a private contractors, while the DWP pay them benefits - which of course amounts to people being forced, under threat of having their benefits stopped entirely for anything up to three years, to work for less than the national minimum wage. Under normal circumstances the person paying your wages would be considered your employer, no matter where you were working. So if I work for Company A, but they send me to work at Company B, then both Company A and Company B would have a Duty of Care towards me, Company A because I am their employee and they have a legal responsibility to ensure that I am not exposed to unnecessary risk wherever I am, and Company B because they have a similar responsibility towards anyone on their premises. Yet DWP seem to be denying that they have the Duty of Care towards me that would normally descend from me being their employee. They also seem to be insisting on a process which would require the disabled person to fully reveal details of their disability to a company they are being forced to work for, in order to allow a risk assessment, no matter the privacy concerns of forcing someone to reveal full details of disability to an organisation for whom they not an employee.
This would be worrying enough for anyone in any circumstances, but for a disabled person dealing with the DWP it is a recipe ripe for disaster. The Workfare process involves someone, either from Job Centre Plus or one of their providers, such as the much castigated A4e (facing two more probes for fraud just this week), deciding that the benefit claimant would be helped by a work placement - or at least that is the spin on it, there is a considerable body of evidence pointing at JCP and contractors like A4e being very heavily target-driven, with JCP employees under massive pressure from management to hit targets such as number of people sanctioned per week, which whistleblowers have revealed means they are driven to target people with intellectual and mental disabilities as 'easy marks'. Now extend that pattern of behaviour to Workfare, and we will undoubtedly see large numbers of disabled people being forced onto Workfare not because it is in their interest, or appropriate for their disability, but because the JCP employee will be bawled out by their manager if she doesn't mandate another dozen crips before the end of the week, or because the training agency employee will miss a bonus if their figures aren't better than the rest of the office's...
I've dealt with JCP Disability Employment Advisors and training agency employees from the benefit claimant's position, a more clueless bunch of people about disability employment it would be difficult to imagine. The JCP staff persistently pushed the boundaries of what my disability allowed me to do, if I could do something for 10 minutes, they would write down 30, and then persistently try to undermine that at every other meeting. The training agency people (once I'd climbed the rickety outside staircase to their office - god help me if I'd arrived with a wheelchair not crutches....) knew so little about privacy and data protection that they saw nothing wrong in asking me to discuss the intimitate details of my disability while the gentleman sat immediately behind me was discussing his drug problem. Do either of these sound like organisations likely to give the necessary weight to the complexities of disability, or to their Duty of Care - especially if they seem to believe that Duty of Care doesn't apply in the first place?
When I was working I regularly ended up curled up in pain on the office floor because of my inability to sit for extended periods, Duty of Care can potentially be something as basic as recognising that someone cannot even sit at a desk, but how much recognition and understanding are we going to see when showing those may mean a bollocking in the manager's office, or a missed bonus? And if basic physical constraints are so readily targetted for undermining, what chance does someone with complex mental health issues have.
I thought this was scary when it was just the prospect of DEAs or A4e employees mandating disabled people onto indefinite Workfare assignments under threat of sanction, but if they don't even think they have a Duty of Care towards us....
The DWP have apparently stated "If however, a work placement is considered appropriate then the responsibilities of the individual, the provider and the organisation accepting the placement must be discussed and made clear (including liability)." and pointed their respondent at the generic guidelines for workfare, which state "All participants involved in any way with DWP Provision are entitled to train and work in a healthy and safe environment with due regard to their welfare. Under Health and Safety Law they are regarded as your employees, whether they are paid by you or not. You must, therefore, comply with your Duty of Care under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Act’s associated regulations in the same way as you would do for any other member of your workforce"
This may seem quite responsible on the surface, however the implications are anything but. The Workfare situation is an unusual one, in which people are being forced to work by (or is it 'for'?) a government agency, the DWP, at a private contractors, while the DWP pay them benefits - which of course amounts to people being forced, under threat of having their benefits stopped entirely for anything up to three years, to work for less than the national minimum wage. Under normal circumstances the person paying your wages would be considered your employer, no matter where you were working. So if I work for Company A, but they send me to work at Company B, then both Company A and Company B would have a Duty of Care towards me, Company A because I am their employee and they have a legal responsibility to ensure that I am not exposed to unnecessary risk wherever I am, and Company B because they have a similar responsibility towards anyone on their premises. Yet DWP seem to be denying that they have the Duty of Care towards me that would normally descend from me being their employee. They also seem to be insisting on a process which would require the disabled person to fully reveal details of their disability to a company they are being forced to work for, in order to allow a risk assessment, no matter the privacy concerns of forcing someone to reveal full details of disability to an organisation for whom they not an employee.
This would be worrying enough for anyone in any circumstances, but for a disabled person dealing with the DWP it is a recipe ripe for disaster. The Workfare process involves someone, either from Job Centre Plus or one of their providers, such as the much castigated A4e (facing two more probes for fraud just this week), deciding that the benefit claimant would be helped by a work placement - or at least that is the spin on it, there is a considerable body of evidence pointing at JCP and contractors like A4e being very heavily target-driven, with JCP employees under massive pressure from management to hit targets such as number of people sanctioned per week, which whistleblowers have revealed means they are driven to target people with intellectual and mental disabilities as 'easy marks'. Now extend that pattern of behaviour to Workfare, and we will undoubtedly see large numbers of disabled people being forced onto Workfare not because it is in their interest, or appropriate for their disability, but because the JCP employee will be bawled out by their manager if she doesn't mandate another dozen crips before the end of the week, or because the training agency employee will miss a bonus if their figures aren't better than the rest of the office's...
I've dealt with JCP Disability Employment Advisors and training agency employees from the benefit claimant's position, a more clueless bunch of people about disability employment it would be difficult to imagine. The JCP staff persistently pushed the boundaries of what my disability allowed me to do, if I could do something for 10 minutes, they would write down 30, and then persistently try to undermine that at every other meeting. The training agency people (once I'd climbed the rickety outside staircase to their office - god help me if I'd arrived with a wheelchair not crutches....) knew so little about privacy and data protection that they saw nothing wrong in asking me to discuss the intimitate details of my disability while the gentleman sat immediately behind me was discussing his drug problem. Do either of these sound like organisations likely to give the necessary weight to the complexities of disability, or to their Duty of Care - especially if they seem to believe that Duty of Care doesn't apply in the first place?
When I was working I regularly ended up curled up in pain on the office floor because of my inability to sit for extended periods, Duty of Care can potentially be something as basic as recognising that someone cannot even sit at a desk, but how much recognition and understanding are we going to see when showing those may mean a bollocking in the manager's office, or a missed bonus? And if basic physical constraints are so readily targetted for undermining, what chance does someone with complex mental health issues have.
I thought this was scary when it was just the prospect of DEAs or A4e employees mandating disabled people onto indefinite Workfare assignments under threat of sanction, but if they don't even think they have a Duty of Care towards us....
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Sanctions removed from work experience - but only a small victory
The government today caved in to bad publicity and agreed to remove the possibility of sanctions from those who refuse to take part in the work experience scheme. Those guilty of gross misconduct may still be sanctioned with removal of benefits.
However, a DWP spokesperson confirmed this afternoon that it is only the work experience scheme which is affected by this change. Those on the work programme, which is run by third party providers such as the disgraced A4e, may still face sanctions if they do not cooperate with the programme. As detailed in the previous article on this site, it is mandatory to attend the work programme after a set amount of time receiving Job Seekers Allowance or Employment Support Allowance. The DWP spokesperson pointed out that the work programme provides much more than just work experience placements and referral to the programme does not necessarily mean undertaking work experience.
I also raised the issue of those who are receiving ESA and placed in the work related activity group being referred to the work programme and possibly for work experience. This is problematic since at the current time many people overturn the decision to place them in the WRAG on appeal and appeals can take a year in many cases so that people who are not fit for the work programme, never mind fit for work might be sent for work experience. The spokesperson did point out that people can present evidence and ask for a reconsideration before going for an appeal, although since at least 40% of those who appeal their decision go on to overturn it I do not think this is enough to ensure that everyone on the work programme is physically and mentally up to the task.
As it stands then, the removal of sanctions from the work experience scheme is a minor victory but the danger is that it will convince the public that all is well once more and the anger over people being made to work without pay may cool. Jobseekers and sick people can still be referred to the work programme where companies such as A4e can send people to do unpaid work experience or face loss of benefits. In the case of those who recieve ESA there is no limit to the length of time they may be made to work without pay.
However, a DWP spokesperson confirmed this afternoon that it is only the work experience scheme which is affected by this change. Those on the work programme, which is run by third party providers such as the disgraced A4e, may still face sanctions if they do not cooperate with the programme. As detailed in the previous article on this site, it is mandatory to attend the work programme after a set amount of time receiving Job Seekers Allowance or Employment Support Allowance. The DWP spokesperson pointed out that the work programme provides much more than just work experience placements and referral to the programme does not necessarily mean undertaking work experience.
I also raised the issue of those who are receiving ESA and placed in the work related activity group being referred to the work programme and possibly for work experience. This is problematic since at the current time many people overturn the decision to place them in the WRAG on appeal and appeals can take a year in many cases so that people who are not fit for the work programme, never mind fit for work might be sent for work experience. The spokesperson did point out that people can present evidence and ask for a reconsideration before going for an appeal, although since at least 40% of those who appeal their decision go on to overturn it I do not think this is enough to ensure that everyone on the work programme is physically and mentally up to the task.
As it stands then, the removal of sanctions from the work experience scheme is a minor victory but the danger is that it will convince the public that all is well once more and the anger over people being made to work without pay may cool. Jobseekers and sick people can still be referred to the work programme where companies such as A4e can send people to do unpaid work experience or face loss of benefits. In the case of those who recieve ESA there is no limit to the length of time they may be made to work without pay.
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Short and Sweet Truth
Friday, 17 February 2012
The Magical Thinking at DWP Gets Worse
In my earlier piece on Magical Thinking, I said that it was clear that DWP didn't have the faintest understanding of long-term disability, and were basing their policy on their lack of understanding.
Just how bad that lack of understanding is became chillingly clear in an article in the Guardian on Thursday. The article reports that in a meeting with disability groups in December, DWP announced that it intended to extend a Workfare-like scheme to disabled people. Under Workfare, unemployed people can be forced to take 30 hours a week of unpaid work experience for 8 weeks, or even 6 months in some cases, with the threat of being sanctioned and their benefit withdrawn if they do not comply. Workfare is already under severe fire from many unions and campaigning groups who view it as akin to slave labour, with people effectively working for far less than the minimum wage and jobs effectively taken permanently out of the marketplace as companies like Poundland, Asda, Tesco, Argos and others just take one Workfare assignee after another. Public pressure has already forced several companies, such as Sainsbury's and Waterstones, to withdraw from the scheme.
For disabled people the potential of Workfare alone would be bad enough, but when asked about time limits on the disability scheme, a DWP official said "There are no plans to introduce a maximum time limit." and also made it clear that sanctions would be applied to force people onto the scheme, or punish them if they refused: "Ministers strongly feel there is a link-up to support those moving close to the labour market, and the individual's responsibility to engage with the support. Ministers feel sanctions are an incentive for people to comply with their responsibility."
The scheme will be targeted at people in the ESA WRAG, which includes people with long term disabilities which are severe enough to mean they are not currently capable of work, but are expected to potentially be capable at some point in the future. As I made clear in my earlier article, that 'potentially' means 'might become capable', not 'will become capable' and for many people we are looking at years not decades of them being unfit for work. Unfortunately DWP are sticking their head in the sand in an attempt to deny the reality of disability and replace that reality with magical thinking in which we all have miracle cures at the 12 month mark and become miraculously capable of competing in the job market on an equal footing with none disabled people. Forcing anyone from WRAG into work is a subversion of what the scheme is supposed to stand for, and the limits on the scheme as currently proposed mean it could even be applied to someone with a terminal illness if they have more than six months to live. Worse, it could be applied to someone with severe mental health issues, with no regard for the consequences to their mental health, or to someone with a physical disability with no thought to the negative physical consequences for them.
We knew DWP was being run to an ideological diktat, sorry, Christian principles, with a disregard for facts that would have embarrassed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its worst, but this is a step far, far beyond the pale. I know both from direct personal experience and the experience of others that JCP Disability Employment Advisers have an appalling inability to recognise and understand disability, in particular how it will impact working (which considering that is their sole professional purpose is a pretty utter failure). To now give these people the ability to decide on their own initiative that a disabled person should be forced into a work assignment, with only the vaguest notion of what the consequences for that person's health might be, is taking the DWP's duty of care and tossing it not just out of the window but into a passing bin wagon.
A lot of stuff coming out of the DWP worries me, but the consequences of this notion truely scare me. The whole point of people being in the ESA WRAG is that they have been assessed as not currently fit for work, and to design a scheme whose sole purpose is to force people who aren't fit for work into work, and then to try and justify it both having no limits and being subject to sanctions, suggests that DWP are truly placing diktat above reality and that magical thinking has displaced any other form of thinking they might once have been capable of.
(Edited to correct who has withdrawn from Workfare - should have been Sainsburys, not Tesco, Tesco admit to having taken 1400 people under the scheme in the past 4 months, potentially 168,000 hours of unpaid work ).
Just how bad that lack of understanding is became chillingly clear in an article in the Guardian on Thursday. The article reports that in a meeting with disability groups in December, DWP announced that it intended to extend a Workfare-like scheme to disabled people. Under Workfare, unemployed people can be forced to take 30 hours a week of unpaid work experience for 8 weeks, or even 6 months in some cases, with the threat of being sanctioned and their benefit withdrawn if they do not comply. Workfare is already under severe fire from many unions and campaigning groups who view it as akin to slave labour, with people effectively working for far less than the minimum wage and jobs effectively taken permanently out of the marketplace as companies like Poundland, Asda, Tesco, Argos and others just take one Workfare assignee after another. Public pressure has already forced several companies, such as Sainsbury's and Waterstones, to withdraw from the scheme.
For disabled people the potential of Workfare alone would be bad enough, but when asked about time limits on the disability scheme, a DWP official said "There are no plans to introduce a maximum time limit." and also made it clear that sanctions would be applied to force people onto the scheme, or punish them if they refused: "Ministers strongly feel there is a link-up to support those moving close to the labour market, and the individual's responsibility to engage with the support. Ministers feel sanctions are an incentive for people to comply with their responsibility."
The scheme will be targeted at people in the ESA WRAG, which includes people with long term disabilities which are severe enough to mean they are not currently capable of work, but are expected to potentially be capable at some point in the future. As I made clear in my earlier article, that 'potentially' means 'might become capable', not 'will become capable' and for many people we are looking at years not decades of them being unfit for work. Unfortunately DWP are sticking their head in the sand in an attempt to deny the reality of disability and replace that reality with magical thinking in which we all have miracle cures at the 12 month mark and become miraculously capable of competing in the job market on an equal footing with none disabled people. Forcing anyone from WRAG into work is a subversion of what the scheme is supposed to stand for, and the limits on the scheme as currently proposed mean it could even be applied to someone with a terminal illness if they have more than six months to live. Worse, it could be applied to someone with severe mental health issues, with no regard for the consequences to their mental health, or to someone with a physical disability with no thought to the negative physical consequences for them.
We knew DWP was being run to an ideological diktat, sorry, Christian principles, with a disregard for facts that would have embarrassed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its worst, but this is a step far, far beyond the pale. I know both from direct personal experience and the experience of others that JCP Disability Employment Advisers have an appalling inability to recognise and understand disability, in particular how it will impact working (which considering that is their sole professional purpose is a pretty utter failure). To now give these people the ability to decide on their own initiative that a disabled person should be forced into a work assignment, with only the vaguest notion of what the consequences for that person's health might be, is taking the DWP's duty of care and tossing it not just out of the window but into a passing bin wagon.
A lot of stuff coming out of the DWP worries me, but the consequences of this notion truely scare me. The whole point of people being in the ESA WRAG is that they have been assessed as not currently fit for work, and to design a scheme whose sole purpose is to force people who aren't fit for work into work, and then to try and justify it both having no limits and being subject to sanctions, suggests that DWP are truly placing diktat above reality and that magical thinking has displaced any other form of thinking they might once have been capable of.
(Edited to correct who has withdrawn from Workfare - should have been Sainsburys, not Tesco, Tesco admit to having taken 1400 people under the scheme in the past 4 months, potentially 168,000 hours of unpaid work ).
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Not In My Name.
Yesterday I wrote about why Workfare is exploitative and unfair, especially for disabled people. Today I want to talk about something insidious and disturbing within the plans for rolling this system out, and this is the details of who stands to benefit.
Firstly, there are big companies who have signed up, unsurprisingly, to get people to work for them without a need to pay them, such as Poundland, Matalan, Tesco and Primark.
Secondly, there are public sector organisations who want to benefit from unpaid labour, such as the local councils of Barnsley, Blackpool, Bromley, Chester, Dudley, East Riding, Gateshead, Greenwich, Hartlepool, Islington, Kensington, Medway, Neath Port Talbot, Newham, North Lanarkshire, Northumberland, Portsmouth, Renfrewshire, Stoke-on-Trent; numerous further education colleges; and several NHS trusts.
And thirdly, and perhaps most disappointingly, is the depressingly large number of charities and third sector organisations who are seeking to benefit from people being forced to work without pay, at threat of loss of their benefits.
Just some of the organisations who the DWP state will be involved in delivering the Work Programme, are:
Action for Blind People
Autism West Midlands
Disability Information Bureau
Disability Works*
Enable
Hammersmith and Fulham MIND
Leonard Cheshire Disability
Papworth Trust
Remploy
RNIB
Rochdale and District MIND
Royal Mencap Society
Royal National College for the Blind
Scottish Association for Mental Health
Shaw Trust
The Mind Consortium (Hull and East Yorkshire MIND)
Warrington Disability Partnership
These are the organisations from the list that stood out to me as disability organisations. Organisations ostensibly to represent and fight for the rights of disabled people.
Last year I wrote about Disability Works, a "collaboration of national third sector disability organisations including Leonard Cheshire, Mencap, Scope, Mind, Action for Blind People, United Response, Pure Innovations, Advance UK and Pluss". I argued in May that the Hardest Hit organisers could not represent me or fight for my rights when they also stood to benefit from the proposed changes in welfare reform.
Now Disability Works are amongst all of the above voluntary sector disability organisations who are seeking to benefit from workfare. Along with all the other charities above, and with all the problems Workfare will cause for disabled and non-disabled people, we simply cannot trust these organisations to have our best interests at heart. They, along with Primark and Tesco, aim to profit from labour which is unpaid, unfair, and is carried out against a threat of a loss of benefits.
These big disability charities do not represent me, they do not have my interests in mind, and they do not speak for me.
Not in my name.
Firstly, there are big companies who have signed up, unsurprisingly, to get people to work for them without a need to pay them, such as Poundland, Matalan, Tesco and Primark.
Secondly, there are public sector organisations who want to benefit from unpaid labour, such as the local councils of Barnsley, Blackpool, Bromley, Chester, Dudley, East Riding, Gateshead, Greenwich, Hartlepool, Islington, Kensington, Medway, Neath Port Talbot, Newham, North Lanarkshire, Northumberland, Portsmouth, Renfrewshire, Stoke-on-Trent; numerous further education colleges; and several NHS trusts.
And thirdly, and perhaps most disappointingly, is the depressingly large number of charities and third sector organisations who are seeking to benefit from people being forced to work without pay, at threat of loss of their benefits.
Just some of the organisations who the DWP state will be involved in delivering the Work Programme, are:
Action for Blind People
Autism West Midlands
Disability Information Bureau
Disability Works*
Enable
Hammersmith and Fulham MIND
Leonard Cheshire Disability
Papworth Trust
Remploy
RNIB
Rochdale and District MIND
Royal Mencap Society
Royal National College for the Blind
Scottish Association for Mental Health
Shaw Trust
The Mind Consortium (Hull and East Yorkshire MIND)
Warrington Disability Partnership
These are the organisations from the list that stood out to me as disability organisations. Organisations ostensibly to represent and fight for the rights of disabled people.
Last year I wrote about Disability Works, a "collaboration of national third sector disability organisations including Leonard Cheshire, Mencap, Scope, Mind, Action for Blind People, United Response, Pure Innovations, Advance UK and Pluss". I argued in May that the Hardest Hit organisers could not represent me or fight for my rights when they also stood to benefit from the proposed changes in welfare reform.
Now Disability Works are amongst all of the above voluntary sector disability organisations who are seeking to benefit from workfare. Along with all the other charities above, and with all the problems Workfare will cause for disabled and non-disabled people, we simply cannot trust these organisations to have our best interests at heart. They, along with Primark and Tesco, aim to profit from labour which is unpaid, unfair, and is carried out against a threat of a loss of benefits.
These big disability charities do not represent me, they do not have my interests in mind, and they do not speak for me.
Not in my name.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Workfare: Exploitative and cruel, especially for disabled people
Some disabled people are completely fit for work, but cannot find any, so claim Jobseekers' Allowance. This is particularly an issue because disabled people face many barriers to work, including inaccessible workplaces, employer prejudice and employers being ignorant of, or refusing to adhere to the Equalities Act in relation to reasonable accommodations.Increasingly, however, disabled people who are not fit for work are finding themselves claiming Jobseekers' Allowance, when they are reassessed and fail to meet the limited criteria for ESA. The result of this is that more and more people are signing on, but also unable to work, for health reasons.
The Guardian has published a press release from the DWP, which states,
People who have been unemployed for more than two years and haven't secured sustainable employment could be referred onto compulsory community work placements under plans being considered by the government.
Under the proposals people who have been supported intensively through the Work Programme for two years yet have still not entered sustainable employment, may have to do community work or ultimately they could lose their benefit entitlement.
Ministers believe a minority of jobseekers struggle to engage with the system fully, are unable to hold down a job and therefore require a greater level of support.
The government is to test compulsory community work coupled with more intensive support through Jobcentre Plus in four key areas ahead of rolling out the scheme
nationwide in 2013.
This is fundamentally unfair. We are in a position as a country where unemployment rates are rising, and job opportunities are shrinking. If someone has failed to get a job in 2 years, it is most likely to be due to circumstances outside their control, and to then force them into unpaid labour, against the threat of losing their pittance of an income from JSA, is exploitative.
For disabled people, even moreso. People who are disabled but genuinely fit for work will still require adaptations, accommodations, and accessibility. These people are less likely to have found a job in 2 years because of the reasons I explained above. And will the people who are happy to take unpaid labour also be happy to accommodate people with complex needs and requirements?
And those who have been found fit for work but are, in fact, not at all fit for work, will be in the most trouble. All of the above, on top of not being well enough to do it. Will their regular sickness absences or inability to be reliable cause them to lose their benefit entitlement? I would imagine so, according to what the press release says.
Workfare is exploitative and unfair to everybody who is forced to do it. For disabled people it has added layers of unfairness, which have the potential to leave, yet again, the most vulnerable abandoned without financial support.
Cross-posted at incurable hippie blog. Thanks to @m_s_collins for prompting me to write this.
[The image is a black and white photograph taken at a protest in New Zealand against a Workfare programme. There are numerous people with placards saying, "The rich get rich at the expense of the poor" and "Real jobs not workfare". It was taken by SocialistWorkerNZ and is used under a Creative Commons Licence]
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Take action against companies profiting from workfare! Oct 19th
Via Boycott Workfare:
1pm, Wed 19th October 2011 outside the annual Welfare to Work
Conference at the Business Design Centre, Upper Street, Islington, N1
0HQ
This year’s Welfare to Work Conference will bring together
politicians and private companies making millions from the welfare to
work industry. The agenda reads like a who’s who of welfare abolition.
We’re not fooled by “Welfare to Work”: It means people forced to do
unpaid work for multi-million pound companies such as Asda and
Poundland. People risk losing the meagre £67 a week Jobseeker’s
Allowance if they do not work for such companies without pay.
Conference speakers will include James Purnell, who introduced the
idea of workfare under Labour, and the Tory peer Lord Freud, multi
millionaire ex-banker and self styled ‘welfare expert’. This is a
convention for those promoting the idea of an unpaid workforce, whilst
making millions from it.
Join us as we make sure the conference doesn’t go as smoothly as planned!
http://www.boycottworkfare.org/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=257927247582905&ref=ts
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