Is workfare fair, or slave labour?

Slavery is a powerful word. It conjures up shameful images of chains and shackles. Of humans trafficked. Or violent traders. Not of someone stacking shelves in the Bolton branch of Poundland.

Yet ‘slavery’ is precisely the charge levelled against the DWP for sending jobseekers with weak or non-existent CVs to work full time in stores, without pay, to gain work experience on a DWP workfare scheme.

Workfare is a catch-all term for the many work experience schemes introduced by the Conservatives in 1993 (the workfare concept was introduced in the US in 1961). Later championed by New Labour, workfare in the UK has remained in constant evolution (and controversy).

The current incarnation, introduced by Iain Duncan Smith in 2011, is the Work Programme, which compels jobseekers to work full time, for several weeks at a time, in order to keep receiving their benefits. And it’s this scheme for which Poundland came under harsh criticism in August after allegations it put claimants to work stacking shelves for 30 hours per week, on zero pay.

Critics argue this stark ‘choice’ is equivalent to forced labour, or slavery. They also attack “exploitative” businesses like Poundland and B&M that offer the placements for taking advantage of free labour. These businesses have no intention of offering a permanent role, they say. Instead, when the placement comes to an end, they say they simply take on another jobseeker in their place rather than pay to hire another member of staff.

Other criticisms include the potential for actual staff to find their hours are being cut or reduced to accom-modate this influx of free labour; that if you equate a full-time job with the amount of benefits paid it doesn’t get close to the minimum wage; that spending time on unsuitable work placements hinders jobseekers’ chances of having the opportunity to secure a real job; and that studies have consistently shown that workfare doesn’t improve their chances of finding work anyway, including research by the DWP in 2012 that found being referred to workfare “had no impact on the likelihood of being employed compared to non-referrals”.

Opponents also accuse the government-contracted organisations (like Serco, Maximus, and PeoplePlus) that process referrals and arrange placements of “profiteering” from “forced unpaid work for benefits”.

One of workfare’s biggest critics is a grassroots organisation called Boycott Workfare. It stops short of describing workfare schemes as slavery but doesn’t hold back when offering its opinion of the various workfare schemes (see box), referring to the “horrifying material impact on people’s lives of the benefit sanctions that underwrite it” and describing workfare as “psychologically violent and humiliating… coerced labour that’s supposed to build skills and motivation but obviously does nothing apart from offer free work to businesses and charities.” It has gathered dozens of grim testimonies from people on work experience schemes, 97 of which have recently been published in its book The Violence of Austerity, published by Pluto Press. It and says the “sheer brutality of the experience reported in the testimonies should be a national scandal.”

Workfare became national news in 2011, when geology graduate Cait Reilly was told to give up voluntary work in a museum to accept a workfare placement at Poundland. Along with Jamieson Wilson, an unem-ployed mechanic who refused a six-month placement cleaning furniture for 30 hours a week, they sued the government, represented by Public Interest Lawyers.

Reilly was branded a “job snob” by Duncan Smith but in 2013 the pair won their case and opened up the possibility of 150,000 people who had lost their benefits as a result of workfare-related sanctions being able to claim them back.

The government swiftly enacted retrospective legislation (the Jobseekers Back to Work Schemes Act 2013) to “protect the public purse” and stop the possibility of compensation, and appealed. In April 2016 that was dismissed when judges declared the 2013 Act “incompatible” with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which refers to the right to a fair trial.

The DWP is considering its next move. But after the trial, Boycott Workfare said it was now an “indisputa-ble fact that all those organisations involved in using and implementing workfare have been involved in depriving people of their human rights. They have helped to illegally stop people getting the social security payments they were lawfully meant to receive.”

Grocery retailers and workfare

Before workfare became a national controversy, supermarkets including Asda and Tesco were using workfare placements to stack shelves and fill freezers. In August 2016, following an FOI request by Boycott Work-fare, a list of the 534 businesses that participated in the Mandatory Work Activity workfare scheme was released, and the big four were all named.

Sainsbury’s and Morrisons flatly rejected they had ever been involved in any work experience scheme with a mandatory element. This week a spokesman for Morrisons says it was an “error” by the DWP, and a Sainsbury’s spokeswoman says “we didn’t participate and our position hasn’t changed.” A spokesman for Tesco says: “We have not taken part in a DWP work experience scheme for at least the last few years.” Asda didn’t respond to questions this week.

But Poundland is still taking on workfare placements. And although the DWP scrapped the Mandatory Work Activity element of the Work Programme in 2015, ostensibly to ensure there was no ‘forced’ element to workfare, the Graduate Fog website suggested in July 2017 that was not always the case. “Three weeks ago I signed on to Universal Credit, and I’ve been told to do unpaid work experience stacking shelves at Poundland,” graduate ‘Billy’ told the website.

“There are 10 of us working 30 hours a week, and none of us is being paid a penny. I’m not learning anything and can’t work out why taxpayers are subsidising my unpaid work for a hugely profitable company.”

He went on to say “we have to do 30 hours a week for six weeks” and “can’t understand how the politicians think unpaid work is a solution to youth unemployment. The quality of these placements is poor and they lead nowhere. Those of us who do them end up exhausted and miserable, and I suspect we’ve probably replaced a few paid workers too. Meanwhile, Poundland must be laughing all the way to the bank.”

Poundland tells a different side to the story. “Poundland’s participation in work experience programmes has been both exaggerated and misunderstood,” says a spokeswoman. “Over the past five years we’ve offered an average of one person per store the opportunity to come to us for a very brief period to learn about the world of work. Where we’ve offered these placements, we’ve obtained commitments from our local Jobcentre Plus partners that anyone who comes to us are volunteers and any benefits are not put at risk. Some of our leading store managers came to Poundland through work experience. They seized the opportunity and their careers have flourished. It’s not surprising that some of them wish to provide the same opportunities they received to kickstart their careers.”

Workfare will continue

Despite the controversy, workfare – which isn’t a term used by the DWP – will continue. “Voluntary work experience is a way of helping people develop employment skills, build confidence and motivation, and demonstrate to potential future employers that they’re able to succeed in a job,” says a spokesman for the DWP.

“Individuals should only complete one work experience, which may last up to eight weeks. We’re clear that work experience isn’t a replacement for paid work, and it isn’t a work trial. Sector-based work academies (SBWA), which help people without much prior experience move into work, are voluntary. An SBWA can last up to six weeks and involves pre-employment training, a work experience placement and a guaranteed interview for a job or apprenticeship at the end.”

It adds that since 2011 there have been “over a million start to work experience schemes and sector-based work academies. Our research shows that people who have done work experience or a work placement spend longer in employment and less time on benefit in the months after they’ve completed their programme.”

“I can’t work out why taxpayers are subsidising my unpaid work for a hugely
profitable company”

And it says “work experience is voluntary, with the length of time and placement being agreed with a Work Coach beforehand. Claimants continue to receive their benefits throughout their placement.”

The latest incarnation of workfare – the Work and Health Programme, which is currently set to launch later this year – will scale down the initiative. But as with any previous incarnation, one element will remain the same. “We will give young people with limited capability for work the opportunity to get valuable work experience,” said secretary of state for work and pensions Damian Green in a Commons briefing paper on the Work and Health Programme last December.

The paper makes no reference to a mandatory requirement for jobseekers to take part. It doesn’t mention sanctions if they refuse. But it does say the Work and Health Programme is a “welfare-to-work programme, which will be launched in Autumn 2017” and “will provide specialised support for those unemployed for over two years and, on a voluntary basis, to those with health conditions or disabilities.”

Which sounds like it’s only voluntary for those with health conditions or disabilities and mandatory for everyone else. In other words, a revamp and a rebrand but the central tenet – work for free to continue to get benefits – remains untouched.

The DWP confirms that “claimants can be sanctioned if they are dismissed for gross misconduct from their work experience or if they do not turn up to their sector-based work academy after they agreed in advance with their work coach.”

Whether this latest incarnation of workfare is more successful and less controversial remains to be seen. But if not both the government, and the businesses that take part, can’t say they weren’t warned.