I was reading Stumbling and Mumbling's A case for workfare.
Over there its believed that SOME form of compulsory work for the long term unemployed might be a good idea. Perhaps not the shelf stacking as envisaged by the government. More a sort of New Deal with community projects in mind.
The evidence apparently points to happier people when employed.
Guido Fawkes had a post In Praise of Workfare at the weekend that generated 650+ comments. His argument was that any work is better than none and in the days before mollycoddling and high benefits people had to get jobs and if they were crappy jobs they just got two or three of them to get by.
The response was a bit lunatic as expected. Ranging from the 'cut all benefits after 6 months' from the right, to the student claiming breach of human rights if she must do two weeks in Poundland on the left. There was a fair amount of attacks made on the employers. Small business claiming larger business were getting free labour that would undercut a small business even more that they do already. Tesco came in for a barrel full of abuse for seeking to exploit workers for no pay and lay off staff to take on 'these slaves.'
Only a leftie with no experience of business could think of that last one. What the articles missed was that its incredibly expensive to take on a free worker.
1. The registration of employees and unpaid workers is a nightmare with potential {and very often prosecuted} immigration law breaches costing £20,000 an employee. Any company of any size that fails to do its immigration checks properly is looking at a big bill. As Baroness Scotland found out in a beautiful piece of schadenfreude when she employed an illegal domestic cleaner.
It must be assumed that if the government is sending the person along from the DSS, and they are working for free, then immigration checks at least are unnecessary. But still an employer needs to have all the details of who it is allowing onto its private premises. The usual checks for a new worker..references..work history are going to look a little thin for a long term unemployed person.
2. Companies don't have a labour shortage as they did 5-10 years ago. When you read of Landrover having 20,000 applications for 1,000 jobs and A Tesco mini mart having 1,000 applications for 80 shelf stacking jobs its pretty clear that companies aren't desperate for workers.
3. No business wants to take on unskilled labour. Even for an unskilled job. Shelf stacking may look like a brain dead job but any employee would take someone who already knows how to do it over someone who doesn't. Primark would much rather take on someone who knows what 3442 x 4/3 x 3L means than someone who doesn't. {No..I'm not going to tell you. Not as easy as you thought this filling up is it? Answers in the comments. Lets see who's done retail.} Its a simple code but some employees never, ever master it because their basic maths isn't strong enough.
4. Any company can take on free workers but only the largest will do so. This is because its an administration and red tape nightmare. Ask any chain how long before a new employee actually starts doing any work, even watching someone else work, and they'll tell you its 16 hours minimum. Maybe 40 hours of admin for a very large chain. That's an entire week of just listening to lectures and filling in forms. A quick look at BQ Industries latest H+S compliance form for the local council {there are different ones for company/insurance/ H+S departments} lists:
H+S policy
Information and instruction training
Training
Management of Health and Safety regs 1999
General workplace safety
Working at height {anything not on the floor is considered at height. A footstool is at height.}
Manual handling
First aid and first aid training and regulations {+ pages on legal medical equipment}
Conditions in the workplace
rest periods
Hygiene
Transport and traffic routes
Accident reporting and investigation {everyone has to know about it, even if they won't deal with it}
Maintenance of equipment and reporting of faulty equipment
Violence and aggression {many companies also have their own separate regulations to fit their own policies}
Computers and display screen - rest periods and electrical safety.
Asbestos
Radon
Action {unspecified other junk.}
The H+S manual in the picture costs £100 and is the most basic there is. There are another 10 differentones to work through too. - This is just H+S. It doesn't cover fire safety and equipment/evacuation/drill or equality in the workplace and sexual and religious discrimination. these are lengthy sessions as there is unlimited compensation available to those who sue and win.Information and instruction training
Training
Management of Health and Safety regs 1999
General workplace safety
Working at height {anything not on the floor is considered at height. A footstool is at height.}
Manual handling
First aid and first aid training and regulations {+ pages on legal medical equipment}
Conditions in the workplace
rest periods
Hygiene
Transport and traffic routes
Accident reporting and investigation {everyone has to know about it, even if they won't deal with it}
Maintenance of equipment and reporting of faulty equipment
Violence and aggression {many companies also have their own separate regulations to fit their own policies}
Computers and display screen - rest periods and electrical safety.
Asbestos
Radon
Action {unspecified other junk.}
Then if there is food involved there's the whole Hygiene and Health and food preparation booklets to add. + much more care about temperatures and storage. Obviously supermarkets are going to have this. They are also working with sharp objects and in areas with vehicles. With slippery or cold surfaces. Or unsupervised. All these areas need covering.
5. On top of that will be the companies own standards and expectations to drill home. More so if they are going to be putting unwilling workers into a uniform. The public won't know that the bloke who just told them 'dunno where the fish is luv- Don't care neither' was just a 30 day wonder.
Large companies have training and recruitment departments to deal with all this. Small ones don't. Any decent sized shop, say a normal Primark @ 10,000 sq/ft will be used to recruiting every single week. I doubt there are many McDonald's that don't hire at least 1 new worker each week. The last store I personally managed had 100+ staff and we recruited every week of my 104 weeks there except one.
6. No one wants to swap experienced for inexperienced. All these long term unemployed, even assuming that they want to be there and are the brightest and best available, still won't know anything. They will have to be monitored and evaluated and trained on every aspect of everything from what 'face up' means to where to put their mobile phone when working. Its a long process and the people screaming that the 'big corporations' will sack skilled for unskilled labour, every 5-6 weeks , have no idea of what that means. Its a soundbite. I've never known it.
Not in any company for even the meanest boss.
No one wants to make their life harder and taking on new people makes your life very hard. They are slow. Have no initiative. Have no idea of workload. Waste time. Can't prioritise. Its all new to them.
7. These are free workers coerced by the state to turn up for their benefits. The same people who, in some cases, threaten to put a chair through a Job Center Plus worker's head if their benefits are late.
They aren't even students looking for a temporary summer job. They have no interest in learning a job if they aren't seriously thinking about going to work. At best they can coast to a tick box finish. At worst they'll be sullen, angry, disruptive & potentially criminal.
3/10 school work-experience kids don't finish a two week placement. 2 of the remaining 7 will be dismissed from a FREE job.
Of the half who manage to get through the two weeks maybe 1 or 2 would be considered for even the most basic of Saturday job roles.
And these are kids. 14-15 years old who are used to being told what to do by teachers and parents. Used to getting up and getting a bus in the morning. Have a vague notion of time of day and have accepted a job in the first place. I expect non working adults would have far worse statistics than that. Mainly because, like these kids, they just aren't used to work for long hours.
8 . Think of the paperwork workfare is going to bring. The government forms and assessments and target monitoring and supervision that the state is going to want to be able to report what a great success the scheme has been. All the overseeing by the committees to make sure no exploitation is taking place. Someone will have to deal with all that and liaise with the DWP and report outcomes and provide concrete reasons for any failures.
After all benefit payments will be at stake. Court cases for 'unfair assessments' a possibility. So great care and mentoring and retraining and counseling with full record keeping undertaken to ensure that fairness has been demonstrated at all times. Exactly as a company would do with its own paid employees.
BQ Industries is not currently looking for any of these free workers. We couldn't possibly afford them.
