Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
Posted on Tuesday 21 February, 2012
Filed Under Conservative Party, Industrial relations, Trade Unions
ONE of the numerous job creation schemes of the Thatcher years was known officially as Employment Training, although the acronym was colloquially translated into ‘Extra Tenner’, because that was how much it paid on top of the dole.
These days, it seems, even an additional ten quid a week is a bit much to ask. Many of Britain’s most profitable employers are securing staff for nothing, with the state picking up the tab for Jobseekers’ Allowance and a bus pass.
When I did my six month stint on ET, my employer provided me with what turned out to be useful training as a press officer for a voluntary organisation. I guess there is not quite so much to learn about the finer nuances of night time shelf stacking.
But the current controversy has sparked widespread outrage and a bit of argy-bargy at a Tesco store in Westminster, and this morning the rightwing press has gone onto the defensive, with numerous articles in defence of workfare.
It was Labour that introduced the practice in the first place, says Philip Johnson in the Telegraph. Nonsense; workfare was commonplace in the Tory 1980s, it’s just that it wasn’t called that at the time, and Labour still had sufficient courage to oppose it.
It shouldn’t even be called workfare, Iain Duncan Smith tells the Daily Mail, before setting out what looks awfully like a distinction without a difference, and then proving how it all turned out well in the end for a woman from Neath. Opponents of the work experience programme are betraying the young, he maintains.
Employment minister Chris Grayling has even coined the term ‘job snob’, mendaciously asserting that the objection here is to the nature of the work rather than the principle involved.
Nobody I know from a working class background looks down on anybody undertaking less than glamorous tasks to earn a living. We have all done that ourselves. In my experience, ‘she’s only a shopgirl, Henry’ sneers more typically emanate from those who consider themselves above all that.
At a time when youth unemployment tops 20%, of course the state should take measures to bolster the chances of those who have been out of work for an extended period.
But I’m not convinced that the current scheme is the way to go about it. Indeed, it is actually a disincentive to job creation. Why employ anybody on a contract when the local Jobcentre will send you an uninterrupted stream of expendable labour power at no cost whatsoever?
If the work needs doing then there is a vacancy. And if there is a vacancy, it should be filled at an appropriate rate of pay.
The definition of appropriate rate of pay will vary according to taste. For me, that means union rates. Given the current weakness of the labour movement, others will regard the local average for similar work as good enough.
But at the non-negotiable very least, it has to mean the minimum wage. The clue is in the name here; if thousands of people are working for less than that, it no longer does what it says on the tin.
Widespread workfare will then exert a downward pressure on what everybody else takes home. And don’t tell the Tories hadn’t thought of that one, either.
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17 Responses to “Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt”
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Back in the 1980s the majority of employers taking on ET people were small, even one man outfits. In any large company opposition from the workforce usually ruled out this sort of thing. Nowadays most of us are so downtrodden and afraid of losing our own jobs to to kick up much fuss. A sad state of affairs that is unlikely to improve any time soon.
On the other hand one of Mrs T’s TOPS courses changed my life in a year, from being afraid to open the electric bill to relative financial comfort. It was an exceptional course though, most of them IIRC were run to grab the Government handouts rather than actually training people well.
“Widespread workfare will then exert a downward pressure on what everybody else takes home”
But happily widespread low-paid immigration has no such effects !
nazi idiot and scum.
Watching Tesco, Argus and Sainsbury running for cover makes me think their marketing peoples’ focus groups have a better feeling for the national pulse than the government’s.
Michael Osler
Illustrated by David Penhalighan’s famous “free boy” speech
Thanks to the wonders of Google:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=1982-12-16a.531.1
To answer Labans question rather than simply calling him a Nazi,
“But happily widespread low-paid immigration has no such effects !”
Yes it would have an effect, which is why socialists propose laws stopping bosses employing workers at levels below British workers.
Workfare is a thoroughly rotten idea, to create a layer of slave labour at the disposal of billion a year profit companies. Hopefully the slaves will do a thoroughly shit job and cause all sorts of problems for their shit employers.
The Tory spokeswoman said that some unemployed youngsters want the job experience so they can put it in their CV. So Tories do have a sense of humour.
Deviation – “which is why socialists propose laws stopping bosses employing workers at levels below British workers”
a) but “levels below British workers” equals in practice the minimum wage. You obviously can’t pay people differential wages for doing the same job, but you can stop wage rises and allow inflation to do its work. Over five years or so you can take wages down nicely, which is why Mervyn King can say that “cost pressures” (i.e. wage pressures) are low despite 5% plus RPI (and much higher inflation on food, power, water, fuel, car insurance i.e. the must-haves not the nice to haves).
b) and the higher the minimum wage and/or the unemployment level, the greater the incentive to employ cash in hand and off the books. Don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t rely on basic honesty too much … and of course the honest employers lose out to the dishonest.
But thank you for recognising that the laws of supply and demand are still operating in the UK labour market.
“The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it”
Excellent inside gen on Ms Emma “Family Czar” Harrison and her rip-off, fraudulent slave-labour outfit A4e:
http://watchinga4e.blogspot.com/
Jimmy……’The Tory spokeswoman said that some unemployed youngsters want the job experience so they can put it in their CV. So Tories do have a sense of humour’……
Please pull yourself together old man and move with the system you defended when you ‘excused’ Baroness Warsi with me a few days back.
What better qualification can you think of to have on your CV than you will work for ‘Nothing’. Self worth and working dignity stopped being commodities the UK could afford with ‘New Labour’.
Michael Osler, ‘Nowadays most of us are so downtrodden and afraid of losing our own jobs to to kick up much fuss’.
Please look up the PCS website. Behind it there are thousands working in DWP who daily ‘fuss’ about what they are told to do, and daily risk their jobs to circumvent it. What’s more I know quite a few who will be on the High St on 3 March, and they will not be shopping.
http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=359#comment-480
Jim, Great link. Cheers. I take it you saw this today.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/21/emma-harrison-a4e-nice-work
Martin. I look forward to the Sunday Sun. Murduck has embraced the SNP. Maybe payback time for the oldie having to waste his time sitting with his dolly burd or was it his mrs in front of the Commons Pretend Select Committee. Maybe Rubert arranged the agenda! I would never suggest he has everyone in his pocket including politicians that are above reproach. Salmond has apparantly phoned Murduck. No details published yet unless the call was hacked.
I do have an unenviable and unbroken record of bringing stuff to an end it seems and closing it down. Do not care what it is or what abuse this may attract. Can you please elect me to Tory Party Chair/Leader, and be bloody quick about it.
It now looks like the weapons we are left with are fisticuffs in the Commons bar and crap jokes.
Heard from a member of staff in a Jobcentre near you today. A4E is of course All For Emma. Hope yet Michael.
Looks like once you change the bloody post it name here you are stuck with it. Can I be ‘Ming The Merciless’ next please David?
Got it. You invent a new name but have to retype the mail address. Glesga is so bloody boring. How many names do we know you by Jimmy?
Stack shelves? What me? I could do it once? But now? Is there training?
laban, there is a limit to the size of the black economy, which exists no matter what you do about immigration. At least your last comment puts the blame firmly on the ‘system’ and not the immigrants. So the problem isn’t immigrants or even rogue employers but the laws of capitalism.
There is a limit to the size of the black economy, obviously it is linked to a thriving ‘official’ economy for one thing, which is why Laban’s second point is relevant. If the unofficial exonomy fries up, then people are forced to look for work in the official one, thereby increasing the supply of labour and depressing wages. The other alternative is turning to crime, of course. Yes, it is all about the laws of capitalism, but why deny their concrete effects?