Cait Reilly, 22, is completing three weeks at Poundland, working five hours a day. Reilly, who graduated last year with a BSc in geology from Birmingham University, found herself with five other JSA claimants last week stacking and cleaning shelves at Poundland in south Birmingham.
She says there are about 15 other staff at the store but, unlike them, she will receive no remuneration for her work. "It seems we're being used as some free labour, especially in the runup to Christmas."
Reilly says she told her local jobcentre in King's Heath, Birmingham, that she did not need the experience in the store as she had already done plenty of retail work.
Despite DWP rules, Reilly says she was told by the jobcentre that she would lose her benefits if she did not take the Poundland placement. The DWP says jobseekers should be told about the cooling-off period but was unable to comment on individual cases without being given personal details."I was told [the work experience placement] was mandatory after I'd attended the [retail] open day," she said.
She said she felt she had to do it because "without my JSA, I would literally have nothing".
Full article HERE
This story is somewhat old now, but I feel it is still worth talking about.
It links quite nicely with the scheme that the DWP are hoping to bring in for disabled people, asking them to work unlimited amounts of time for no pay.
As you can see, the DWP aren't specifically targeting disabled people with their schemes, it just seems a natural byproduct of their plans to target those that need the help the most with pointless plans.
In this case, we've got skilled workers, people that are already gaining voluntary experience in the industry that they want to work in, being forced to work in simple retail positions. This is problematic for several reasons; for starters we've got big businesses getting free labour, cutting down on the number of positions or hours available to those that are actually seeking work and forcing those that are on JSA to do the positions that they could take for free.
Finally this also means that those people that set up volunteer work within the industry they want to work in are being forced to cancel their time to work under retail systems that have nothing to do with their future career plans.
Ultimately this doesn't come across as badly as the focus on disabled claimants does, but it really highlights an issue that both the government and the DWP really have when it comes to reforming our welfare system. No matter how many schemes and plans they come up with, they consistently target the wrong people, punishing those that are working to get better or are seeking work, and rewarding or ignoring those that cheat the system.
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