First posted on January 4, 2013
Dear Ed Balls WorkFare doesn’t Work!
Dear Ed Balls MP
Following your announcement of Labour’s plan to tackle unemployment, I’m asking you to think!
I’m not an economist, a Politician, a journalist & nor do I belong to any ‘thinktank’, I’m someone who has worked within and around various WorkFare schemes since the 80′s, and that I believe qualifies me an opinion.
The basic problem with most of these scheme was they were time limited Government subsidised projects with the real recipients being the Companies, who benefited from cheap labour. The ‘employees’ generally only received basic pay and training for their role, little or no support once placed, and rarely anything more that enabled them to do something other than return to the Job Centre to sign on, again, once their time is up.
I can see no difference with this and your plans other than Labour has this time adopted the Conservative ideology of Mandating attendance, thus buying into the toxic rhetoric that somehow it is the fault of the jobless people for being unemployed and not the responsibility of Government to create Jobs!
As a Labour member I am appalled that the Party has decided to perpetuate myth that unemployment is the problem of the unemployed; NO, it’s the problem of the Government and Labour would serve it’s members better by acting in opposition to the vile, immoral tactics of the Coalition, rather than merely repackaging Failing and Failed Policies.
So before you go ahead with this please ask yourself How does demonising Millions of People and depriving them of gainful employment fit into One Nation?
Yours without anticipation of a reply
Think Left 
Balls is a ‘Yesterday’ man. It doesn’t matter what he says he is associated with Gordon Brown and the Banking Rip-Off. He will never live that down and, the simple fact is, nobody trusts him. A very real case of, ‘You had your chance and you blew it!’ If Milibland wants to move on he MUST ditch Balls.
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“The basic problem with most of these schemes was they were time limited Government subsidised projects with the real recipients being the Companies, who benefited from cheap labour.”
Actually, time limits are a very good idea in that without them, the subsidised employees might end up a PERMANENT subsidised employees: exactly what we don’t want.
As to the idea that companies benefit from cheap labour, there is a wealth of evidence that companies DO NOT fall over themselves to make use is this cheap labour. Many employers regard subsidised employees (workfare type or otherwise) as a pain in the a*rse.
“The fault of the jobless people for being unemployed..”. The fact of being pro-workfare does not imply an assumption that unemployment is the fault of the unemployed. That is just a typical emotive leftie slur, which I’m sure gives you great emotional satisfaction. Many professional labour market economists favour something along the lines of workare. But none of them regard unemployment as being exclusively the “fault of the unemployed”. You’ll find a list of relevant labour market economists here:
http://ralphanomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/effect-of-temporary-subsidised.html
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Ralph,
Look at a list of companies who have been involved in unpaid work experience schemes. Name a high street chain or supermarket, and it’s odds on they are involved (or at least had been until bad press forced them to abandon). Firms do seem to be quite taken with the idea of subsidised Labour.
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Excellent article, I wonder if either of the above posters have actually been unemployed since the crash? As a matter of fact I have, and been actively been seeking work, or working for various temp agencies, like some kind of “industrial gypsy”, to quote the late Mick McGahey.
If companies do not benefit from cheap labour, then why are the jobs I apply for now offering drastically reduced wages for similar work as compared to 2009?
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By even considering this course he is adding credence to the Tory line when it has none. Government’s are there to create the economic conditions for gainful employment and the rest takes care of itself. Nobody wants to be signing on and living in poverty. He should be concentrating on the living wage rather than this type of crap. Unemployment is high because of Osborne’s total failure to add any stimulus to the economy.
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