Young jobseekers told to work without pay or lose unemployment benefits

[bricolage]

People taking up work experience places – providing up to 30 hours a week of unpaid labour – face losing benefits if they quit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/16/young-jobseekers-work-pay-unemployment

[Agathor]

Thank god I'm not unemployed anymore. This looks grim.

[Buttress]

Unpaid labour under capitalism just doesn't make sense

[bricolage]

Unpaid labour under capitalism just doesn't make sense
why?

[Zealot]

Forced labour

Next month comes Nazi-style labour camps.

Yaaayyyy..... fucking capitalism.

[Nox]

Forget wage slavery, this is slavery slavery.

[piet11111]

This is already happening in germany hart4 laws are essentially the same.
And in the netherlands they are setting up a similar system at the social workplace i work at we have 1 on unemployment benefits that has to work there or he would face massive cuts in his benefits.

[rednordman]

why?

because if people work without pay than that also means they will not be able to put their earnings back into the economy. Thats actually even more damaging to capitalism as a system because it quoshes growth needed for it to be strong. That aswell the class struggle which will emerge as a result.

[RebelDog]

This is a racket. Working in a supermarket is bad enough for someone who is getting paid, this is horrific. This is simply more subsidisation of business. These are business' that are constantly recieving public money, some will no doubt be avoiding tax and now they get free labour. Putting young people to work in supermarkets for nothing is tyranny, pure and simple. If it were North Koreans forced to work in a field it would be condemned by the UN. If the supermarkets have work for them they should be forced to pay for them. Work experience is a pile of shit. Companies should be forced to employ people, train them properly and pay them a decent wage.

[IndependentCitizen]

And my hypothesis from this is: A larger rise in unemployment in the coming months pushed forward by the Tories. Why pay workers properly, when benefits are cheaper and help corporations make more profit?

Fuckin' slavery!



why?

I believe he was being sarcastic, comrade :)

[RedRose]

In the UK, work experience is generally something done for 1-2 weeks around the age of 15-16, which takes you out of school for a bit and is very helpful as you usually do work experience in a field which you want to pursue a career in later.

You're meant to learn skills that will help you get into university and get a job later, what fucking skills can you learn in Tescos? This isn't work experience, it's literally the definition of forced labour. Without benefits, chances are most of these people will end up with no money at all. What the fuck?

[ВАЛТЕР]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is pretty much the definition of slavery. Minus the whips and chains.

[RedRose]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is pretty much the definition of slavery. Minus the whips and chains.

Wikipedia:

Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages.
You're not going out on a limb, you're stating fact.

Obviously they could leave if they wanted to, they're not going to be stopped, but if they leave, they will literally have no money and we all know what that leads to...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/suic-n15.shtml

[bricolage]

because if people work without pay than that also means they will not be able to put their earnings back into the economy. Thats actually even more damaging to capitalism as a system because it quoshes growth needed for it to be strong. That aswell the class struggle which will emerge as a result.
this is what I thought he was getting at but in this case it doesn't add up. this is true in the structural sense and if everyone was working there'd be no money for consumption but there are acres of leeway before you get to that point where wages can be heavily suppressed (even down to nothing) and capitalism still function fine. more to the point bosses/politicians/that lot don’t tend think in terms of capital as a whole and instead, most commonly think in terms of how to get the most profit as quickly as possible. either they don’t know or don’t care about what happens in the future or they’ll be retired on a big enough pay out then to be able to afford to not care.

there is a massive drive to getting unapid labour ie. those on the dole, prisoners, and i'm sure there are plenty of other examples. in the meantime its a cut to the social wage of everyone else in order to 'balance the books’, it’s capital trying to restructure itself.

[brigadista]

this has been going on for a while now

[ВАЛТЕР]

Wikipedia:

Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages.
You're not going out on a limb, you're stating fact.

Obviously they could leave if they wanted to, they're not going to be stopped, but if they leave, they will literally have no money and we all know what that leads to...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/suic-n15.shtml


Yeah well, you know what I mean...it sucks. :D

[kahimikarie]

This is really terrible... It reminds me of another news story I read in The Guardian(?) about a year ago, praising a 19 year old woman for giving her unpaid labor to a clothes shop for a year, and then finally being "rewarded" by getting hired for a lousy retail position.

Also, I can't remember if this is conjecture or not, but I remember reading that in Germany, women can lose their benefits if they don't take any job available...which can mean being forced to work in legalized brothels.

[rednordman]

this is what I thought he was getting at but in this case it doesn't add up. this is true in the structural sense and if everyone was working there'd be no money for consumption but there are acres of leeway before you get to that point where wages can be heavily suppressed (even down to nothing) and capitalism still function fine.Of course they are going to think its fine, after all they are forcing young people to work for free. The problem is, little known to the capitalists, foresight has shown and still is showing right at this very minute that the while the world revolves around them, they are not the whole picture.

Sure they could go and force us all to work 20 hours a day, and for 1p an hour, but lets face the fact that while it would be awesome for the capitalists, the country would end up looking like poorest areas of India and far east. If that was the case, who's stopping complete unified revolution in the west.

Capitalists may scoff at theories of Marx, but they are only hiding their acknowledgement that such events are indeed a very strong reality when things get very bad.

[Marxaveli]

This is slavery indeed, indentured servitude at best. I mean what the fuck!?!? Its one thing to work without pay on an internship or something, but this is far from that. I really wish the revolution would happen already, so we can hang these bourgeois scum by their entrails.

[piet11111]

Wikipedia:

Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages.
You're not going out on a limb, you're stating fact.

See capitalism is progressive /sarcasm.

[thefinalmarch]

capitalism is progressive
I see no reason to disagree with this statement.

[blah]

Without pay? They are getting paid with the benefits.

[Charlie Watt]

My understanding of workfare is that it'd been around since the labour were last in, but the tories have ramped it up a fair bit. That being said, I'm not sure it's the same deal north of the border. Before I started college, I was papped onto numerous work placements, none of which provided a job at the end, but with that, non-the-less, being the stated goal. As far as I know, with workfare, you have to work indefinitely, with no real prospect of a job whenever the end comes.

[bricolage]

Sure they could go and force us all to work 20 hours a day, and for 1p an hour, but lets face the fact that while it would be awesome for the capitalists, the country would end up looking like poorest areas of India and far east. If that was the case, who's stopping complete unified revolution in the west.
the same things that are stopping it at the moment. if the only prerequisite for revolution was poverty half the world would be communist by now. evidently it needs a bit more.

[RedRose]

Without pay? They are getting paid with the benefits.

No they're not though...

Literally, one day they are looking for a good, paid job and receiving benefits, and the next they are working in Tescos for no pay and they only money that have to live on is with their benefits.

Think about it like this. Normally, if Philip leaves his job, he stops getting his job's pay, but then gets unemployment benefits to keep him alive until his next batch of wage labour. Under this system, if Philip leaves the job he has been forced to do, the government refuses to donate to him any money and he doesn't have anything at all to sustain himself with.

[Marxaveli]

This whole thing is a perfect example of why capitalism can never, ever work. It does not matter how many reforms you implement. As long as the system stays in place, the bourgeois are protected and rollbacks to socialistic policies will always be possible, and probable. We saw this with the FDR's New Deal program, 50 years later Reagan and his worshippers than followed him have assaulted it greatly. This is just a coercive tactic to force people to work for $2 an hour.