WORKFARE OR FASCISM?

Large employers are withdrawing from the Workfare scheme proposed by the current government. Several politicians, businessmen and media organisations have praised the idea. Indeed, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail are at the front of the demands for Workfare.

Today The Daily Workfare Mail has an article in which former Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose supports Workfare. The article mentions that Rose started at M&S stacking shelves, but information that is buried in the article states that he first joined M&S as a management trainee, so had a guaranteed job and guaranteed promotion up the career ladder after his presumably short stint stacking shelves (can't have the management associating with the shopfloor staff). Rose says,

‘It’s about getting people into the routine of working, making sure they are up in the morning, making sure they’re presentable, make sure they arrive on time, make sure they know what it’s like to have a properly constructed work programme, and shelf stacking is just a part of it.

‘When I started off in my retail career as a management trainee in Marks & Spencer’s 40 years ago, I was put to shelf stacking and indeed to sweeping out the warehouse for a day.

‘If you are drawing unemployment benefit and you are looking to get into the workplace and somebody says to you, “We’ll give you some experience” and you have got a week apparently to withdraw from it if it doesn’t suit you, why would you not do it?

‘If I was the parent of one of these people I’d say, “Go on to it, lad, get in there, get stuck in”.

‘So I find it quite baffling and I think it’s very, very sad, with I think it’s 20-odd per cent of unemployment around the age of 18, that kids are being led to believe that big business is exploiting them, which is nonsense.’ Sir Stuart said firms were apparently being ‘intimidated’ by the campaign against the scheme, adding: ‘One or two have shown a little less than backbone, if I might say so.

‘I think you have got to stick with it. If there are one or two issues of administration in the process that need sorting out, then let’s sort it out, but it seems to me quite straightforward.

‘You can come in, you can get work experience and if you like it you can stay here and possibly get offered a job; if you don’t like it after the first week you can go away. I don’t get it, what’s the problem?’

[source : Show some backbone! Ex-M&S chief tells firms to defy militants on work experience scheme, The Daily Mail, 27/02/2012]

What is wrong with this? Well, if you go to the Right to Work webiste you will find a report entitled "A comparative review of workfare programmes in the United States, Canada and Australia", financed by the DWP themselves, that looked at Workfare in the USA, Canada and Australia. The report concludes that Workfare did very little if anything to help people find work (this when jobs were more available), and Workfare may in fact be harming chances of finding employment because while those on the scheme were 'working' and travelling to and from their location of 'work' they were unable to look for real full time employment with real prospects.

What a farce!

But why is the government proposing Workfare in the first place? Because we are broke. Now Captain Oik admits it, but despite being Chancellor for nearly two years blames it all on Labour (which is half right, the other half is his fault). During his time as Chancellor he has been promising a land of milk and honey and rivers made of chocolate if only we, i.e. the working and middle classes, suffer austerity to pay for the reckless gambling of his good friends the Zionazi warmongering Rothschilds and their ilk, the banker classs. Oik said,

“The British Government has run out of money because all the money was spent in the good years,” the Chancellor said. “The money and the investment and the jobs need to come from the private sector.”

[source : George Osborne: UK has run out of money, The Daily Telegraph, 26/02/2012]

So now we see why the implementation of Workfare is so crucial to the government. They want and need a source of free labour, just like in war they want and need a source of free cannon fodder.

So what is Workfare? It's when you do some 'work' in return for experience and your benefits. The company 'employing' you while you 'work' does not pay you a bean. All the money comes from the government. The result is that the government pays you to work for a company, the company gets the result of your 'work' and you may or may not get a job after it. But please read the aforementioned DWP report about USA, Canada and Autralia; WORKFARE DOESN'T WORK! AND THE DWP KNOWS IT!

Workfare is fascism, plain and simple.

The DWP knows it.

McDonalds knows it.

Grayling knows it.

Osborne knows it.

Under normal economic conditions Workfare would not even be discussed because jobs would be much more abundant and easily obtained. However, as Sir Stuart Rose himself acknowledges our economic condition is far from normal. Unemployment is increasing, particularly among the youth, and is forecast to get much worse before it gets better.

But why are economic conditions far from normal? That's right. Because of the bankers. And it's not just all bankers, it's those at the very, very top, who are reaping all the power and the wealth from the chaos that their gambling caused. And it is the working and middle classes who are being asked, or ordered, to work for free.

If a few of these bankers were hung, drawn and quartered to teach the rest of the banker class to respect the God-like power to create money out of thin air that they have been entrusted with by our corrupt wretches in the Houses of Parliament, then at least we would see that maybe, just maybe, we are indeed "all in this together", to quote Cap'n Oik. Perhaps then Workfare could possibly be seen as a solution by more of society.

But I don't see any gallows.

I see a disunited fascist kingdom.

And it's becoming more disunited and more fascist by the day.