Following the landmark decision by the Appeal Court last
week the governments sector-based work academy programme is the latest
Conservative policy to hit the metaphorical buffers, but what does this
decision mean for the job seekers and what is the problem with the system?
It should be made clear right from the start the Appeal Court
did not say the programme, which was criticised for being tantamount to slave
labour, was illegal. The issue was about the lack of information being given to
benefits claimants and the suggestion it was a mandatory requirement.
The programme itself works like this. Job seekers are placed
into unpaid work, usually stacking shelves or other low-paid work, and in
return receive government benefits. The idea is this gives them relevant experience,
gets them into the habit of going to work and increases their chances of
getting full-time paid employment.
However, right from the start the policy was fundamentally flawed,
something which the recent court decision brought into the spotlight.
Cait Reilly, one of the claimants in the case last week, is
a 24-year-old geology graduate from the University of Birmingham. Having left university
she volunteered at a local museum, but was on benefits as she was unable to
find full-time paid employment.
As part of the scheme she was told she had to go and work at
a local Poundland store stacking shelves for no pay if she wished to continue
claiming. This meant she had to give up her voluntary work and had less time to
apply for paid work.
Regardless of your view of people who claim unemployment
benefit it is hard to see any benefit for a well educated university graduate
to get ‘work experience’ stacking shelves when it is clearly not what they are
interested in or trained for.
The truly ironic thing about this is volunteering at a
museum was actually better work experience for her and more likely to result in
gainful long-term employment than the government scheme.
Long-term unemployment is a major problem in this country.
There are far too many people leaving education with no qualifications who then
spend years on unemployment benefits at the tax-payers’ expense.
It is these people who benefit from the sector-based work academy,
not a university graduate.
When I finished training as a journalist at the height of
the credit-crunch in 2009 I came out into one of the worst job markets in history
and was forced to claim unemployment benefits and although this scheme did not
exist at the time I suffered from many of the same problems.
Job Centre staff did not care about my qualifications,
skills and experience and were only interested in getting me to apply for as
many jobs as possible, almost all of which had no bearing on my qualifications
or experiance.
At one point I was effectively ordered to apply for a
temporary Christmas position in a retail store at a local shopping centre. I
then had to explain to the advisor that, while I was willing to apply, there
was no chance of me getting the job as it was the kind of position offered to
17-year-olds looking for work during the school holidays.
Thankfully I now have a great job working for a media
company in London which I love and is well paid, but being asked to stack shelves
would have, if anything, hindered my chances of this.
The experience of Ms Reilly and myself just goes to show the
Job Centre is not fit for purpose when it comes to dealing with educated people
who are unemployed.
To make matters worse over the weekend Work and Pensions
Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith had the audacity to criticise people “who think
they’re too good” to stack supermarket shelves, then saying those involved in
the programme were not unpaid as they were “paid” job seekers allowance.
The problem is Ms Reilly did not feel she was too good to
stack shelves, it is just it is not a suitable work-
placement for somebody who
is a university graduate.
Has this government completely given up on people who have
aspirations to get into more gainful long-term employment, or does it honestly believe
the privileged should be able to do what they want and the rest should go and
work in Tesco?
Anybody taking more than a cursory glance at the policy can
see how to get it to work.
Firstly look at the job seekers CV. What is their highest
level of qualification and do they have any marketable skills or experience? If
the answers are in the negative, or they are long-term unemployed then yes, getting
them into any workplace is going to be beneficial.
Secondly, for people who have higher qualifications, for
example, degrees, A-levels and the equivalents, look at their areas of
specialisation and find out what can be done to help them into employment in
their area of expertise, be it volunteering, internships or apprenticeships.
People stay in school and go to university so they can get
better paid work, not so they can graduate and get a job in Poundland. It is
not that they are too good for the job, it is that they have made the effort
and are trying to get a better future for themselves and their children.
This in fact might be the first time in history a government
has been against people aspiring to do better by staying in education.
Ms Reilly was not caught in the vicious circle of unemployment,
she was just unlucky enough to graduate into an artificially uber-competitive
job market.
There is nothing wrong with the sector-based work academy,
it is just it has been implemented really badly by an organisation [Job Centre]
who have no interest in actually helping people into relevant employment.
If this programme was aimed at the right people, people with
no qualifications and the chronically unemployed, then it would be a great
programme, but it should not be seen as a one size fits all solution to joblessness
in this country, particularly not for skilled workers and graduates.
