Welfare Action Gathering - 30 May.

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

Saturday 30th May, 10.30am-5.30pm (arrive from 10.15am for a cup of tea), London Welsh Centre (10 minutes’ walk from King’s Cross station)

"We’ve just added a couple more workshops – and now there’s a timetable as well!

We're really looking forward to seeing you at the Welfare Action Gathering this Saturday.  Here's a little more information about what's happening when on the day.  

And if you're free on Saturday but not sure whether you're coming or not, have a look at the programme, and maybe our website too, for longer descriptions of the workshops. 

p.s. If you're coming, it would be great if you could make sure you're at the Welsh Centre before 10.30!

Here's the programme:

10.00	Tea / coffee / welcome
10.30	Opening session
	What will cuts and reforms to welfare and housing mean? How can we fight against them? We’ll hear from everyone about what the biggest challenges facing us at the moment are.  We’ll find out what all the different groups and individuals want to get out of the day. To get a snapshot of who’s come along, each group will have 2 minutes to say who they are and what they do.  Hopefully this way, everyone will be able to make links with the people they especially want to speak to throughout the day. We’ll hear about successes that we might like to explore in more depth later. Everyone will be able to share the priorities and interests that bring them to the gathering, and say what they’d like to work together on and what issues they’d like to discuss.   We’ll start using the materials around the room to record what people would like to discuss in the open space, to signpost others to useful resources, and to advertise upcoming dates for actions/events/workshops.  We want this to be a day for making concrete links between groups and between people. We want there to be more effective collaboration by the end of it – not just another committee or a manifesto. And we hope these discussions can get going from the start.
11.40	Tea / coffee / snacks
12.00	Workshop session 1
	Organising against workfare in your town or city	Challenging sanctions and mandation	Staying strong: Supporting each other through the emotional impact of punitive welfare reforms	Knowing your right to Access to Work support, before going on Work Placements (DPAC)
1.20	Lunch (provided, vegetarian and vegan friendly)
2.20	Workshop session 2
	Universal Credit: time for welfare and housing campaigners to come together	Taking on workfare	Tactics to resist and navigate the Work Programme	Keeping Volunteering Voluntary: workfare stops when there’s nowhere to send people (KVV)	Title TBC (WinVisible)
3.40	Tea / coffee / snacks
4.00	Open space session to make stuff happen!				Workshop
	This session is for organising and information sharing.  People can plan how the ideas for action from the workshops will happen; or spend time exploring important questions we’ve all brought to the day. People can move between discussions, and between discussion and the workshop.  We’d like each discussion group to be able to feed back with information about: who to contact; what is going to happen; how can people get involved.				Dealing with energy companies and energy debt (FPA)
5.00	After today?
	We’ll hear about the plans from the open space, who is taking them forward and how we can stay in touch beyond the day. We’ll maybe arrange dates or targets for UK-wide action and ways we can build capacity and share resources to support each other.
5.30	Finish and pub!

Join the Facebook event and invite others to come too!

Organised by Boycott Workfare with Haringey Solidarity Group, with workshops and contributions from other groups. 

Please let us know if you’d like to come, if you haven't already: info@boycottworkfare.org

We can help with travel costs. If you are in a local group where people support each other and take action on welfare or housing (or plan to start one), we should be able to help with your travel costs. Please help by booking travel early and accessing other sources of funding if you can. Get in touchas soon as you can to sort travel costs out.

If you’d like access info please get in touch and let us know if there are ways we can help make the event accessible. We’ll make sure the venue is wheelchair accessible on the day, but unfortunately one workshop room is not.  If you’re a wheelchair user and would like to contact us in advance to let us know what workshops you’d like to attend, we’ll make sure they’re scheduled on the ground floor.  But either way, room allocations are flexible and will be decided on the day."

Boycott Workfare Action Weeks. Keep volunteering, VOLUNTARY!

We are publishing below recent briefings from 'Boycott Workfare':

"Saturday 2nd May, 12noon – 1.30pm, Salvation Army International HQ by Millennium Bridge, London

Praised by the government for “holding the line” on workfare, the Salvation Army is one of the few national charities still to use compulsory unpaid work placements.

Being involved in workfare means being responsible for sanctions – benefit stoppages which leave people with nothing to live on. Sanctions are driving food poverty in the UK. So it’s a mystery how Salvation Army – which also runs foodbanks – can justify its involvement in the sanctions regime.

On Saturday 2nd May, come and shame Salvation Army into joining the tens of charities to pull out of workfare. Take part in a visual action outside their international headquarters by millennium bridge near St Paul’s between 12 noon and 1.30pm.

Bring a placard or poster with a sanctions story, fact or example. Show just what a grotesque system the Salvation Army is supporting!

Please help spread the word and invite people to the Facebook event!

This week’s the Week of Action vs Sanctions and Workfare with daily online actions. If you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, please take a minute to:

• Lobby Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice shops to withdraw from workfare
• Sanction B&M Stores who we’ve been told are replacing paid workers with workfare
• Ask the British Psychological Society to challenge psychological coercion in the benefits regime
• Tweet the leaders of the main political parties to challenge their unanimous support for workfare

Today we’re supporting the Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign’s call for people to contact the charities and voluntary organisations you support to invite them to pledge to shun workfare too. Read on for more info, and follow Keep Volunteering Voluntary on twitter and facebook.

There are a lot of organisations who have said they won’t take workfare, but still a lot who do. We want all voluntary work to be freely chosen, not a means for private companies to make profits or Jobcentres to force people off benefits. Keep Volunteering Voluntary (KVV) have set up a pledge and already over 450 organisations have signed!

You can help to encourage organisations to sign up to Keep Volunteering Voluntary in several ways. Firstly check whether they are already on the list of sign-ups.

• If you use or support a charity, try to find out whether they use workfare, and in any case ask them to sign up to KVV.
• If there is a local charity shop, go in and talk to the people there: find out whether there is anyone there on workfare, and ask the organisation to sign up to KVV.
• If you work or volunteer at a voluntary organisation, try to get them to sign up.
• If a place you work or volunteer at has any links with a voluntary organisation, try to contact them too.

Download or order leaflets from Keep Volunteering Voluntary to take into charity shops, or adapt this template letter as an email to send to a voluntary organisation.

Some responses you may get and some tips on how to reply:

“We’ve already signed up.” – great, well done!
“We don’t have anyone on workfare.” – so you won’t mind signing up to KVV then.
“We’re helping the unemployed gain experience.” – that’s not of much value if they don’t want to be there.
“What’s wrong with (unpaid) volunteers.” – there’s no objection to genuine volunteers, but to compulsory schemes and coercion.
“The people on placement want to be here.” – that’s fine, but they shouldn’t be threatened with sanctions.

If you can get any kind of statement from an organisation, that’s always useful – a way in to further dialogue, or good publicity for the campaign. Let Boycott Workfare know and we’ll pass it on to KVV as well.

Some charities – such as Age UK – have a national office but each local area branch is ‘independent’ and may sign up separately. So if you see a local branch signed up but not your area, that’s an added incentive for your local to sign up too.

Without charities’ support, workfare schemes will collapse. That’s why every extra new organisation to sign up is so important – helping build consensus in the voluntary sector that workfare is completely at odds with its aims and values.

Perhaps you’d like to take the opportunity to contact some persistent workfare-using charities with your concerns too?

• See if there are any charities local to you on our list of workfare exploiters
• Ask hospices how they can reconcile caring for the community with sanctions. Contact North London Hospice shops or other charity hospice shops too
• Contact Groundwork UK – which hosts hundreds of placements and a DWP sub-contractor for the schemes
• Contact YMCA – which releases reports condemning sanctions, but then helps sanction people on Mandatory Work Activity

And don’t forget to check out the list of actions taking place across the UK today and tomorrow as part of the Week of Action vs Workfare and Sanctions.

Election Special: How the Political Parties stand on 'workfare' a.k.a. State Sponsored Slavery!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

"It is a disgrace that the three main political parties (and UKIP) support workfare and sanctions.  This consensus has allowed the introduction of policies that are causing ill health, hunger, homelessness and deaths.  All three parties have some responsibility for this and they all have questions to answer.

So today we’re asking you to take action online and help us break the election silence on workfare and sanctions.  It is unlikely that these issues will even get a mention during tonight’s Election Leaders Special edition of Question Time.

Help us to make sure these issues do get talked about, and tweet up a storm about workfare and sanctions using the #bbcqt hashtag.  And tweet your unanswered questions to @Ed_Miliband @nick_clegg and @David_Cameron…

Here’s the low-down on the political parties that support workfare and sanctions:

Vote Labour: Get Workfare

Shamefully it was the last Labour government who introduced workfare with the Welfare Reform Act of 2009.  Under Labour’s Flexible New Deal thousands of hours of unpaid work was handed out to businesses like Primark and claimants were forced to work without pay in hospitals and local councils.  The last Labour government also introduced the hated Work Capability Assessment and extended benefit sanctions to include disabled people and lone parents.  Over the last five years there has been a complete absence of any opposition from Labour to any of the workfare and sanctions policies introduced by the coalition.  Labour’s support for the retrospective Workfare Bill was particularly disgraceful.

Labour’s manifesto promises to introduce a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee for young people and the long-term unemployed. Previous statements indicate that the compulsory jobs would be paid at 25 hours of minimum wage and involve an additional 10 hours unpaid “training” each week. Those unable or unwilling to accept the compulsory jobs will be sanctioned “in line with the existing sanctions regime”.  Labour have also pledged to withdraw unemployment benefits completely from young people and replace them with a Youth Allowance paid at the same rate.  This allowance would be means tested and conditional on young people being in “training”.

Vote Liberal Democrats: Get Workfare

The Liberal Democrats have supported every workfare and sanctions policy introduced by the Conservatives over the last five years (including the retrospective Workfare Bill) and must share responsibility for the ill health, hunger, homelessness and deaths caused by coalition policies.  Nick Clegg’s Youth Contract created thousands of unpaid workfare placements resulting in millions of hours of unpaid work. In their manifesto the Lib Dems say they will expand the availability of unpaid work placements into new sectors.

Vote Conservative: Get Workfare

The last five years of Conservative-led government have seen a proliferation of workfare schemes and a huge increase in the number of benefit sanctions.  Claimants can now be forced to work for 6 months without pay.  Benefits can now be stopped for up to 3 years.  Predictably these policies are having disastrous consequences.  With the introduction of Universal Credit the Conservatives are seeking to extend workfare and sanctions to low paid part-time and self-employed workers.

Their manifesto promises more of the same, with an unspecified £12 billion of cuts to the welfare budget.  There are pledges to send Jobcentre advisors into schools to provide routes into unpaid work; tougher “Day One Work Requirements” for young claimants; the ending of housing benefit for young people; and sanctions for claimants who refuse “recommended treatment”. Like Labour, they say they will replace JSA for young people with a Youth Allowance.  This would be limited to 6 months – after which young people will be forced onto apprenticeships, unpaid traineeships or community work.

And finally…

Vote UKIP: Get Workfare

At the last election UKIP’s policy document on social security was entitled “From Welfare to Workfare”.  This was an incredibly offensive tract which cited the Daily Mail as evidence and described claimants as “a parasitic underclass of scroungers”. Tellingly, one of the workfare proposals suggested was that claimants should be forced to work without pay to build prisons (presumably for themselves).  This time around it seems that UKIP have decided that workfare is no longer a vote winner and have disappeared the policy from their manifesto.  It should be noted though that workfare was endorsed at their last conference and is still listed on their website as one of the reasons to vote for UKIP."

Psychobabble to be used by Tories to get people back-to-work. Is this mind control?

We are publishing below a recent briefing received from 'Boycott Workfare':

"On top of punishing claimants with sanctions that leave people destitute, the Government now has plans to use psychological treatments to force people into work.

George Osborne’s budget announced measures to ‘improve employment outcomes’ for people with mental health conditions. These include online cognitive behavioural therapy (change the world by changing how you think) for people on ESA or JSA and putting psychologists in JobCentres.
Unemployment is being redefined as a psychological disorder and the main purpose of psychological therapy will be to force people off benefits.  Or to promote yet another specious reason to cut people off benefits.

Meanwhile, the Tory Manifesto states that claimants who ‘refuse a recommended treatment’ may have their benefits reduced. This is an assault on the human rights of people on benefits and an attempt to co-opt medical professionals as state enforcers.

We’re hearing more and more reports of the misuse of psychology to coerce, bully and punish claimants into ‘getting the right mindset’: “all new starts must attend an initial two week course to develop their confidence”.

Change your attitude

The ‘change your attitude’ message of positive psychology is enforced in mandatory ‘employability’ training courses promising to help with ‘self-esteem, self-confidence and motivation’ and in unsolicited ‘positive thinking’ emails.  Making people take part in various pointless and humiliating psycho-group-activities e.g. building paper clip towers to demonstrate team work, or take completely meaningless and unethical psychological tests to determine their ‘strengths’.

The Department for Work and Pensions issues contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds (Focus the Mind, Achieve your Potential) designed to ‘address negative perceptions’ and ‘instil a positive attitude to work‘.  A programme for JSA/ESA claimants over 50 aims to persuade people that age discrimination doesn’t exist:

“to challenge perceptions that employers discriminate on the grounds of age”.

Fraud

These fraudulent programmes don’t result in real paid work you can live on. The companies that run them are making millions out of a big con: that with a total personality makeover, anyone can get a job.  That positive thinking can change the low pay, no pay UK economy.

Psychological resistance to work

In another scheme claimants will have interviews to assess whether we have a ‘psychological resistance’ to work, along with attitude profiling to judge whether we are ‘bewildered, despondent or determined’. If they decide you are ‘less mentally fit’ you’ll be sent on ‘more intensive coaching’, while those who are ‘optimistic’ can be placed on less rigorous regimes. This is how they will decide who is to be punished with ‘extra support’ i.e. forced to spend 35 hours a week at a JobCentre.

Sanctions

The growing use of psychology, with practically every JobCentrePlus manager an expert in the topic, is not helping people with mental health problems whose suffering at the hands of this system has been well documented - with more than 100 people a day with mental health problems losing their benefits through sanctions.

The newly privatised Behavioural Insights Team has trained over 20,000 JobCentre staff in ‘behavioural techniques‘ with DWP managers regularly sending out positive psychology tweets to ‘motivate’ staff to meet targets. Targets that result in escalating sanctions.

Positive psychology

Positive psychology messages are so stupid, they are laughable. But being told day in, day out, that it’s our fault we’re unemployed or in such low paid work that we have to claim benefits  can really get to people. The language of workshy scroungers is a deliberate attempt to put people down and undermine support for hard won welfare rights.  Claimants are expected to show a positive attitude to being exploited or be sent on 6 months Community Work Placement for ‘lack of motivation’ or be referred to a psychologist for questioning your job coach.

BPS inquiry

Before Christmas, the president elect of the British Psychological Society  Jamie Hacker Hughes responded to our concerns by promising to hold an inquiry. That was then. Inspite of repeated reminders, there is nothing on the BPS website about the inquiry. No terms of reference. No information about how people who’ve been through various workfare psycho-interventions can submit their testimonies. All we’ve had from BPS on the issue of psychology, workfare and ethics so far is a press release saying that it’s fine to test claimants for ‘psychological resistance to work‘ as long as the person doing the tests is ‘qualified’.

We’re not holding our breath for the BPS inquiry. In the meantime, we welcome your own testimony on how psychology is used to manipulate, blame, punish and coerce people on benefits.

What you can do

Let the British Psychological Society know we won’t stand for compulsory positive psychology and mandatory psychological treatment. We expect them to speak out. You could also ask them what happened to the inquiry into psychology and workfare promised by their President Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes back in November 2014?

Twitter

Facebook

Lobby members of the newly established ‘Mental Health Task Force‘ . This includes Mind, Age UK(well known workfare exploiters) and Rethink

Ask Psychologists against Austerity to keep up the pressure. Tweet them here "

Take action: No voice for workfare profiteers!

We are publishing below a recent briefing received from Boycott Workfare:

"Take action online against the workfare industry conference as part of the Week of Action vs Workfare and Sanctions!

Today, Monday 27 April, the welfare-to-work industry is holding its AGM.  The ERSA – the organisation that does spin and lobbying for workfare exploiters – is meeting to discuss the year in workfare and new ways of making the sector respectable.

We don’t know the location yet.  Since our noise demo massively disrupted their conference at the end of 2013, they’ve been cagier about where they meet.

For the first online action for the week of action against workfare, we want to target the ERSA and spotlight the violence they do to claimants through workfare, ‘training’, and sanctions.   Their work relies on coercion, threats, and the imposition of poverty. So at the AGM we’ll find the Employment Related Services Association talking over new ways of presenting the same lies about workfare.

Their past conferences have been attended by people like Esther McVey (Minister of State for Employment); the head researcher of Iain Duncan Smith’s thinktank Centre for Social Justice; the heads of workfare companies like Avanta, Seetec, G4S and Pinnacle People; the heads of massive charity workfare users like Groundwork and the Salvation Army; and the boss of the company that forced unemployed people to get changed under a bridge for the Queen’s Jubilee.

Their blog hosts advertorials for the Salvation Army’s part in the Work Programme.

Contracts to these companies and others that ERSA represents are worth billions of pounds.  Fees for delivery of one part of one workfare scheme, for two years, in England, Scotland, and Wales, are over £250 million.   And all this is money wasted: the schemes don’t do what we’re told they’re supposed to do, they just cause poverty, homelessness, anxiety, and death.

The ERSA’s tagline is ‘giving a voice to the employment support sector’.   But the industry doesn’t need a voice – it certainly has no interest in hearing from the people its members’ jobs exploit.  Why should they be able to sit and calmly discuss ‘employment support’, as if they were unemployed people’s benevolent helpers?

Let’s drown them out.  Tweet to @ersa_news "

WORKFARE WEEK OF ACTION!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare.

"With an election looming it’s a vital opportunity to expose and challenge workfare and sanctions policies and the political lies that underpin them. 

Already your efforts have resulted in massive success: Dozens of organisations have withdrawn from the schemes following public pressure. Let’s take it even further on 25th April – 2nd May. Read more here.

Start getting ready for the week of action now:

• Reply to this email to order know your rights leaflets to give out at your local jobcentre or workfare provider
• Plan an action at a workfare exploiter near you!
• Order Keep Volunteering Voluntary leaflets to ask charities in your area to pledge to avoid workfare!
• Join the Facebook event and invite others to take part too!
• Remember to let us know what you plan so we can help to publicise it!

The week of action is a chance for everyone who opposes workfare and sanctions to demand an end to these cruel policies. Already this year, at least four organisations have withdrawn from workfare following public pressure. However you take part, it will count. 

During the week itself, check the Boycott Workfare website to take part in daily online actions too!

Then join us for the Welfare Action Gathering on 30th May!

It’s a fact, regardless of who wins the election - we will have to resist!  New policies such as the roll out of Universal Credit will see people in employment and on housing benefit sanctioned too. So, we would love to see you come and take part in our Welfare Action Gathering on 30th May at the London Welsh Centre. It will be a great chance to discuss how we can all continue to resist, and maybe even come up with creative new ways of doing so! "

Please let us know if you can take part in the week of action and gathering and help spread the word far and wide!

Boycott Workfare Action Week: 25 April - 2 May!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

As the general election campaign gets underway we are already seeing politicians calling for more of the same policies. More workfare. More sanctions. Yet we know that these policies have been a total disaster. It is shameful that workfare and sanctions are supported by all the main political parties. This is why we are holding a week of action in the week before the election. We need your help to expose and challenge workfare and sanctions policies and the political lies that underpin them.

Workfare undermines paid jobs and wages and results in sanctions. It does nothing to improve the chances of people finding a job and exploits those forced to carry it out. Last year over half a million people had their benefits sanctioned. The number of benefit sanctions imposed by the DWP now exceeds the number of fines imposed by the courts. People are being left with nothing for up to three years. There is now overwhelming evidenceof the harm being caused by sanctions. Sanctions are damaging the health of claimants and leading to hunger, homelessness and deaths.

Your actions have already had a huge impact in challenging these policies. Dozens of organisations have withdrawn from the schemes following public pressure. Over 500 voluntary sector organisations have now signed the Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement to say they oppose workfare and sanctions and will not be involved. 25 councils have also said they will boycott the schemes. All this means it is getting harder and harder for the government’s private providers to find workfare placements. Hundreds of placements have been cancelled and your actions have made a real difference.

The week of action is a chance for everyone who opposes workfare and sanctions to demand an end to these cruel policies. However you can contribute join us to take action from 25 April – 2 May:

• Join in with online actions throughout the week!
• Ask charities you support to sign the Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement!
• Speak out! Tell those promoting workfare and sanctions what you think of their policies!
• Hand out our know-your-rights leaflets at your local jobcentre!
• Plan actions at a workfare exploiter near you!

Remember to let us know what you plan so we can help to publicise it!

Join the Facebook event and invite others to take part too! "