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."

Labour's workfare shame: How Labour abandoned support for the poorest over illegal sanctions!

Jonathan Reynolds MP

In February 2013, the Court of Appeal quashed ‘The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise) Scheme’. The three Judges, Lord Justice Pill, Lady Justice Black and Sir Stanley Burton, ruled that the 2011 Regulations were ultra vires of section 17A of the Jobseeker’s Act 1995 because they failed to prescribe a description of the various schemes launched in August 2011 or the circumstances in which, a person can be required to participate in those schemes or the period during which, participants are required to undertake work on those schemes.

The case centred on whether the Secretary of State was able to create programmes and schemes at a whim rather than issuing Parliament with full details of the myriad of schemes in operation. It was declared that the Secretary of State, Ian Duncan Smith, had not given unemployed people sufficient information about their rights to appeal against being made to work up to 780 hours unpaid and the penalties they would face if they refused. The effect of the ruling meant that almost all of the Government’s work-for-your dole employment schemes were unlawful.

The Court of Appeal ruling meant that thousands of unemployed people (approximately 44,000) who had been unlawfully sanctioned (had their benefits stopped) for not participating in these schemes, were entitled to a refund of their benefits of around £130 million. On 30 October 2013, the decision of the Appeal Court was upheld by the Supreme Court.

The Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) stated that they would resist paying out rebates until all legal avenues had been exhausted. However, following the Court of Appeal ruling, the Government introduced emergency legislation -  ‘The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Schemes for Assisting  Persons to Obtain Employment) Regulations 2013’ and the ‘Jobseeker’s (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013’  that was fast tracked through Parliament with the support of most of the opposition.

What both measures sought to do was to validate the 2011 Regulations retrospectively and undo the decision of the Court of Appeal. This did have the effect of retrospectively making unlawful benefit sanctions imposed under the 2011 Regulations lawful in order to deny people rebates.

When these measures were introduced in Parliament in the spring of 2013, some 44 Labour MPs voted against these measures. However, the Labour Party official line was to ‘abstain’ so the Government could get the legislation through.

One of the MPs, who abstained, was Jonathan Reynolds MP, who represents the constituency of Stalybridge and Hyde. In May 2013, he wrote to a constituent to explain why he’d abstained on the Government’s Jobseekers Bill. According to Reynolds, the DWP’s back to work schemes (2011 Regulations), were struck down – not because they were unlawful – but on a technicality, because the DWP had not provided sufficient information to jobseekers about the penalties involved in refusing to participate in their schemes. He added, “The legal judgement was not about the legality or ethics of so-called workfare schemes (which were introduced by the last Labour government). These will always be political, not legal, matters.” He stated that he thought it only reasonable that people should have their benefits stopped if they won’t try to find work. However, he points out that Labour had demanded two crucial concessions: first, that people can appeal against mistakes by the DWP; “We can’t have carte blanche retrospective legislation of sanctions.” Second, there should be an independent review of the sanctions regime.

What Reynolds fails to mention and must have known at the time, is that in supporting this nasty little bill, money illegally taken from jobseekers who had been illegally sanctioned, would not be paid back to them. Labour’s support allowed the Government to backdate changes to the law so they could steal money from the poor.

Even right-wing think tanks like Civitas,were appalled by this shocking move. They asked, is the Government above the law? Moreover, what is the point in taking the Government to court, when they can simply move the goal posts and ignore the ruling, by introducing retrospective legislation that validates it?

Though Labour and Jonathan Reynolds MP, supported the Tory Government, the High Court subsequently found that retrospective legislation designed to render lawful benefits sanctions that were issued under the 2011 Regulations, was ‘incompatible’ with the right to a fair trial. The court called the move ‘draconian’, stating it was not explained or justified and “incompatible with the European Convention on human Rights.” After the ruling, the Government announced that it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

A Blairite and Labour friend of Israel, Jonathan Reynolds was elected to Parliament at the 2010 General Election, following the resignation of his mentor and predecessor, James (work-or-lose-your-dole) Purnell, who turned the seat of Stalybridge & Hyde into a marginal. According to Labour NEC member, Tom Watson MP, Reynolds was not initially put on the NEC’s shortlist, having failed to impress. However, Watson told ‘The Times’, that Reynolds was put on the shortlist of candidates for the vacant seat, following intervention from James Purnell and Peter Mandelson, who wanted him elected.

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 "

BULKY BOB'S AND L.A.M.H PULL OUT OF COMMUNITY WORK PLACEMENT SCHEMES!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

"It’s been a bad month for workfare: anti-workfare protests and campaigns in various parts of the country have been gaining ground at the expense of the DWP’s schemes. Campaigners are causing myriad problems for the Department for Work and Pensions: it is increasingly difficult for them find and keep placement providers for their Community Work Placements(CWP) scheme.

As Shiv Malik reported in the Guardian earlier this month, even the DWP admits that our actions are working. At the Information Commission tribunal hearing – where the DWP are challenging court orders telling them to release the list of organisations that are involved in workfare schemes – they argued, “that if the public knew exactly where people were being sent on placements political protests would increase, which was likely to lead to the collapse of several employment schemes”. Well, it would be a shame not to prove them right.

Successful attempts to get charities and other organisations to stop their involvement in workfare this month have taken many forms. There have been online actions; the work of the campaign urging charities to Keep Volunteering Voluntary (KVV); persistent one-man protests outside placement providers; and actions which didn’t even have to take place to get Bulky Bob’s to stop using workfare!

By some accounts, it was merely the threat of Liverpool IWW arriving at local household waste recycling firm Bulky Bob’s for the protest they had planned for the 12th of November that moved them to withdraw from workfare – although online actions by Liverpool IWW and others helped to pile pressure on the company’s management. Bulky Bob’s have also agreed to sign the KVV pledge, promising not to get involved in further unpaid work schemes. You can see their statement on their website here.

John MacArthur protested on his own for 2 hours a day outside the Motherwell (Scotland) charity ‘LAMH’ (Lanarkshire Association for Mental Health). He had been employed by the association at minimum wage in 2010-11, but recently was referred to them for unpaid work as part of the 6 month Community Work Placement programme. He was sanctioned in August – his Jobseeker’s Allowance was stopped until January for refusing to work for no wages at LAMH, leaving him “living on 16p tins of spaghetti”. But John made sure his former employers were aware of his situation and the negative publicity LAMH received induced them to drop out of the CWP scheme.

Sustained campaigning against workfare schemes has been destabilising the DWP’s schemes at every level this month, and clearly they’ve been feeling it. Let’s all support each other to keep up the good work going forward.

If you have any actions planned you’d like us to publicise, or any recent actions you’d like us to mention, get in touch at info@boycottworkfare.org."

Take action: Invite organisations to Keep Volunteering Voluntary!‏

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

"All week we’ve been inviting people to take part in online action to challenge workfare. If you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, please take a minute to:

• Ask Barnardos and British Heart Foundation why they appear on a list of Community Work Placements
• Contact Groundwork – the charity with 4500 workfare placements last year and a sub-contract to run workfare
• Stop workfare in hospice charity shops
• Challenge the TUC‘s 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 a template letter, 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 430 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 this template letter you can take to a charity shop, or adapt as an email to send to a voluntary organization.

Some responses you may get and 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 charity’s 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.

A massive thanks to everyone who has taken part online and organised demonstrations throughout the week of action! There are more protests in Amsterdam and Peckham today, and in Bristol, Haringey and Sheffield tomorrow! "

YMCA accused of exploiting unemployed youngsters!

We are publishing below the latest briefing from 'Boycott Workfare'.

"Today boycott workfare paid a visit to the London headquarters of workfare exploiter YMCA. They’ve defended their use of unpaid, forced work in previous statements and we’ve called them out on it. Mandatory Work Activity forces people to work without wages under threat of sanction, and doesn’t help them find a job anyway. Whereas the Salvation Army have stated they will not get involved in the new 6 month long Community Work Placements starting later this month, the YMCA have yet to make a public statement on the issue.

The YMCA wants to have its cake and eat it. Their president, Bishop John Sentamu, has spoken against workfare. Yet, the organisation still takes part in some of the harshest schemes.  They’re also involved in delivering traineeships – workfare by another name.

We say volunteering should remain just that, and that people shouldn’t be “made to volunteer” under threat of sanction.

The fight against workfare is more important than ever, with 74,000 people being sanctioned every month. Sanctions are one of the main reasons people are turning to food banks to feed themselves, and you can now be sanctioned for up to three years. This is forcing people to make the choice between heating their homes or eating.

Join us in a day of action against the YMCA’s use of workfare. Tell them what you think about them using forced unpaid work in their charity shops. Don’t let them ignore the devastating effect that sanctions are having on people up and down the country.

Facebook: YMCA England

Twitter: @YMCA_England 

Phone them on 020 7186 9500 or their shops hotline on 0845 601 0728.

Find contact details of your nearest YMCA shop here

But please note: Whilst it’s well worth trying to speak to a manager or senior individual if possible please bear in mind most people taking calls/emails will be low paid retail/admin staff and could even be on workfare themselves. Be aware that is an offence to make telephone calls or send communications which are threatening, indecent or offensive."