Compulsory community work may breach Human Rights and Minimum Wage ActsThe Coalition Government's plans to introduce a national scheme of compulsory community work for unemployed job seekers may be considered unlawful.
The scheme will compel the long term unemployed to accept unpaid work assignments in the community for four weeks or more. Failure to accept assignments will result in a loss of benefits.
The initiative is part of the Government's attempts to reduce the country's welfare bill and follows a pilot in which the number of benefit claimants dropped dramatically when community placements were assigned.
However some lawyers claim that it may fall foul of the Human Rights Act which outlaws anything that is considered 'forced or compulsory' labour and could also breach the minimum wage act, particularly if they are for a profit making company.
The proposal has come under increasing scrutiny recently. Unemployed Cait Reilley, who was volunteering in a museum in Birmingham in order to gain work experience to follow her career ambitions of working in the heritage sector, was forced to abandon her volunteering to take an unpaid placement for the retailer Poundland where she was made to sweep floors and stack shelves. In cases like these there is concern that the government is at risk of providing free labour for companies like Poundland to make a profit.
Opinion is mixed as to the potential sucess of work schemes to reduce unemployment. In 2008 the Labour Government examined a ange of similar schemes in the US and Australia and found little evidence that they helped claiments find paid work.
A poll running on social network i-volunteer currently shows 33% of people are in favour of job seekers working in the community in return for state benefits, with a further 52% citing that the scheme might be acceptable depending on an individual's circumstances. So far only 1% disagree with the scheme with 5% undecided.
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Unfortunatley I feel that the figures in the i-volunteer poll will invariably be selectively quote mined, as reflecting a fairly significant degree of supportive consensus as to forced community work.
However, I do not feel that the figures in the i-volunteer poll should be seen in isolation, and without context; as I would be very surprised if it was actually felt, especially by those within the volunteering sector/community, that people should be forced to “work” in any environment, more especially profit based often dead end environments, whereby as part of this process they were forced to cease demonstrably productive volunteering; not only to the detriment of themselves, (presumably they enjoyed volunteering), but also to the detriment of the organisation they volunteered for, and importantly the service users they engaged with.
Equally, as a society hopefully based on moral capital, logic and fairness, I feel we need to tread very, very carefully here, and most definitely not lump everyone together as being lazy good for nothing idlers simply because they are unemployed.
For in the current climate, unfortunatley many more people will find themselves unemployed, some never having been so before, and perhaps after many consistent productive years of work and active citizenship, including choosing to volunteer.
Therefore, I feel we always need to be mindful and appreciative that such people are most definitely not in the same league/category, as those who regard never “working” in any way, shape, or form as a legitimate lifestyle choice, indeed their right!
Either way; as temporary, transient custodians of “Volunteerism”, and in upholding its values, principles and ethics; then we must always remain focused that such government forced “community work” is most definitely NOT seen as volunteering, and be equally determined that this message is driven home at every opportunity, and at all levels; for regardless of the subjective rights and wrongs of forced labour/community work; we are not agents of the state, and are not there to police political ideology and rhetoric, however much "others" with a vested interest would like us to be so.
A fair bit of Hobson's Choice in this one. Or maybe Catch 22? "We're not FORCING you to volunteer - that'd be unlawful and immoral - but if you don't get down the community centre sharpish we'll stop your benefits".
Utterly seperate to the ideology is the implementation of the plans. We all know that the Job Centre Plus network is about as coordinated as a drunk octopus anyway - is there much hope they'll be able to use discretion and apply 'common sense' in this scheme, over all the others they've botched in recent years?
“Is there much hope they'll be able to use discretion and apply 'common sense' “
Hmm…no, of course not; but as eluded to; they are at least consistent in their inability to apply basic common sense to situations; which means its all the more important that we ensure appropriate ethical distance from ill thought out, illogical, unfair schemes, and ill-informed governmental jobs worth’s, and maintain our independence/identity.
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