Thursday 3 February 2011

Problems and opportunities

More problems over the introduction of the Work Programme have been brought up at a Work and Pensions Committee hearing. A4e's executive director Rob Murdoch is chair of the ERSA, the industry's trade body, and he expressed concern over the 3-month gap between the old contracts ending and the new ones starting. The big companies can cope with this, but the smaller ones can't, and are having to lay off staff. "Social enterprises" are concerned, too, that they are being signed up by the prime contractors simply as window-dressing, because the contracts demand it, rather than with a genuine prospect of involvement. What seemed so simple to the government is rapidly unravelling.

Meanwhile, A4e's Mark Lovell (who is "in charge of A4e", according to the Spectator - but then the company seems to have a number of bosses) says that we're wrong about there being no jobs. In the Spectator interview he assures us that, "We have never been in an economy where there aren’t suitable jobs for the people who walk through our doors." He quotes the ONS figure of 500,000 vacancies in the Jobcentres, and says that this is only one third of the total. This will come as a surprise to those who know that a great many of the vacancies in the Jobcentres are not jobs at all, but spurious "home working opportunities" and adverts by agencies. Still, Lovell is clear about A4e's value. "During a recession you tend to find that employers often do more by word-of-mouth recruitment. The role of brokers who put people in touch with these opportunities is even more important during the recessionary cycle." The writer of the article, Peter Hoskin, doesn't question this, or bring up the embarrassing statistics.

Another of the government's big ideas is that groups of workers in the public sector should turn themselves into "mutual pathfinders", becoming independent co-operatives. Just once, in the election campaign, a spokesman let slip the real agenda - that these mutuals would then be able to bid for contracts. There's nothing of that in the piece on the Thirdsector website. We are not to suspect that this is a prelude to privatisation, when the mutuals will be outbid by the private companies. But there's a small clue in the fact that A4e is one of the organisations which will provide mentors for these new mutuals.

7 comments:

  1. How can the work programme work, with jobs lasting only a few months nowadays? even less than that in lot of cases, providers get paid for putting people into long term jobs, a month is not long term!

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  2. Having seen the draft WP contract, providers will have the victims (sorry, customers) in their control for two years. The outcome payment is based on the amount of time you are "off benefits" in that period. So if you get a short term job that only lasts a month or two, they claim an outcome for that period. You get to return to the provider until you get another job (which they claim a further outcome for). It is a messy setup, but the bottom line is the providers can bounce you around in short term contracts and still claim outcomes. The only way out is to die (for which A4e would probably try to claim as a success).

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  3. A person gets a job then has to go back to a provider, to be sold again and again, for profit on the providers part for two years, and what if if a "client" refuses say a pathetic weeks work? benifit cuts? or even a days work? will people be made to work in the meat industry say even though their vegitarian? if a persons anti war will they be made to work in the arms industry? the work programme reminds me of of roman gladiators in stables each man owned by a wealthy roman, the only way a person could win their freedom was to win a wooden sword through combat, but at least they could win their freedom, a client of a provider is there for two years even if they get a job!!!!

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  4. I've posted the above comment despite my irritation at someone who can't be bothered to use capital letters and flatly refuses to spell "benefits" correctly. Talk of being "sold" to the providers is OTT, as you well know. They will only get the one "attachment fee" per client. I don't think they will get more than one fee for short-term jobs, and only make a profit if the client gets long-term work. I agree that the very short-term and casual work is a problem. The government is supposed to be solving this, but hasn't yet, and it isn't clear whether someone can be sanctioned for refusing, say, to sign up with an agency. There will have to be provision for conscientious reasons for refusing a job. You couldn't, for instance, make a Muslim or a Jew work with pigs.

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  5. HI is there anyway that I can email you or make contact. I am journalist currently researching the issue and would be very grateful of having a chat in confidence

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  6. Anon, if you send a comment (which I won't, of course, publish) with your email address I will contact you.

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  7. A4e are laying off thousands of staff in Wales

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