That "unpaid stewards" row

There's been a great deal written about the case of the "work experience" jubilee stewards, but I haven't weighed in because it was nothing to do with A4e.  Well, not directly, anyway.
Among all the articles about the controversy I recommend two.  The first is a New Statesman blog piece, written by Kerry McCarthy.   The second is by John Harris in the Guardian, and is emotively titled "Back to the Workhouse".  


One thing struck me about the incident, which hasn't been raised in the media; the relationship of Work Programme providers with large companies.  In this case the provider was a subcontractor, a charity called Tomorrow's People, and the employer was Close Protection UK.  Now, in the past security work was an area for which some providers were willing to pay for training.  The SIA (the necessary qualification for the job) could be delivered in a week.  The provider might well have an arrangement with one or two local security firms for their clients to have interviews for any vacancies.  But now, it seems, the qualification involves unpaid "work experience" and an NVQ2 in something called spectator safety.  And the employer is a national company.  


This is far from unique.  A4e has a relationship with another huge security firm, Securitas, which boasts of employing 300,000 people in 51 countries.  Such arrangements are not widely publicised, but probably involve employers in areas like care work and retail, as well as security; jobs which need minimal training and pay minimum wage.  The WP provider pays for the training and the employer agrees to offer some jobs to the WP clients.  What's wrong with that?  Most people would say that anything which helps get people into work must be a good thing.  But there are some drawbacks.


For the employers it means a big taxpayer subsidy, because ultimately it's the taxpayer who is paying for the training.  Yet it's a private arrangement between two private companies.  It leaves smaller companies out of the loop.  True, the clients who get work are not bound to the first employer.  But they don't know, when put onto the programme, which companies have these arrangements with their provider, and so which areas of work they are going to be steered into.  No one is monitoring these relationships - that "black box" again.  They only get scrutinised when it goes wrong, as with CPUK.  There, it was apparent that the employer was benefiting from free labour called "work experience".  How many other employers are getting a similar benefit?


The government is determined to increase dramatically the number of people who are made to do unpaid "work experience".  We must demand full disclosure of which employers benefit from this.  How many people are they taking onto work experience and how many are they subsequently employing?

Puzzles

I am genuinely puzzled. Emma Harrison's stunt over Working Families Everywhere and family champions completely obscured the fact that contracts are coming out to provide such people with ESF money. And now Kent County Council are advertising for them in what they're calling a pilot until March 2013. The advert uses Harrison's slogans. But it also says that "there may be scope for an extension (after March 2013) depending on new funding becoming available". So when and where do these new DWP contracts apply? Since these people are currently employed by the councils, and would be TUPE'd over to the private contractors, there would seem to be nothing in it for Harrison except publicity; unless the volunteers she's trying to recruit are under her control, and that seems unlikely.

The website Children and Young People Now has tried to get some clarity from Harrison, but without much success. However, the piece does solve the puzzle of why Kent is joining in. Baroness Debbie Stedman-Scott is chief executive of charity Tomorrow's People and member of the Working Families Everywhere advisory board, and her group works in Maidstone, Kent. Helen Dent, chief executive of charity Family Action, repeats her scepticism about the whole scheme.

It would be useful if the journalists who are paid to research these things would sort it out. And pigs might fly.

There are times, just briefly, when I wonder whether I'm being unfair. Perhaps the bosses of A4e are genuinely more interested in helping people than in making money. Mark Lovell tweets: "Don't like profit motive - set up a social business and grow it globally. Compete, impact and force corporates and governments to change". And he's about to start an "Improving People's Lives" Fund. All very worthy. And unrecognisable to many of A4e's staff and clients. Another of his tweets is really interesting: "3,800 staff in our business - 63% female:male staffing ratio, higher outside UK. My 'boss' Emma and I have worked together for 20 yrs". Note the quotes around "boss". It has long been difficult to work out Harrison's real role in the company. There is a board of directors and a chief executive, so how much power does she have? Perhaps it's just useful to have her out there getting the publicity and cosying up to politicians while others get on with running the company.