Competing on compulsion

The leaders' debate tonight saw Cameron and Brown competing on how tough they are going to be on the unemployed. Brown said people will be forced to work. Cameron repeated what he has said many times about cutting off benefits for people who refuse a job. He also said that 3 years without benefit would be the penalty. Neither said where these compulsory jobs would come from. Clegg didn't compete with them. He said that people should have the incentive to work, and that raising the tax threshold would provide that incentive. Take your pick.

Emma's fans

Emma Harrison has a new fan - James Caan of Dragons' Den fame. In a piece in the Telegraph he says: "Recently, I was impressed to read about Emma Harrison - founder and chairman of A4e, the largest supplier of Government training contracts. The company works with public sector organisations to help train people and get them back into work. The last government's Flexible New Deal scheme targeted people who have been on jobseeker's allowance and out of work for more than a year by creating an individually tailored programme. Emma tells me that last year A4e assisted 17,681 people into work, helped 10,695 people gain a qualification, worked with 13,523 employers to improve the capacity of their workforce and helped build 79 thirdsector organisations." I'm intrigued by the verbs there - "assisted", "helped", "worked with"; and by the absence of the financial figures.

There were other fans tweeting from the Institute of Directors bash last night where Emma was a speaker. It seems that she gave good advice to the assembled business leaders, such as, "Do four new things every day" and "If you haven't got a vision, go and get one", for which they were no doubt grateful.

Gordon Brown and the unemployed

"But they shouldn’t be doing that, there is no life on the dole anymore for people, if you’re unemployed you’ve got to go back to work. At six months…" That's a quote from Gordon Brown's run-in with an elderly lady today. And, of course, it's gone unremarked. He didn't finish the sentence, but clearly the intention, if a Labour government is returned, is to copy the Tories' idea of Workfare - compulsory "training" or work-for-your-benefits, or even a cut-off point for benefits. There's nothing to distinguish Labour and the Conservatives, then, and whoever gets in we're going to see an increase in the resentment that so many unemployed people feel at being stigmatised. I see a growing number of posts and blogs on the internet from JSA claimants venting their anger. That is going to get worse.

There's a relevant article on CFE News saying that "Charity claims NEETs view employability courses with contempt".

"Barnardo’s Scotland director Martin Crewe claimed that young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) view courses designed to improve their job prospects with contempt. Mr Crewe stated that that was not what they wanted, and said: "What they want are real jobs and programmes that will get them employed - not a short-term placement which will leave them more or less back where they started. Sitting around in classrooms for long periods working on their CVs is not going to provide a major boost to the employability prospects of the young people we work with. They know it from day one and regard such schemes with contempt." He went on to say that the Barnardo's Works programme had got 80% of its young participants into sustained employment.

The Panorama Programme

The BBC having sorted out iplayer, I've now watched last night's programme about NEETs.

Back in 2007 four unemployed young men in Swindon, where there were plenty of jobs, were challenged to get work. This was a follow-up to see what has happened to them in the last three years. Digby Jones, former head of the CBI, had only a small role in the programme, but there were questions which could have been asked of him. We were told that he is "passionate about improving employment skills". But there was no mention of the fact that businesses have long since ceased to train their own employees. They decided a couple of decades ago that they would only take on people, ready qualified and experienced, off the shelf; the tax-payer has had to pick up the bill for training. Of the 4 young men, 2 got work through a work placement while on New Deal. Both are low-paid, low skills jobs; but no one would argue that this isn't a good outcome for them. Both had been employed in other jobs since 2007, but one lost his job when the company he worked for went out of business in the crash; the other resigned after 7 months. They are now seen as New Deal successes and are still in work.

The other two are still out of work. Tim had a job in a juice bar but lost it after 3 months for bad time-keeping. Ben got agency work at BMW and loved it, but was a casualty of the recession. He also had the prospect of a job through a New Deal placement, as a night porter in a hotel, but turned it down. The job went to another New Deal client after a work placement. At the end of the programme Ben was being interviewed by an FE college for an apprenticeship. Tim is doing a 3-month voluntary course to improve his employability. Both talked about the demoralisation of being unemployed. Jones had no sympathy. They were eminently employable, he said, telling them to get their hair cut, and trying to fire them up by humiliating them. Both Ben's parents and Jones said they were in favour of Workfare - force NEETs on to training or similar schemes or they forfeit their benefits. The punch line to the programme was the statement that each NEET will cost the tax-payer over £100k.

How you react to this programme will depend on your personal experience. What it highlighted for me was the lack of real skills training for young people. Schools have not engaged with vocational training enough, and the government has been concerned with getting 50% of kids to go to university and has ignored the rest.

The China strategy

There's an interesting article in the English online edition of the China People's Daily which asks whether it's too late for foreign companies wanting to enter the Chinese market. It's a massive market with 1.3 billion potential customers; but as China invests in, and develops, its own private sector, is there less scope for outsiders? The answer is yes-and-no; but "Roy Newey, group board director of A4e, a services business which helps people who are unemployed get back into work, is someone not daunted by the prospect of entering China. The Sheffield, UK-based operation is already in 11 international markets and is hoping to set up an operation in the country soon. "I have been on a China-British Business Council trade mission recently and I didn't get any sense among those on that trip that there was any lack of enthusiasm for doing business in China," he said. Newey believes the company provides the sort of specialized service for which there is a gap in the market. "We help people who are out of work get back into jobs and we believe we could play a role in China," he said."

I didn't see the Panorama programme last night, but will, I hope, watch it later today. However, it certainly angered someone who left a comment. I can't accept the comment because it's abusive, but he calls it "a thinly-disguised attempt to promote the workfare idea". It "ignores vast issues such as the likes of A4e" and there is no discussion of capitalism.

PS. The programme is listed on iplayer, but what is playing is actually an earlier programme on immigration. Is this another BBC foul-up?

A good time to bash the unemployed

The BBC is to broadcast a Panorama programme about the young unemployed, tomorrow 26 April at 8.30 pm. It returns to a programme they filmed in 2007 about four young unemployed people in Swindon. "The programme first met them in 2007 and set them real-life Apprentice-style work challenges, with dramatic results. Since then the recession has struck, and hit Swindon - and their prospects - hard. How have they responded?" (BBC website) Today's Times gives us a taste of what is in this programme. "The former government minister Lord Jones has suggested that unemployed young people who refuse to look for a job should be “starved back to work” rather than continue to claim thousands of pounds in benefits." It's predictable stuff. "One of the pair, who were from middle-class families, told Jones that he and his girlfriend were paid about £12,000 a year in jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit, and there was no reason for them to look for work. This is equivalent to a gross income of £15,000-£16,000." Shocking. And Jones' conclusion? "He said that while looking for a job, claimants should carry out community work — such as cleaning lavatories or removing graffiti — or study at college. While he did not support forced starvation, he believed anyone who refused three offers of jobs should lose the dole and be put in hostels and given “subsistence rations” of food and water. Jones said: “I’d say to them, ‘Sorry, mate, you have just surrendered your choices in life’.”"

The comments on the article are equally predictable. But the unemployed will be asking the obvious question. Where do those job offers come from? As we've pointed out before, you are not handed a job, you have to go out and ask for it. And no government, whatever the rhetoric, is going to create jobs specifically for the unemployed; and no government (one sincerely hopes) is going to change the law to remove the concept of the personal allowance, the minimum someone needs to live on.

It's a good time for the right-wing press to carry articles like this. It's less obvious why the BBC should choose an election campaign to run programmes like this. - hard. How have they responded?s. Since then the recession has struck, and hit Swindon - and their prospects - hard. How have they responded?

Bits and pieces

Two pieces of news this week - unrelated, of ccourse. From the South Yorkshire Star newspaper we learn that in the list of the 100 British companies with the fastest-growing profits, "A4e, whose services span employment, education, enterprise and tackling social exclusion, was placed 83rd after profits rose by 46 per cent to £8.2." And from all news sources we learn that unemployment has risen to 2.5 million.

Demos has produced a report flashily entitled "Liberation Welfare". Demos is a "think tank" which has in the past produced policy ideas for Labour and now, with its Open Left project, seeks "to create a space for open debate and new thinking about the kind of society Britain should be and how to bring
it about. This should be based on idealism,pluralism and radicalism." However, it gives "Special thanks .... to Reed in Partnership and A4e. Without their financial support this project would not have been possible." So we know we are not likely to get an objective view of welfare reform; and indeed the report doesn't question the use of private companies. Rob Harvey and Rob Murdoch from A4e have contributed a sensible article on reforming housing benefit;and much of what is in the report is equally sensible. But what is wrong with Demos' whole approach is the acceptance of private profit at the heart of welfare "reform".

Have you ever been offered a job? If you're a high-flying, skilled person with a good job you may have been head-hunted by another company. But the vast majority of us have always had to apply for jobs, or go out and ask if there are any vacancies, and then hope that we'll be the chosen candidate. But you'd never know this from David Cameron's lastest populist statement of intent about the work-shy. "If you refuse a job offer you'll lose your benefit," he said. Labour plaintively replied that it was already the case. And indeed it has been true since the year dot. Back in the 1960s there was the green card system. The Labour Exchange sent a claimant off with a green card to an employer who had vacancies. The employer had to sign the card to prove that the claimant had turned up; without that proof, benefit would be docked. But even then, the employer had the choice. Some claimants, then as now, were simply unemployable; and a few didn't want the job so could easily put off the employer. Nothing much has changed. It is very rare for an umployed person to be offered a job which he hasn't actively sought; and very rare for someone to go after a job, be offered it and turn it down. So what does Cameron intend? Nothing, I suspect. Once again, the people with the power demonstrate their ignorance of real life for the 2.5 million unemployed.