Would 750 hours benefit YOUR store without payroll costs?

This is an Older Post From 2013 Which Has Been Updated

Boycott Workfare – Boycott Homebase

The Lies Homebase Tells to Increase Profits

Homebase do one thing and say another

Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare. Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage. We are a grassroots campaign, formed in 2010 by people with experience of workfare and those concerned about its impact. We expose and take action against companies and organisations profiting from workfare; encourage organisations to pledge to boycott it; and actively inform people of their rights.

 Know your rights on workfare schemes!  

 “Would 750 hours with no payroll costs benefit YOUR store?”

This poster was leaked from the Haringey Homebase store.  I's called Stage 1 of the Work Experience Experience.  Now of course a free 750 hours will benefit any store, or rather the profits of that store.  But for the staff it's a different matter.

It shows exactly how employers view workfare: an easy way to cut the wages bill. Homebase claim “We ensure they work alongside, not replace, paid colleagues”, but a staff member has told us that since tens of workfare placements were brought in, overtime has been cut for everyone. Some people’s hours have been cut from 48 down to 8 – far below the threshold for Working Tax Credits – because that is all they are contracted for.

It turns out 750 hours with no payroll costs – the figure for just one week in just one of Homebase’s 342 stores – does have a massive impact on the paid work available. Apparently it’s an effect that is popular with the regional manager, who we’ve heard has been trying to get all Homebase stores in her region to use workfare, and has been suspending or moving managers who don’t.

 

Homebase have been quick to claim that the scheme is voluntary, but our source told us that workfare workers have all been told “work for free or lose your benefits”. As Boycott Workfare have exposed, even on paper the Work Experience scheme is only voluntary if you say ‘yes’, since it is backed with the threat of Mandatory Work Activity which carries up to three year sanctions.

The new slavery -    Workfare

Haringey Homebase is not advertising for workers and we’ve heard that managers have been instructed to tell people on workfare that there are no jobs for them. This, despite the fact that last year the boss of Home Retail Group – who also own workfare exploiters Argos – was paid £1.1 million.

The public response to this story has been immense with hundreds of comments on Homebase’s Facebook page deleted, and the company taking it offline at times. But it hasn’t yet been enough. In a week where people claiming benefit have been smeared by the Chancellor, the fact of the matter is that it’s not people on benefits who are scrounging off the taxpayer, it’s businesses. We need to show Homebase that they can’t get away with workfare exploitation and we won’t go away until everyone working in their stores is paid.

Contact Homebase and their parent company Home Retail Group. Order leaflets from Boycott Workfare for a pop-up action at your local store. Help spread the word!

Oh, and if you were ever tempted to think this is a one-off mistake, this is what someone else told us this week: “a friend of mine who was working 40 hours per week at Argos has just had his hours cut by half because they have been getting workfare in. Now he can’t afford his rent.”
Feel free to contact Argos, Homebase’s sister company, too.  

Oops! Homebase let cat out of the bag about using workfare to reduce wage bills

Crosspost from Pride's Purge

On their Facebook page today, Homebase have denied they’re using unemployed people from the government’s Workfare scheme to work for them for free:
Posted by Tom Pride in hopeless naivety (it’s not satire – it’s workfare!)

Only someone very naive could believe private firms are participating in the government’s workfare scheme because they want to provide work experience for unemployed people out of the goodness of their own hearts and not as a way of reducing their wage bills by using forced labour at taxpayers’ expense.

But ask any of them and they’ll swear the workfare people they’ve taken on are extra to their requirements and are not – repeat not – replacing jobs they would normally have had to pay someone a proper wage to do.

Well. It looks like Homebase have accidentally let the cat out of the bag.
Here’s a poster currently displayed on the wall in the manager’s office of Homebase Haringey – which clearly shows the company is using workfare as a means to reduce their payroll costs:
This is particularly interesting, as Homebase have recently been lying to telling the public they’re not participating in workfare at all. See my previous post about that here:

Looks like Homebase just can’t stop themselves telling porky pies about workfare, doesn’t it?

Homebase are so embarrassed about using workfare – they’re reduced to lying about it

Saturday Mar 2013

On their Facebook page  today, Homebase have denied they’re using unemployed people from the government’s Workfare scheme to work for them for free:

Which is a bit strange when you consider the above tweet from Finsbury Park Job Centre Plus on Wednesday:

See what I mean?

Could it be that Homebase are so embarrassed by their participation in Workfare that they’re reduced to telling porkies about it?

Related articles by Tom Pride:
Salvation Army denies existence of Workfare scheme it participates in (no – not satire)
Victory as online campaign forces Sue Ryder off Workfare scheme
Sue Ryder executives looking to profit from the privatisation of NHS services
The Sue Ryder charity and its sinister Orwellian doublethink
Admit it UK charities – you were conned by Cameron and his so-called ‘Big Society’ garbage
Cameron’s Big Society – TOFFS paying SPIVS to rip off PLEBS
A4e given over 45 million of taxpayers money – to give classes on using toilet paper

Brighton Picket of British Heart Foundation for Using Forced Labour

British Heart Foundation Uses Unpaid Labour at Every Shop it Owns Boasts its CEO

Brighton picket of  British Heart Foundation Shop

For over 2 hours there was a very lively and active picket of the British Heart Foundation shop in Brighton's London Road.  Lots of people turned away and the public mood was overwhelmingly sympathetic.  Forced labour undermines the terms and conditions of workers in work and furthermore it leads to their replacement by forced and unpaid labour.  It is a disastrous 'solution' to British capitalism's crisis because it actually undermines the very market they are banking on recovering.

London May Day Demonstration

BHF like most charities  believes that because it is a charity it can get away with anything.  In my own experience representing workers at employment tribunals, charities are some of the worst employers and as the voluntary sector grows at the expense of the public sector this is a threat that the unions have barely recognised.

Add caption

The action against BHF will hopefully be followed by action against similar charities, prime amongst whom are Barnardos, who care for kids until they are 18 and then exploit their labour once they are adults.   Below is a description of the picket by one attendee, Pip and below that various items on workfare nationally.

Tony Greenstein

Picket went very well, with at least a dozen people taking part. Loads of leaflets given out to mostly positive responses, many stopped to talk over what was happening, some telling of their own negative experiences of workfare. One guy had been sent on courses & work experience despite being his qualifications, & then found there was still no job at the end of it. He summed it up perfectly: "What we need is a revolution." Oh yes!


Pip Tindall

One charity which has admitted to using workfare on a massive scale  is British Heart Foundation. This week, comedian Mark Thomas has spoken out against their involvement. Below, Izzy Koksal blogs about a visit to her local store to speak to the people forced to work without pay. Want to take action? Saturday is the day to do it as people across the UK take on charity involvement in workfare.

Forget second hand furniture – the British Heart Foundation is the place to go if you want to understand the reality of workfare. I popped along to my local store this afternoon in the hope of speaking with someone about their experience of workfare. The policy director of the BHF had announced that every store had people on work placements from the government’s various schemes and so this seemed like a good place to start. Speaking with the manager, she looked around the room and counted those on Mandatory Work Activity, ‘1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 today’ she informed me, adding ‘we do have pure volunteers as well’. I certainly had come to the right place to witness workfare at work. Three men were at the back of the room hammering at a wardrobe, a young woman was answering the phone and arranging for donations to be collected by the van, another woman was sticking price tags on sofas – all of these people were here because, as one of them put it, ‘there is no choice’, if they refused they would lose their benefits.

Before I could even ask a question, the young woman at the desk hearing why I was there, said quietly and emphatically ‘it’s not nice here, it’s not nice here’. She went on to tell me that she had a qualification in retail and so ‘it’s not benefiting me at all’. She wanted to work with animals but had been told by her job centre advisor that they would not help her in pursing this interest, instead she’s found herself stuck here for a month. I mentioned to her that Boycott Workfare were protesting against BHF’s involvement in workfare this weekend and she became very excited ‘come here and protest when we’re here! That would be so fun!’

I went over to the three men who were fixing a broken wardrobe. ‘It’s a punishment’ one of the men told me as he hammered a nail into the wardrobe ‘it’s nothing to do with work experience, if you miss a day your benefits are stopped, it’s about stopping people from claiming benefits… Yes, I really appreciate this work experience, the 13 years of work I’ve done managing clubs in London really wasn’t enough’ he says good naturedly. ‘It’s a punishment because you are in the same boat as a probation person’, he turns to the man who is hammering the wardrobe with him who is there on probation ‘no offence’ he says. ‘I’m unemployed and he’s a criminal’.

I speak with a black woman who tells me workfare makes her feel ‘mad…it’s absolutely slave labour – absolutely – it’s the 21st century. They took me out of slavery and put me back in slavery.’

Charities are the new face of workfare with politicians stressing the words ‘community benefit’ in order to make workfare seem more acceptable and friendly as they attempt to expand it on an incredible scale.  But as is clear from the people I spoke with whoever workfare is for, it is a punitive, degrading, and exploitative practice.

This Saturday join Boycott Workfare’s UK-wide day of action against charity involvement in workfare.

The Story of One Unpaid Worker

The British Heart Foundation, contacted by a Boycott Workfare campaigner back in November, were insistent that they “would not actively encourage any placements, regardless of the scheme name, where the person involved is not a willing participant…” But P Barclays, a commenter on the Guardian’s cif pages, is willing alright, willing their time at the British Heart Foundation under a MWA placement to come to an end, speaking of the charity they say:

Let's get things straight, I am being FORCED to work for one of these SO CALLED CHARITIES, I don't know if I'm allowed to name them here but they are running a prominent ad campaign with Vinnie Jones and initials BHF…

    This “charity” is treating me and fellow workers who have been placed there like garbage and we are working our arses off for 6 hours+ a day for dole money, there is no way that this “charity” would be able to function without this free slave labour and they would have to “hire” some real workers with real wages if it wasn’t for this scheme.

I am going to advise all my friends and family NEVER to donate to this charity or any other charity that is exploiting people using the “work programme” these “charities” are no better morally than private sector companies and probably treat the work programme people worse than they would be in the private sector.

Constant threats of sanction if everything is not done on time or in the way they want, I hate seeing the way they demoralise people and make them feel like human garbage. Its disgusting its despicable and “charity” is not a name that belongs to most of these charities, they are a disgrace.

According to the British Heart Foundation, PBarclays would have had a choice in the matter of their being there, as s/he would have had “an informal chat with them to ascertain their interest in our organisation and the work experience we can offer.” And that, resulting of this conversation: “If either side feels it is not beneficial, then we do not accept people for placement. The agencies who manage the placements then source an alternative. In these situations, the candidate will not have their benefits affected.”

It is unfortunate that the British Heart Foundation fail to understand that the very reflex of workfare is the imposition at which the jobseeker faces threat of sanction to their benefit, and that choice therefore is no option. And if not a failure to understand, plain uncaring in the situation of PBarclays’s workfare cohorts:

“… I am on MWA and at least 4+ others are there on “the work programme” (not voluntary). I’ve seen them threatened with sanctions by the ingeus people infront of the store manager, the store manager says any sanctions are not my problem, you are here to “do the job” he says “I have a business to run” basically fall in line or I’ll make the phone call and your claim will be sanctioned for 6 months end of story. It makes sense that someone like Vinnie Jones is running the campaign because thats basically how the place is run and representative of the people behind the company.”

The British Heart Foundation have since been contacted again and made aware of PBarclays case, but make no direct comment, other than to insist once more that a discussion occurs prior to placement. Worryingly, the organisation cannot consult its political heart because it claims not to have one, though in accepting this government policy one might suggest it is blue and yellow. British Heart Foundation has not yet ditched its workfare involvement.