Liverpool combats Workfare over the next 2 months in the lead up to the 7-14th July National Week of Action called by the How Do We Break Workfare? Conference held in May.
On Tuesday 12th June, Solidarity
Federation, Anarchist Federation and Liverpool activists picketed Workfare
profiteers A4e Liverpool in tandem with a communications blockade via email,
phone & fax. Read reports at Truth
Reason & Liberty and at Anarcho-bastard.
The next action is a communications blockade
of A4e Bootle followed by Combat Workfare in
Wavertree on Saturday 16th June.
If claimant-organised networks are to become a reality,
ongoing picketing of Prime Providers, such as A4e, must continue so that the
fear preventing claimants from mobilizing against Workfare exploitation is
broken down. Jobcentres must also be targeted, as well as continued disruption
of retailers & charities that seem to have no problem tapping the
unemployed as a source of free labour.
Being ‘attached’ to a Prime Provider
for 2 years on the Work Programme is a mind-fuck: constant berating masked by
an adviser’s smile, not-so-subtle coercion into unsuitable jobs, and outright
bullying of ‘customers’ all have a psychological effect. When claimants are
unaware of their rights —however minuscule those rights are— although
intuitively know they are being exploited, it’s difficult & frustrating not
to able to stand up for yourself when you’re being asked to sign a 50-page
document or to have the confidence to refuse a job that isn’t suitable. More often than not, companies,
like A4e, are hoping that’s the case because you’re easier to manipulate and
easier to make money out of —long-term unemployed claimants can be worth £1000’s to Work Programme
providers.
Talking with claimants and giving
them the right info & tactics during pickets is a step towards
claimant-organised networks bringing down Workfare.
As
claimants and/or activists we must set up Jobcentre pickets that engage new claimants who’ve yet to experience the
full onslaught of the Department for Work & Pensions’ Work Programme; to
kit them out with info & tactics so they at least have some say in their
own lives while on the dole. Furthermore, at some point the question of
solidarity between claimants & DWP frontline staff has to be resolved. For
more discussion on this read Dole Bondage? Up Yours! An
account of Wales against the JSA —“Only doing your job” starts to wear very thin when you’re being
slapped with a 2-month benefit sanction.
As claimants organizing against
exploitation, the preference is solidarity with frontline employees as part of
a broader working-class resistance against attacks on welfare & work. With
that said, the priority must always be claimant defence & action.
And the pressure must be
kept up on retailers & charities, by using pickets and blockades to disrupt
operation and custom. For all the exhortations by some companies, like Argos, that they’ve suspended
involvement in Workfare, many have sneakily carried on under the radar until
found out again.
The fight against Workfare must centre on claimant-organised networks taking direct action against Prime Contractors, Subcontractors and profit-making businesses using unpaid workers.
If
you exploit us, we will shut you down!
For
more info on claimant rights visit:
For
more info on the national Boycott Workfare campaign visit:
Join Liverpool Claimant Network at:
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