Workfare Schemes in Historical and Class Context
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Aufheben 1 Editorial: The ‘new’ workfare schemes in historical and class context The storm of public outrage expressed against the one hand, given that our involvement in workfare schemes in February and March this struggles against workfare had in the past been year was quite unprecedented. People being criticised by some for parochialism5 or for the forced to work for their benefits featured heavily supposed narrowness of our concerns, there was in the news for weeks. This was perhaps a sense of vindication. There was also the surprising. The illegitimacy of attacks on benefits excitement, of course, of seeing the government has usually been a marginal issue even in the defensive and vulnerable, and beating a rapid ‘political’/campaigning scenes1 and the labour retreat in the face of the opposition to the movement,2 let alone the mainstream press. schemes. On the other hand, we noted that many In the face of this hostile ‘public opinion’, the of the howls of outrage at the workfare schemes government made concessions over sanctions for reflected a complete lack of historical perspective. some of the workfare schemes.3 Around the same Workfare schemes specifically, and the disgusting time, a succession of the big companies involved - treatment of the unemployed more generally, have TK Maxx, Sainsbury’s, Waterstones, Shelter, a very long history of course. Forms of workfare – Marie Curie, 99p Stores, Maplin, Oxfam, Mind, required work for unemployment benefits – have BHS, Burger King, HMV, and Boots - publicly been used (or attempted) on many previous announced they were pulling out of some of the occasions in the last century, though they have a schemes.4 Afraid for their reputations, they didn’t much longer history of use in the USA than in the want to be seen to be ‘exploiting the vulnerable’ UK.6 In the UK, we can trace early versions and by using compulsory (or near compulsory) work indeed the basis of today’s schemes to the Job experience ‘placements’ that did not lead to jobs Seeker’s Allowance (JSA), which was introduced or constitute real training. Workfare had become in 1996. A pilot workfare scheme, Project Work, a national scandal. Tesco supermarket was the was introduced in 29 towns by the Tories in the cause célèbre – though their recanting was only same year, and continued under New Labour. In partial since they only pulled out of the high one of these towns (Brighton), the scheme was profile Work Experience scheme but not the Work badly holed by what police and Jobcentre Programme. managers in Brighton called a ‘thuggish’ For those of us who had for many years been campaign,7 but it only ended when it was involved in small and at times lonely campaigns superseded by the more ambitious (and around the dole and benefit cuts more generally, expensive), New Deal in 1998.8 The current there was a mixture of surprised delight tinged government’s Work Programme workfare scheme with irritation to see this sudden wave of public is based upon, and inherited much from, New indignation and its dramatic consequences. On 1 Back in 1998, we complained that some people who, as ‘full time activists’, were involved in struggles that depended on 5 The workfare scheme Project Work was piloted in Brighton the dole for their very existence paradoxically did little to and became a focus of our struggles and our articles. See resist attacks on the dole. See Dole autonomy versus the re- Dole autonomy. imposition of work: Analysis of the current tendency to 6 The workfare programmes in the USA, which have workfare in the UK. http://libcom.org/library/dole- functioned to displace paid employment in parts of the autonomy-aufheben public sector in New York and Wisconsin, have been the 2 Back in the 1920s and 30s, the National Unemployed model for some of the schemes in the UK. See the Dole Workers’ Movement was rejected by the TUC and the Labour autonomy appendix, Workfare: the USA case (1998). Party. See Dole autonomy, footnote 6. http://libcom.org/library/appendix-workfare-usa-case 7 3 For example, they lifted the sanction (loss of benefits) for In reality a combination of pickets of charity shops and leaving a workfare placement on the Work Experience effective alliances with militants among Jobcentre workers. 8 scheme. See the Guardian, 29th February 2012. As we have pointed out previously, while the stated http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/29/ministers-drop- rationale for the New Deal was to help unemployed people sanctions-work-experience into work through enhancing their ‘marketability’ (with the 4 Workfare takes place as part of five schemes: Work implication that mass unemployment was due to the poor Experience, Sector-Based Work Academies, Mandatory Work quality of unemployed individuals), the government’s own Activity, the Community Action Programme, and the Work evidence showed that it was not the New Deal at all but the Programme. The best guide to the schemes is Abolish upturn in the economy in the early 2000s that reduced the workfare: The Solidarity Federation’s guide to the unemployment figures. See Dole autonomy and work re- government’s unpaid work schemes. imposition: An epilogue (1999). http://www.solfed.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/workfar http://libcom.org/library/aufheben/pamphlets-articles/dole- e_pamphlet_v2_0.pdf autonomy-and-work-re-im-position-an-epilogue 2 Aufheben Labour’s Flexible New Deal.9 Rather than a new like A4e and Working Links who are involved with development, therefore, the ‘new’ schemes ‘getting people back to work’, both directly (by represent a recurring theme in recent welfare providing the experience of work discipline as part policies. of ‘mandatory work activity’) and indirectly (acting In the welter of news scandals and indignant in effect as an employment agency or go-between, commentaries on the injustice of workfare, this through involvement in the Work Programme) utter lack of historical perspective was closely treat workfare schemes as part of their core related to an almost total absence of interest in business. Indeed, there has developed a whole the class context of the recent developments. sector of the economy that depends entirely on Before analysing this class context more closely, the massive contracts to run these schemes. This however, we should recognize that, alongside the in turn is just one example of the huge growth in continuities with previous schemes for the government outsourcing more generally as a unemployed, there are indeed some features of profitable industry in its own right.11 The other the current programmes that distinguish them point to make about this, of course, is that the from past attempts to implement workfare. individuals running the companies getting these There are perhaps two important differences multi-million pound contracts to deliver services from the schemes of the past in the current crop that might in the past have been run from the of workfare schemes. The first difference has to do Jobcentre have in many cases been shown to with the place of workfare providers in the have extremely close personal links to both the economy. Back in the 1980s and 90s, the Labour and the Coalition government.12 companies running the ‘back to work’ schemes The other difference with the past is the sheer were either small businesses or charity wings of brazenness of the new versions of workfare. As we multinationals. For example, the multinational have stated previously,13 with Project Work and GrandMet (now part of Diageo) set up a company that later became ‘Tomorrow’s People’ as a 11 There are numerous big businesses involved in the 10 response to the riots of the 1980s. It was a provision of benefits services and other government ‘social conscience’ decision, based on fears of functions. They include Atos (running the notorious ‘work deteriorating social cohesion, not a business capability’ tests and the even more infamous NHS database decision to make money. Now, by contrast, firms software, and now involved in the Community Action Programme and Work Programme as well), G4S (prisons, policing, Work Programme), Capita (housing benefit 9 The Flexible New Deal was introduced in 2009, 11 years software cock ups), and Maximus (Flexible New Deal, Work after the original New Deal schemes, and placed more Programme). emphasis on coercion rather than training. 12 Private Eye has documented many of these links in detail. 10 A second wave of scandal broke when it was found that Just one example: Quiller Consultants, owned by prime workfare workers were involved in some of the stewarding minister David Cameron’s constituency party chair Lord duties during the Golden Jubilee weekend in June. The Chadlington, and run by lobbyist George Bridges, has been organization administering the scheme in this case was hired by A4e who have been given huge sums by Cameron’s Tomorrow’s People. See ‘Unemployed bussed in to steward government. See Private Eye #1315 (1st June, 2012) and river pageant’, Guardian, 4th June 2012. passim. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/04/jubilee- 13 ‘The renewed imposition of work in the era of austerity: pageant-unemployed Prospects for resistance’ in Aufheben #19, 2011. Aufheben 3 the Flexible New Deal, placements were sought The middle class interests of those who led the largely in the voluntary sector. In the present mass media campaign against (aspects of) the case, however, workfare has been extended into workfare schemes was reflected in the framing of many areas that previously would not have been their critique, which was almost entirely one of touched for fear of being attacked by the unions moral indignation about the treatment of a for job substitution.