When it comes to the question of unemployment the Tories (and it must be said the right wing of Labour also) like to explain this tricky problem away by blaming it all on “workshy” elements who simply won’t get a job. In this Tory fantasy, people simply sit around claiming benefits rather than looking for work until they become long-term unemployed. The truth, of course, is very different.  The recent sharp rise in unemployment is entirely down to the laying off of those in work combined with the slump in available jobs. The cutting of public sector jobs in particular has had a particularly harsh effect in the so-called unemployment hotspots where traditional industries have long gone with nothing taking its place. Many sections of society – the young, the middle-aged and women – have been especially hard hit by the rise in unemployment. No wonder some people have simply given up the fight for work – they are offered nothing or next to nothing, month after month after month.

What real help that did exist to help people find work has been undermined by the cuts in job centres and other support services, especially those aimed at young people. All the government can now come up with are schemes to “force” people into anything going. This is all variations on the infamous Workfare method that right wing governments have been trying to bring in for decades. The latest such scheme now being piloted involves forcing selected people on benefit to work for nothing.  The scheme, now being launched by the Department for (no) Work and (no) Pensions (DWP) is called Mandatory Work Activity (MWA.) The government says it is about forcing people who have forgotten how to work into schemes that will give them that experience once again.  They have to do that work or starve. This is a project in the 19th century tradition of the old Work Houses.

A Sunday Times report (8/1/12) tries to justify the scheme by saying many of those told to do the work are actually working already in the so-called Grey Economy and simply then disappear. However, the Grey Economy exists not because workers want to work in it but because cheapskate bosses just want to avoid paying their share of taxes, N.I. etc.  The report then goes on to reveal something of the truth about this scheme.

According to the Sunday Times: ‘ Joanne Long, a spokeswoman for the lobby group Boycott Workfare said “ The work programme is a cash gift from the government to businesses, which can replace employees with a constant free labour source mandated to work by the job centre at risk of destitution.”

Bizarrely, it seems the MWA scheme may not only be putting people out of work since firms get free labour instead, it may also be hindering those who are already taking action to get new work. The Sunday Times article raises the case of a graduate who had been working unpaid at a museum to gain experience to get work at a later stage in that sector. She was instead forced to work for two weeks without pay at Poundland – what benefit was this?

The ultimate irony is that the scheme is being challenged in court by lawyers who are saying that MWA may contravene European and UK law. Not least they are saying that the scheme contravenes laws prohibiting compulsory or forced labour, also known as bonded labour.  In other words, The Tories have nationalised slavery.