Urban Futures occupied: Six month workfare no way!
Today members of Haringey Solidarity Group and Boycott Workfare paid workfare provider Urban Futures in Wood Green a visit. Fifteen people occupied the office with banners and a soundsystem – challenging Urban Futures on their treatment of claimants and speaking to people on enforced jobsearch about their experiences and sharing info on their rights.
We'd already heard that the managers are aggressive and bullying towards claimants, so expected the same. But the short occupation revealed the nasty attitudes throughout the staff team – about ten staff tried to hassle people out and came out with some revealing lines, taunting a number of us that we should "get a job" (yawn). When one of us replied that he had a job, they replied, "I can't believe you have a job, looking like that."
Staff tried to make sure claimants didn't access info on their rights. They confiscated leaflets and tore them up, and blocked doors to claimants inside the job search rooms. They grabbed phones and bags off people and tried to take the banner too.
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- Published: 09 October 2014
Urban Futures - make workfare a thing of the past
We all know Community Work Placements aren’t about helping people find work. Instead, forced unpaid work and supervised job search treat the unemployed like criminals. Six months of workfare is more than twice the maximum community service sentence!
CWP forces claimants to work for 34 hours a week – most of the time doing pointless and menial tasks. And all for £72 a week – that’s about £2 an hour. CWP is forced labour.
Placements with no relationship to our experience or what we want, bullying and mistreatment, and pointless and menial placements - all under threat of benefit sanctions - are totally wrong.
But together we can fight them. Know your rights, name and shame placement hosts and get involved to help end all workfare!
Urban Futures: breaking the rules?
Urban Futures is making money out of making people’s lives a misery. CWP shouldn’t exist in the first place, but are Urban Futures even following the rules?
DWP guidelines state that:
- Placements must be of clear and demonstrable benefit to the community.
- Placements must give work experience and develop skills.
- Support for claimants should include appropriate help and workplace training.
- Work placements must be supervised with tasks similar to those in a normal working environment.
- No more than 25% of the placements they arrange should be in charity shops.
- Provider must establish claimants’ current job goals.
- Placements must not displace existing jobs.
- Claimants must start placement within 20 working days of Jobcentre Plus (JCP) referral.
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- Published: 08 October 2014
Why is North London Hospice still using workfare?
On Saturday, 11 October, from 12pm, we'll be outside North London Hospice's Wood Green shop, as part of Boycott Workfare's week of action against workfare. And once more, we'll be asking them, why they are still involved with Community Work Placements and other workfare schemes.
Join us from 12pm at North London Hospice shop, 19 High Road, N22 6BH. Three minutes’ walk from Turnpike Lane tube station.
Hundreds of people in Haringey are being forced to work for six months with no pay under threat of sanctions under the new scheme.
Urban Futures have a contract for Community Work Placements and are busy finding placements in charities and “community benefit” projects across north London. But these schemes cannot work without charities making the placements possible – charities like North London Hospice.
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- Published: 06 October 2014
Anti-workfare protest outside North London Hospice shop
Pickets, protests, and online pressure are meeting each organisation that is found participating in the government's latest and longest workfare scheme - Community Work(fare) Placements.
On Saturday morning, 16 August, Haringey Solidarity Group held a picket outside North London Hospice charity shop on Wood Green High Road (near Turnpike Lane) about their involvement with the six-month long, forced labour scheme. The picket attracted lots of interest and support from passersby, with some saying they would no longer shop there and others saying that they would contact the hospice to let them know about their concerns.
We have spoken to at least two people on Community Work Placements at this shop, and others at the shop near Wood Green tube.
You can find more details about how to get in touch with North London Hospice in our article here.
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- Published: 18 August 2014
Community Work Placements in Haringey - who's proud to be working with G4S?
While the government would like to keep their names secret, the companies involved with running the recently launched Community Work Placements seem proud to publicise their involvement.
G4S won the contract for six regions across the country and was "delighted" to announce its involvement with the scheme which consists of six-month, forced, unpaid work placements for unemployed people. (The placements need local council and charity participation in order to claim to be of “community benefit”.)
But, being as they are the world's largest security company, G4S isn't bothering itself with the day-to-day business of sorting out placements for workfare conscripts. Instead, they have teamed up with "top-performing placement brokers" in the six regions for which it has a CWP contract. One of these regions is West London. This is the one that covers Haringey and, of the five partners it has here, only one, Urban Futures, appears to have an office in Haringey. They have expressed similar delight at their involvement with the government's newest forced labour scheme.
We have tried to figure out exactly what Urban Futures do, but their website, with all its talk of employment, training and apprenticeships, manages to hide the fact that they are fully signed up to a programme that threatens some of the most vulnerable people in our community with destitution and abject poverty.
Urban Futures may or may not be a lost cause, but we want to find out the names of the local charities and community organisations that they are using to fulfil their part of the CWP contract.
We have been talking to the people going in and out of Urban Futures' Wood Green offices. So far, the only confirmed partner is North London Hospice. According to personal testimonies, they have taken on a number of workfare conscripts in their Wood Green shop, and possibly others.
Many of us in HSG were really disappointed to hear about this. North London Hospice provides a service which places value on the quality of life of local people. Its complicity in this workfare scheme seems totally at odds with its main aims.
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- Published: 12 August 2014
