The ‘Welfare to Work’ programme is a scheme set up by the UK Government to tackle the growing unemployment rate amongst young people. The idea is to provide the one million unemployed 16-24 year olds the opportunity to gain experience in, and exposure to, the working environment.

For potential employees, work experience is fast becoming, and in most cases already is, a prerequisite to gaining employment. Young people are struggling to undertake work experience without already having had work experience, and so the vicious circle becomes apparent.

The purpose of this scheme is to break that cycle by allowing the unemployed in receipt of Job Seeker’s Allowance, the chance to participate in voluntary work. Participants of the programme are still paid their JSA and in addition, are paid their expenses, but are not paid for the work.

The idea that any work conducted is on a voluntary basis has come under the firing line recently with some suggestions being that employers are taking advantage of the scheme for their own financial gain. Employers are potentially benefitting from free labour: there has been some indication that organisations are offering young people work experience in low skilled roles, which would not offer the opportunity to develop new skills and may increase competition for available work for the paid employees of those chains. And, until recently this year the many unemployed youth, desperate to find work, were faced with the prospect of losing their benefits for a fortnight if they decided to opt out of the programme.

This may attract the suggestion that the scheme is not truly voluntary, leading some to brandish it ‘slave labour’. Legally, if the work is not voluntary, the workers are entitled to the National Minimum Wage. Such controversy - leading to protests - has resulted in many major UK chains opting out of the scheme, including TK Maxx, Waterstones, Sainsburys, Matalan and Superdrug. The damaged confidence in the scheme is apparent in that some of the remaining chains are distancing themselves by reviewing their involvement in the scheme, or by offering additional financial benefits so not to attract bad press.

In a further blow, last month a social enterprise firm, Eco Actif, hired to coordinate the scheme went into liquidation claiming that banks had refused to lend it money because the scheme was too financially risky.
Posted Tuesday 28th of August 2012