Workfare profiteers A4e and Ingeus targeted

On Monday 4th March, precarious workers, students, the unemployed, squatters, and others turned up outside the Nottingham offices of Ingeus and A4e for a demonstration called by Nottingham Against Workfare and Stop G8 Notts. A “Workfare ain’t fair” banner was unfurled and hundreds of leaflets entitled “Workfare is class warfare” were handed out to shoppers, as well as those employed and harassed by A4e and Ingeus.

Newswire: ’Workfare Ain’t Fair’ Protest and leafleting | Demonstration against A4e and Ingeus | Riseup! Radio at A4e

Previous features: Workfare walk of shame | Workfare : Forced Labour Protest

This demonstration was part of a local and national campaign aiming to highlight the grievous attack by the capitalist class on everyone else that is workfare. A4e are one of the UK’s biggest workfare companies they are being paid billions of pounds to bully people into unpaid labour for supermarkets, charities and high street shops.

Workfare means that those who need welfare are forced into unpaid work for multimillion pound companies. Instead of a living wage, they receive only Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) which is far below the minimum wage. The companies themselves don’t pay anything.

Workfare means that those in paid positions may see their jobs replaced by this unpaid labour. Why would a company pay for people to do your job when they can get free labour from the job centre?

Compulsory workfare was at the heart of the Government’s £5 billion Work Programme. So far the Government are refusing to provide figures detailing whether anyone has actually got a job on the Work Programme.

A4e’s workfare contract means they get paid £45m. In the first 10 months of their contract, almost 115,000 people were referred to A4e under the Work Programme. Of those just 4,000 have managed to obtain jobs that lasted 13 weeks or more – the length of time the government determines as a successful outcome.

A4e, which paid its former chairman Emma Harrison an £8.6m dividend in 2010, referred the second largest number of cases for punishment. The firm, which has been at the centre of a series of fraud allegations, in the first year of it’s Work programme contact demanded that 10,120 individuals be sanctioned. The Jobcentres agreed to withhold benefits in 3,000 of those cases.

So far in Nottingham different groups and individuals have leafleted job centres, held pickets outside shops that use workfare, and private companies who administrate the welfare industry such as Atos, Ingeus and A4e have had their buildings sabotaged by unknown individuals with hammers, stickers and glue. Similar activities have happened around the country with shops being occupied by bodies and certain offices being targeted with phone blockades.

The demonstrators made this statement:
It’s clear that workfare and other work programmes like it are another attack by the rich on the poor. We need to unite in order to fight back against the rich bosses and government officials who think we’ll take this lying down. It’s also clear that the willingness to resist is there but questions remain over whether the class solidarity, the organisation or the long term strategy is. We know we can’t rely solely on unions, many of whom have implicitly supported the recent reforms and explicitly suggest that the response is to re-elect a Labour party who were as guilty in attacking the poor and working classes as this current Lib-Con government is. Street demonstrations like today’s could remain a valid way of spreading the word and engaging with more pissed off people. They will only be relevant if they are used to build a broad coalition where the balance between autonomy and horizontal collectivism is found.

As part of the Workfare week of action Nottingham Against Workfare will be holding a blockade on “workfare parasites” Burtons Men’s Clothing on the Saturday 23rd March at 14:00.

Stop G8 Notts will have their next meeting at the Sumac Centre on Tuesday 12th March at 19:30, and a “They won’t pay and neither will we” demonstration at the Tax offices will be held on 5th April.

If you’re a claimant or unemployed come along to The Unemployed Workers Club at the Sumac Centre every Thursday at 11am.