Black Flag 210 index
JSA
Volunteering and Workfare
The Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) is being introduced to provide a reserve
army of cheap labour for the bosses. However, the government is obliged
to ensure adequate provision of welfare, for the unemployed, aged and
infirm, lives up to certain international standards. The voluntary
sector's role is to meet those standards with funding from certain
bodies such as the National Lottery. That wouldn't be so bad if the
voluntary sector avoided being manipulated into upholding the values of
the government of the day. This occurs because social and political
debate is forbidden within projects and will alienate the client group.
That of course is pure nonsense and would only be true if we lived under
a totalitarian regime, where the state would provide all "welfare" and
those considered undeserving would simply be put to death.
While we would be rightly alarmed if projects were used to recruit
people to political parties, to forbid debate denies our basic civil
liberties. The JSA will force the poor out of any meaningful social and
political debate in this area.
The government encouraged the shift from statutory towards voluntary
provision of welfare both as a cost cutting exercise and to re-establish
Victorian values on the 19th century philanthropic model. Workfare
programmes will be introduced along with a hierarchy of volunteers.
These volunteers will be initially divided between those who have free
time and want to help out and those who are coerced under the threat of
benefit cuts.
At this point the true volunteers will be separated and charged with
supervising the coerced volunteers, who will of course be perceived as
being lazy, shifty, too critical, deviant and diseased. Those with any
political outlook will be placed at the very bottom, accused of
agitating and endangering the future funding of the project.
One may consider this scenario far fetched, but the processes were
already in place for its introduction during the early 80s with the
Youth Training Scheme(YTS). In the late 80s this was replaced by
Employment Training but neither were challenged in earnest because they
established the skivvy mentality. Those involved in promoting YTS and ET
alleged they were perfect models but if that was the case where are they
now? They were merely part of a greater plan and served only to pave the
way for a passive and compliant workforce for both private employers and
voluntary agencies. This can only mean a severe drop in the quality of
life for many because we will no longer have organisational bodies
required to both maintain and win our rights.
Therefore voluntary agencies must seriously stop to consider whose
agendas they may be following. The need to seek their own agendas in
favour of their specific client groups who should be defining their won
needs is paramount. The jargon that alleges "needs led empowerment"
should be placed deeper into reality where decision making is honestly
needs led rather than being paid lip-service to. Also, we must abolish
the JSA - don't adapt!
Both paid and voluntary workers should join unions (preferably
anarcho-syndicalist ones) to protect their won rights and to ensure
there is no abuse of the client group's rights. Unity is Strength
Graham Short