Unemployment Movement

So how do we bring Emma Harrison of A4e fame Down?

We could use `Positive Thinking`!



Yeah, wishful thinking….. Whatever you’re going to do its going to hurt but hey aren’t you hurting already and these bitches along with her friends haven’t finished with you yet.

Cuts: in fact, fantastic!

It's time to shake off all those negative vibes about spending cuts and job losses, advises Emma Harrison, the millionaire boss of welfare to work provider A4E. And why not!

Emma Harrison's latest press release declares herself "perhaps the only person who is positive about spending cuts." (Coalition ministers may dispute this).

As well she might be, given her company has a 25% slice of the government's multi-billion pound budget for getting long term unemployed back to work.

You have lost, or may be about to lose your job, suggests Harrison, but look on the bright side: there are loads of other opportunities out there.

Source; Guardian

ESF contracts - secret performance data

There's an article in today's Financial Times by Cunthia O'Murchu which points out that A4e has had €60 million of public money since 2007 for programmes in the UK and Poland, as well as £700m for its welfare to work programmes funded by the UK, but we can't know how well it's doing on its EU structural fund contracts because the UK government won't release data on individual companies.

However, the article cites projects in London where data is available and which show A4e to be performing very badly. One £2m contract was supposed to help 400 people into work, but after a year only 14 people had found a job. Another £820,000 contract for learning and skills was also reported to be underperforming. A4e rejected the criticism and gave different figures.

The FT tried using FoI requests to get the data for the EU-funded programmes, but was refused, despite the fact that 2 million people have been enrolled on them in the UK. The article goes on to highlight the poor performance of A4e, along with Reed, on the Pathways programme. But then it cites an Ofsted review which says that A4e is not alone; all the providers were failing to achieve job outcome targets. This sits rather oddly with the blythe optimism of Emma Harrison.

Source; Watching A4e

Your argument delivers an accurate account of the reality of A4E farce. I once had to attend one of these programmes run by them for six months, and soon woke up to what was really making the jobless passive in their efforts: inadequate resources and appalling Minimum National Wages. The course managers were somewhat a mixture of power-hungry women; emotionally dysfunctional administrators if my own memory is anything to go by.

For these programmes to genuinely work, you need people to be 'job ready' in which case, the vast majority were by far from committing themselves to something compulsory. Either because they were and are still suffering from psychological or mental health issues or because the available opportunities too demeaning or a combination of all three.

The A4E course providers are inept at understanding the boundaries of unemployment and just how near impossible it is for a vast majority of jobless to motivate themselves in a competitive and ever increasing skilled job market. The assumptions are that, no one out of work wants real and advantageous career prospects or that they are ignorant of a better quality of existence to want to take a menial job.

However, if the government were to raise the national minimum wage to £10 per hour for people over the age of 21 able to work, you would see people in their droves returning to employment regardless of what that job is. I was on £1.50 less an hour ten years ago when the NMW was £4.50! - I cannot fathom the justification of a £1.50 increase over a decade that has seen the cost of living triple within this time frame.

There most definitely has to be a welfare before a return to work. People's welfare cannot be compromised in such brutal ways in order to save the economy from collapse. So where and how are the government going to fund these A4E borstals once again? - Job cuts, welfare slashes, rising taxes are not the best recipe to be thinking of forced labour on masses of intelligent people who will inevitably become demoralised in a new bleak century reminiscent of early industrial dismay .

Why not solve the deficit issue by pulling out of the EU temporarily due to the urgency of the financial slump, then when we are better resourced and financially secure; aid people back into work where opportunities and smarter work ethics, rise in national minimum wage on par with the civilized economy? - would this not be the most civilized action to take? - Utopian values in a depression may have its advantages but only for those whose lives are made of Ivory imagination.

Have any of these autocrats been for a mental health evaluation to see Wether they are fit to assist millions of vulnerable people in such a dangerous capacity? The outcome will be interesting if not, downright third Reich.

Amazinglyso, welcome to the unemployment movement…. I got to thank you for the honesty you’ve shown in stating your political stance but we`re not off to a good start when you start slagging the unemployed off? Now just where do you get the language to describe someone as not `Job Ready`, this is the same anal retentive attitude the unemployed come across daily and adding insult to injury you then imply the unemployed have “psychological or mental health issues”; this is the same attitude that describes unemployment as a personal issue but then you go on to describe a utopian vision of a minimum wage which clearly stamps unemployment as an economic issue. Which one is it?

Oh I got to know about these `SMARTER WORK ETHICS` you say we need as this is a new one on me… Please I want to know more?