New Deal and Flexible New Deal Exposed

Pauly you have hit the nail on the head!

When a jobseeker applies for a job in the labour market which s/he isn’t interested in (Although lies on the application to get the job) or have any experience (Although focus on transferable skills) this displaces other people. Furthermore, you realise the effect this has, not only are people forced into low paid dull jobs they aren’t interested in and splits a “career” into a selection of “random jobs” rather than following a common path – i.e. in one industry etc. … but doing this stabs each and every jobseeker in the back.

This is exactly what happens, and even happened before the credit crunch. People who left uni who employers didnt want to touch because of lack of experience (although freshly qualified) started filling up the easy simple jobs, such as retail… working on tills, shelf filling etc. This left a hole in the labour market for dumb people (like me) or (for everyone else) those new to the labour market (school/college leavers, newly unemployed) who no longer could get the jobs to begin a career or even a job they could do. These people either luckily found a vacancy at places like poundland with high staff turnover (I wonder why) or stayed on the dole. There werent many alternatives, you couldnt jump ranks looking for a supervisor job without experience at lower level. Other jobs might be too skilled to take on.

The “credit crunch” forced people to expand their horizons. I’ll be honest, me personally have no desire to work in retail below management position, but I always considered retail from day one because its a relatively easy job to do (anyone can do it with training, although some people will eb better at it than others including experience) and rather easy to get.

If you employ an idiot in a bank or in your admin department, you risk losing serious money and losing cutomers. In retail, you be picky, and if you get the wrong person its easy to get rid of them and most retail positions your discretion and powers are extremely limited. In an office a “genuine” mistake could affect your business severely – money, clients, reputation. If you worked on a till and gave someone too much change or charged someone the wrong amount (i.e. £100 less than the proper price due to wrong barcode) you have to PAY BACK the difference out fo your own money (Even if genuine) or be pending a criminal prosecution. If you offend a customer in retail – the customer gets upset but in most cases the customer will accept the apology, perhaps an “good will” gesture (i.e. money off voucher/gift card) and realise its just a rogue employee. With admin, its direct… if you told one of your largest clients to “FUCK OFF YOU TWAT” its likely, as a direct representative, to lose that client forever.

This is why high staff turnover retailers end up employing so many different people keeping them part time with overtime @ same rate and rolling contracts to be able to easier get rid of the person. Its so sad how not many retail employers actually employ anyone fulltime anymore with a proper permanent contract.

Anyway, I feel to an extent its always “work smarter, not harder”… applying for more jobs of every different type when you have no chance of getting them is a waste of time. Focus on the jobs you want to get. Spend more time. Make sure you get feedback where applicable. Adventure sometimes from the jobs you want and can do, to jobs which you are underqualified for etc. to take the chance, a punt on ceasing the opportunity to do well for yourself.

You have to wonder whether the people who come up with these ideas are logically challenged or simply taking the Mickey.

Jobs are a scarce resource in any community. That scarcity is more prevelent in communities that have experienced higher than average rates of unemployment for many years. But the notion of compelling jobseekers to take unsuitable jobs is entirely at odds with the ideal of jobseekers achieving sustainable employment.

So a jobseeker gets the usual good cop/bad cop treatment from a FND provider and reluctantly applies for jobs in which he/she has no interest or experience. The jobseeker eventually receives the offer of an unsuitable job and, concerned about the threatened sanction for refusing such an offer, accepts the job even though he/she will soon be an unmotivated employee.

From there that person simply goes through the motions of being commited to or even interested in the job and counts the days until “good cause” provides him/her with a legitimate reason for leaving the job – that is any time from the fourth week up to the twelfth week of starting the job.

Sustainable employment ? Not at all.

But this situation affects other jobseekers too. In accepting the unsuitable job, that jobseeker has automatically excluded other people from even applying for it. However a jobseeker shut out from the job in these circumstances might well have considered the job to be ideal in terms of it’s nature, location, hours, etc. The second jobseeker (excluded from the vacancy) is equally as unhappy as the first jobseeker (accepts the job) and because he/she is still unemployed is ordered to widen his/her jobseeking activities to include jobs in which he/she has no interest or experience.

And so this ridiculous situation contiues. The second jobseeker applies for and accepts an unsuitable vacancy and thereby shuts out the third jobseeker …….. and on and on.

But probably the most absurd thing about all of these events is that not one jobseeker has achieved a sustainable employment outcome, but the FND provider has received a no doubt large sum of public money in exchange for facilitating such nonesense.

The course should be renamed The Journey Into Space.

Hi Funny You are wrong on so many levels. Sorry to sound cruel. As I am aware a number of charities still carpet baggers in my opinion are biddng it is now more importantto them that they get something.

1 The scrapping of the local quangos advantage west Midlands is one example provided a lot of funding for these harities to help unemployed and in my case the disabled. This means they are more eager to chase money

2 The government has still got to be seen to be kicking at someone and doing something so they will go moreso for the easiest targets

3 The governmeant work programme. Lets look at this logically like i did in my sppof post on spendingchallenge for more information click on my name and follow the two different links for two posts.

4 Unemployed civil servants with reduced redundancy will be fast tracked back into their existing posts. so they will work for the dole whilst being on the dole.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing gets quietly shelved or drastically reduced in size.

With a worsening economy the chances are there will be fewer job vacancies in 2011 than there are this year. And if unemployment continues to rise between now and 2011 there will be more people claiming benefits from a smaller tax take!

Given the above scenario, no provider will touch the Work Programme with a 12ft barge pole.

I agree – many wont be interested until the Government backs down and gives them a too-good deal.

The Work Programme is likely to be 6 months “Flexible New Deal” type support and 6 months “Work for Your Benefit”.

This is then likely to loop.

The problem is they are reducing taxation to “encourage” employers to take people on, however, in addition to solve unemployment they are giving people away to employers for free and to fuck over everyone increasing VAT. The increase in VAT is to combat the reduced corporation tax… VAT gets in more money than corporation tax if I recall correctly. Reducing corporation tax but increasing VAT is getting more money in and not balancing it.