Summations Only

A few points:▪ Anyone forced to work to receive government assistance should at least be doing work that benefits the community. I think it is a great idea to make work available to people who are unemployed. It gives people a chance to gain experience and form social connections with potential future job references. It would be best if this work was community-service focused, but it's okay to have some companies willing to take on and train folk, but most of the benefits of the unpaid work should be going to the communityyou know, the group of people who pay the taxes that actually fund unemployment benefits.▪ The companies that participate in this program should be required to submit records proving that they are not firing paid staff and replacing them with unpaid workers.▪ The unpaid workers should be compensated according to the income they generate for the company; that way the government is not funding the profits of private businesses.OR:The companies that participate should be required to submit a plan for training each unpaid worker they take on that shows they will actually be teaching the worker essential job skillsas opposed to simply having them do something lame that anyone can do without training, such as socking shelves, which doesn't help increase a person's later employability.I think if these three things are followed, then there should be no reason to question the validity of the program.Jon

Work has always been available to the unemployed; it's called "a job." The most convenient thing about this form of work is that once you get it, you're no longer unemployed.I assume each and every single one of these companies that employs people to do "unpaid work" has a similar program for "unpaid sales", where I can go in and take what I want for free?What's that you say? No, they don't have that, because they're a business and not a charity? So are the people they expect to work for free."Unpaid work." What a load of horseshit. Only in a world where we morally obligate individuals to work, but don't morally obligate corporations in any way whatsoever, does slavery look like a legitimate business decision. These businesses are stealing labor, flat-out.

Huh? They're not completely unpaid.

"A job." That's what it's called when you have some work you want to have done, and you want to get an unemployed person to do it for you.If companies have a bunch of work they want done, and there's a bunch of people who want to do work, then I'm completely at a loss to understand what problem there is, here, that can't be solved by a process called "hiring." What on Earth is the need for "unpaid work for the unemployed"?

Am I reading this right? Your solution to unemployment is to simply tell the unemployed go out and get jobs? How familiar are you with minimum wage laws? Such laws represent a 'minimum expense' to a company. On top of this, companies have other minimum expenses associated with the hiring of any employee, and full-time or regular employees may be entitled to certain costly benefits.If the income generated from the work being done doesn't justify these minimum expenses, hiring will not take place. The company will either choose to let the work go undone and pass up the income, or push the work into the eight-hour workday of its already over-tasked regular/full-time employees.

No, you are not reading "this right". What crashfrog says is that the solution to not having enough employees to get the work done is to hire an unemployed person. And your solution to this problem is slavery?

I have not even attempted to do the maths, but wouldn't it be more beneficial for everyone if unemployed people were employed by the government/councils?Rather than the Govt. guaranteeing people an income, could they not guarantee people a job?
Why would we want to pay people to look for work, when we could just pay them to do work?

Doing work costs more money.

No.

LOL.

Not even close. My solution to unemployment is for businesses and governments who apparently have all this work they need done to hire the unemployed to do it.In doing so, they become employed. It's a system that has worked well for us in the past. I don't understand what part of it you find ambiguous.If a business is standing there saying "I have all this money and some work that needs doing", and a guy is standing there saying "I'd sure love to do some work in exchange for money", then what on Earth is the problem here best solved by demanding that the guy work for free? Why not have the business give the man some money in exchange for his labor? You know - that arrangement we refer to as "a job"? Why does a business need any work done that doesn't justify the expense? Like I said, "unpaid work for the unemployed" makes no sense at all. We already have two systems where people work for free - "volunteering", where they do so by choice, and "slavery", where they don't. If they're already overtasked, it makes even more sense to hire a guy, since now you have a "critical mass" of work to be done that justifies another hire.But the urgency with which these "unpaid hires" are apparently needed belies the justification of not hiring them. If it's urgent, that means the need is so great that the pay would be worth it. Not paying them is simply an attempt to steal their labor.

Did you read anything I wrote? Anything at all? First, I didn't say the work was needed.Second, you didn't reply at all to my point that sometimes the extra work doesn't produce an income enough to justify the cost of the labor, which has a minimum cost because of unpreventable things like the cost of hiring, and also because of things like minimum wage.If the work generates an additional income for the company of $3.00/hour, do you think they will hire someone for $7.50/hour to do it? And as far as I can tell, what's being done in England isn't one of them. Not overtasked in the sense of literally incapable of doing further work; overtasked in the sense of already doing more work than they're getting paid foryou know, like everyone who works for a wage does. I've read nothing about urgency. Please point it out to me.Jon

No disrespect to any who have replied to me personally here but I am gonna observe this thread and see what others say rather than wade in myself.Just for a change....

Hey Straggler,Even though you're sitting out, I'm going to ask again for just a bit more info, as I don't know many of the details of this "free work" issue or the social safety net across the pond.Is this unpaid labor voluntary or compulsory?Is the social safety net sufficient to guarantee a minimally acceptable standard of living for the unemployed?Involuntary unpaid labor rather screams "slavery." Voluntary unpaid labor is just "volunteering," which doesn't seem to be much of a problem in principle, except that in this case the purpose seems to be exclusively to take advantage of the misfortunes of a rather desperate class of people.

One of the issues is that some fine young English people won't do unskilled work as it is often easier to spong off the state.Then they bitch and whine about immigrants who actually turn up on time and work hard.This is all a very poor patch for a big culture of entitlement many people seem to have over here, these days./rant