Wednesday 6 June 2012

Stewarding the Unemployed towards Success

The front page story in yesterday's Guardian (Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant) and leading this morning's BBC London news may snowball to become another mess requiring the Government to consider a U-turn. It's claimed that unemployed people were coerced, under threat of losing benefits, to work as stewards at the Jubilee weekend and were forced to sleep rough and change into uniform in public, and had no access to toilets.

The story gave me goosebumps. Clean Slate is recruiting homeless people to work as stewards through this summer and beyond. And we work across Bristol, Bath and London. But we have nothing to do with the employer, Close Protection UK, or the Government’s Work Programme.

Clean Slate acknowledges our duty of care for the 40 plus stewards we're currently recruiting. In liaising with Green Stewards, who will take them on for paid work, we've covered ground like access to facilities, breaks and the usual entitlements employers must provide. Our candidates also did an unpaid NVQ weekend (ironically, taking people from London to the West Country) but Clean Slate ensured there was food, good accommodation and a tangible outcome that was more than the promise of paid work in future. What's more, there was no coercion at all. By contrast to the Jubilee weekend, our stewards found the weekend hugely beneficial as they became part of a team, overcame the challenges of a new environment and mixing with new colleagues, and learned about the job they would be doing. Working with Green Stewards and homelessness charities, in the wings to provide more pastoral support, we ensure there's a positive outcome for everyone.

For us, involving job seekers is about carrot more than stick, which is essentially ‘if you don’t prove what you have to offer, you’re unlikely to be offered work’. We have an honest partnership with job seekers about our needing them to do well. Our social enterprise is ostensibly a temp agency that recruits long-term unemployed people and places them in paid work with employers. We work in partnership with support agencies but our focus is on re-activating people who have been systematically switched off by their experience of unemployment. We look for the light switch and by focusing on all the potential they possess, and proving it to them by offering job ready people paid work, they become motivated and self-confident, ready to be part of the solution to their own unemployment.

Now I'm worried the flaws of a Government scheme, married with the drive for private sector profit, has sullied our own scheme to re-activate people, who are only too used to being treated without respect or dignity. It could pull the rug from underneath us. Our supporters, employer partners, funders and temporary workers now all need reassuring that we weren't involved in this weekend's debacle.

As seen in previous blogs, Clean Slate is opposed to mandatory work placements - forcing unemployed people to work for free or face losing their benefits. A day's productive work in a profit-making business must be paid for, otherwise it is state-sanctioned exploitation. Volunteering has a place for job seekers when it honestly provides training and valuable experience and, most of all, when it really is voluntary.

Having worked with people facing barriers to employment for the past 19 years - people who have been homeless, offenders, mentally ill, refugees or chronically socially excluded - I know how many can benefit from simple opportunities to get involved. They often jump at the chances and some will move on from there. But there has to be ethical guardianship in the mix to ensure this goodwill is not exploited.

Most unemployed people I speak to feel victimised by the state, stigmatised by the media and generally considered undeserving of benefits. They fear employers either won't be interested in them or will treat them badly. So it is totally counter-productive when a prospective employer like Close Protection UK drops the ball this way. Whichever agencies were supporting the volunteers also let them down.

This morning we'll be contacting all our stakeholders to distance ourselves from this appalling story. We will also write to all the job seekers on our books as Temp Workers to reassure them about our promise to look out for their wellbeing and how to blow the whistle if they feel they're being mistreated.

No doubt more details about, and repercussions from, the Jubilee story will emerge - good and bad - but Clean Slate must set out its ethical stall. While there are uncomfortably close similarities between this story and the opportunities we lay on for job seekers as stewards, we will always put the wellbeing of our workers first. We won't always get things right, and we have scant resources to be omnipotent, but we will never be part of mandatory work placements or leave people feeling exploited.