Unemployed Are Not Getting Help They Need
The joy of idleness
It has recently come to the attention of the Great Commotion that the so called ‘help’ that the government gives to the unemployed is not really very helpful. Young people who have been receiving state benefits for six months or more find themselves herded like cattle onto a two week ‘Gateway to Work’ course.
The Commotion spoke to a veteran of this course, who wished to remain anonymous. He said, “While they do give you some useful information, most of the course is just a waste of time. They basically just sit you down and tell you that the reason why some people are more successful than others is solely because of their motivation and two entire days of the course focuses purely on ways to raise motivation. In reality there are several reasons why people find themselves unemployed and to be told otherwise just sounds insulting and patronizing. In some ways the course was good, because I gave over 40 CVs to employers, which I wouldn’t have done otherwise, however, the course could have been about three days long. For most of the second week we had nothing to do and we were just expected to sit in the room.”
If someone still hasn’t found a job after this two week course, they are sent on another thirteen week course, which one person described as being just like “the seventh level of hell’.
We spoke to our contact again, who told us “I dropped out of the thirteen week course during the first week. I didn’t think anything could be a bigger waste of time than the two week course, but what I didn’t count on was that I had to go through it all again. And I mean that literally. I had the same tutor who even used the exact same words as before. If I had stayed on the course, they would have sent me on temporary placements, where you have to work for an employer without getting paid. You get a little extra money with your benefit, but it’s still much less than minimum wage and at the expense of taxpayers and not the employers.”
The courses are mandatory for anyone who doesn’t want to lose their benefit. Our contact, who dropped out of the course, is now bitterly struggling to find employment with little success.
While unemployment may seem like a natural part of life to many of us, it is actually a relatively new phenomenon that did not come into existence until the industrial revolution. In today’s society, companies will not hire staff unless they can profit by it. Perhaps if we lived in a world where people worked simply because their job benefits society and not so corporations can accumulate ridiculously high amounts of wealth, then unemployment could be banished to the realm of history.
Date Added: March 22nd 2007