From the perspective of the employee/trainee, the only difference I see between this situation and actual employment is that the name on the check is different from the name of the employer. So what's the big deal?
The big deal is that JSA which is the only paid amount is £56.80 a week. For a 40 hour standard week that is £1.42 an hour.
The national minimum wage is £6.31 an hour.
Not only that, the jobs in question can be literally 20-30 miles from your residential address so travelling is not even possible.
Also, we end up paying the JSA for the business. The business sees this as another expense avoided rather than an investment in the business. This should not be promoted!!
Jobseeker's Allowance (Income based) £71.70 per week
Child Tax Credit £62.72 per week
Housing Benefit £115.39 per week
Child Benefit £20.30 per week
Total weekly income £270.11 per week
(This excludes the below market rent, $500gbp/month, I claimed to be paying for council housing.)
https://www.dwpe-services.direct.gov.uk/portal/page/portal/b...
That works out to 6.75GBP/hour.
As for the incentives on the business side, I agree with you. Rather than being private sector jobs, these should be low skill government jobs. We can even help the budget by replacing overpaid unionized govt workers with job seekers working for their benefits. But it's dishonest to claim that they are paid only 50GBP/week for their labor.
[edit: I took out the child, benefits were 187 GBP/week, ignoring council housing subsidies.]
1. Child tax credit works on your previous year's income so it can take up to a year to get adjusted. Same with child benefit.
2. Housing benefit takes 8-12 weeks to come through. Not only that it won't cover most private rents inside the M25. The council waiting list is 3-5 years in London so you'll have to go into arrears. The only way out is to stop paying your rent and go the council and tell them you are homeless. At which point either you or your children are split up or you get wedged in what I can only describe as a "crackhead den" at best. My other half had to clean the needles away before she could wash in the morning when this happened to her (after she was made redundant and the market was suddenly saturated with her speciality).
3. You don't get JSA immediately. It takes 4-8 weeks for it to start.
You don't just clap your hands when you're unemployed and cash starts rolling in. There are other concerns.
It's a fucking rough ride and not only that you have to do the legwork and deal with government incompetence and prejudice along the way which is more than rife.
If you're childless and (for instance) living with family then it would be accurate. Adding child allowances into the picture is pretty much beside the point here.
And the taxpayer foots the bill instead of the business, which as a societal meme can just go f*ck itself.
[Note that I say that as someone who actually has signed on for a bit when I was a daft kid and done some pretty ghastly manual laboring jobs in agriculture and fishing].
Mind you I think having to pay their own travelling expenses is a bit harsh (mind you the first employment I had was for 12-15 hour shifts and I had to cycle 45 minutes to get there and back.)
1. The business should foot the wage.
2. The wage should be fair.
Doing something isn't actually necessarily possible. We've automated a big chunk of people's jobs away. There isn't necessarily a place for everyone to work now. Not only that, we're living longer. Provisions need to be made for these facts.
