Not giving a valuable service to jobseekers

‘PEOPLE Plus’ – improving people’s lives...

The above claim is questionable based on my own experience as an unemployed job seeker who has been forced to sign a contract with the People Plus organisation.

For the uninitiated, People Plus is a for profit welfare-to-work company which works with the Department of Work and Pensions.

Long term Job Seekers Allowance claimants invariably end up being assigned to this privatised version of the Jobcentre for a period of two years.

People Plus, which is paid millions each year by the state to provide people with training, education and job seeking assistance, is not giving good value to the British taxpayer.

In the nine months that I have been forced to attend People Plus’s Manchester office three days a week, I have received no training or help in finding a job; apart that is from the occasional offer of a zerohours position in a warehouse or discount store which takes no account of one’s personal circumstances or educational background.

The attitude in these instances is ‘take it or leave it’ and veiled threats are made that benefits will be sanctioned if one doesn’t go to interviews for these jobs that frankly no right minded person would consider.

Claimants with no car of their own and dependent on public transport are presented with 6am starts in difficult to get to places and 12-hour shifts are commonplace.

If one cites ill health, old age or physical incapacity as a reason for rejecting the job, then one is treated as a malingering sponger and sanctions on benefits routinely ensue.

People Plus does nothing that the Jobcentre is not already doing, so the public is being double charged for the same service. People Plus should be shut down.

Friends of the privatisation obsessed Conservative government have had a good run but it is time to call a stop to this.

RW, Manchester JSA claimant