This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
Workfare contractor LearnDirect’s bosses were told to get themselves a proper job yesterday when demonstrators occupied their Edinburgh offices.
Over a dozen protesters from Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty swept into the firm’s Morrison Street headquarters, with banners making their message clear: “If you exploit us we will shut you down!”
The welfare privateer has been handed lucrative public-sector contracts as part of Tory Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s widely-reviled “mandatory work activity” and “community work placements,” which demand up to six months’ unpaid work on pain of losing jobseekers’ allowance.
Demonstrator Michael Cormack told the Morning Star he and his comrades aimed to make the new workfare scheme unworkable.
“We were supporting one guy who was already volunteering at Christian Aid and helping organise their book fair. He was ordered to stop doing that work and was told to go stock shelves at the Salvation Army bookshop,” said Mr Cormack.
“It was completely absurd.”