or, another day on the Work Programme.
The Work Programme doesn’t involve work, rather it is a scheme run by the government, or rather by contractors for the government, allegedly aimed at getting people into jobs. I’ve known people who’ve been on it and its predecessor, the New Deal, for several years and the only one who got a job was hired by the contractor running the programme.
In fact, these contractors consistently achieve worse results, in terms of getting people into work, than the jobcentre working without contractors. There are some beneficiaries, though (beneficiaries, not “beneficiaries”, being the official label for what have also been known as “clients” and so on). The founder of one of the main companies, A4E (formerly A4E Work, formerly Action 4 Employment), now lives in a massive Georgian mansion worth nigh-on ten million pounds, every penny extracted from the taxpayer. Dole scum, she is.
The Work Programme is a requirement for those on Jobseekers’ Allowance and certain other benefits for more than six months. So, now I find myself on it. Happened to catch a glance of some of their paperwork the other day, they get £350 for signing me onto the programme. That’s Framework, a subcontractor for A4E. A4E presumably skim a bit off before passing the money onto Framework, which is normally a charity dealing with the homeless. They will be collecting extra cash every time I go in, presumably less than that £350 (which is rather more than a month’s dole money, incidentally). Theoretically they’re meant to find you work, but as I say that’s not something I’ve ever seen happen, and provide training and work placements, which are unpaid labour. However I already do voluntary work and the Open University, so I’m just a cash cow for them. Odd that A4E are back in the picture. They already lost the local contract once when they were found to have fraudulently overbilled.
Which I wouldn’t mind. From the point of view of effective public administration it’s obviously not wise to lavish money on private contractors for doing nothing, but on the other hand it does mean I don’t actually have to do anything different, which is nice and unburdensome.
Today, however, I was required to go to an “ASDA jobs event”. ASDA are opening a new shop in the town, which has so far shut down the local bus station and is currently rendering the main road through town unusable so the council can generously lay down pipes and cables for them. Rather than extracting the customary “section 106 planning bribe” for this inconvenience and expense they decided to let ASDA keep their money, after having generously handed over a prime town centre plot which was previously a profitable council-owned carpark and the only bus station in the area. And that after the council’s own report said there are too many supermarkets in the town.
But I digress, the point is that they’re opening soon and the jobcentre and now Framework are to a certain degree insistent that the jobseekers they have on the books apply for ASDA or else. The jobcentre ran a three day course at the local college, mostly useless stuff about interview techniques according to a friend of mine who was there, but culminating in doing the usual online application to ASDA. The Framework bods think it was all a way for the college to grab some money of the government. Today Framework were running the aforementioned “ASDA jobs event”, and they’d signed me up. Not sure what I was expecting, but I was expecting something. Maybe a code you put into the website that gets you to the top of the list due to a jobcentre/ASDA deal of some sort. Or special training as to how one should sidle through the multiple choice questions to get the automated system to choose you first. Something, anyway.
What I got was “here’s a computer, which can be used to apply for the job on their website”. Yeah, thanks. I could have done that at home. The first thing I notice was that you have to create an account, a requirement which is somewhat famous as the ultimate in bad ideas in website design. Okay, they’re not trying to sell me something, but is needlessly inconveniencing people applying for jobs with your company a wise corporate policy? Anyway, fine, I signed up. Name, e-mail address, postcode, so forth. Fine. Then I went through the same information for the actual application, fine.
Then there’s the stupid questionaire. Yes, I do feel that customers sometimes need putting in their place, and I feel that potential employers ought to know I feel that way. Right, 42 stupid questions, the inversion of the meaning of life. Oh, look, it keeps loading the same page with “click here if this page doesn’t close” on it as an infinite loop. Goody. Just what I was hoping for. There’s meant to be some sort of numeracy and literacy questions here, surely.
Ask the staff. Turns out being at Framework is a good idea, because he has the phone number of the head of HR at the soon-to-be-built local shop. Who comes round personally, from the office twenty seconds walk away… to see if he can make the website work. But he’s deciding on the hiring, I’m here, could I not have a word with him, perhaps skip the numeracy test by demonstrating some deft mental arithmetic? No? No. Has to be done on the website. Application won’t go through otherwise. So he phones head office. They don’t answer. Apparently the entire server array is based in America because ASDA is currently owned by Wal-mart. Also, it seems the head of ASDA lives near here, at least half a county from the nearest ASDA. Until now, anyway. So, he says to do it all again. Start again. The browser has remembered how I filled in all the fields in the from, which is identity theft waiting to happen. Freezes again.
Wipes browser history. Works! Most Windows solution ever. Of course, as this had evidently happened with several people just at Framework this is obviously a major problem, and as the job shows up on your account homepage as having been submitted (but is never submitted at the other end) no doubt lots of people just assume it’s worked when it hasn’t gone through at all. His only response to this pretty much fatal flaw in their website, which is the only way their company recruits, is that they don’t get many reports of problems, which they wouldn’t if the site shows the applications as submitted when they haven’t been, and head office don’t know of any problems. Presumably they’re the same ones who wrote this piece of shit in the first place. He’s not going to report any problems to them or anything, then they might know about problems and have to fix them and who knows where that might lead.
Ok, drama over, literacy and numeracy test. Right, they order 18, there are 500 in the warehouse, how many left in the warehouse after the order is filled. 482. Hmm. Multiple choice question. 482 is not one of the answers. Well, never mind, the next one’ll be fine. Price list, which product has the least discount. Easy. Hmm, all the answers contain two products. Probably meant to say “products” in the question there, it’s fine. And so on. The literacy test didn’t seem to have been composed by someone whose first language was English. But hey, I’m used to working around that sort of thing. A4E gave me a leaflet about how to write letters to employers, incomprehensible due to poor spelling and grammar. Another company, OTR, supposed to help with writing a CV, gave me one full of misspellings and made-up words. So, fine, I can understand this stuff. Probably.
Is there a place on here I can apply to run the company? Because you’re all idiots. I’d have to be a graduate, you say. Well, that certainly does reassure me about the state of the education system. Talking to myself. He’s gone. Managing the personnel at a shop without any staff, and judging by all this without the prospect of any staff. Must be very busy.
Oh look, frozen again.