Re: State Sponsored Slavery : Thu Nov 17, 2011 2:21 pm
The name that gets chucked about in the activist world for companies that send the unemployed to work for free at big corporations is poverty pimps. The companies that are paid to pimp out the unemployed that I’m aware of are Remploy (seeing them again in a couple of weeks), a4e, Best LTD, Mencap, Scope, Ingeus and Crosby training. There’s probably many more but let’s focus on Mencap who I had a recent experience with. Mencap pride themselves on helping the disabled like myself by placing donation buckets in Co-Ops up and down the country. However these donations don’t go to help the disabled. They go to help the employees who work for the charity so they can continue to get paid to pimp out the unemployed to Co-Op. I recently found out it’s a win/win situation for both Co-Op and Mencap last June when I declined a ten week placement at Co-Op. The answer was they can easily replace me with someone else who’d take the placement instead. How’s that helping me get back into work?
I’ve had previous with working for free at a supermarket at ASDA via Remploy so I know how these things go. The problem these days is that most charity’s (not all) exploit the cause they supposed to be helping. The only way employees at Mencap are going to stay in the job is by placing donation buckets in supermarkets whilst highlighting the few success stories to mislead the general public what they all about. The people they’ve failed like myself don’t have the resources nor the platforms to expose them for the scumbags that they really are. Thankfully the Guardian does.
The money that Mencap gets donated would be better spent on creating sustainable and real jobs for the disabled rather than using it to maintain their current failure of ‘help’ which is no help at all other than to the employees at the so called charity and Co-Op.
