According to this government, challenging a business on its use of unpaid labour is "unacceptable intimidation", but someone dying after having their benefits stopped is acceptable as long as the "correct procedures" have been followed.

As the last welfare claimant is sanctioned, the statistics show a jobless figure of zero. Unemployment has been eliminated. The word has been consigned to the virtual heritage cabinet, along with the old ‘job for life’. Meanwhile full employment, for so long an impossible dream buried in some bureaucrat’s drawer, has suddenly become a bright, market-led reality. The news channels are in full flow, business leaders and their political allies are triumphant. This is the surest sign yet of the economic resurrection, a victory for hard-working families doing the right thing and a validation of the moral toolkits of the employability coaches, a turnaround in the national mindset and a huge winning stride forward in the global race.

Viewers watch this scrolling fiction with a weary indifference as they scour the job sites, clicking from one assignment to another, searching for another few hours, bidding for scraps of work tomorrow or next week, often for no more money than so-called welfare would provide. It has long been known that a benefit claim is a conscription to Poundland. The figures have been massaged out of existence by the invisible hand and its twin pressures of stigma and fragmentary labour. The duties are the same, the rewards and prospects equally non-existent: it comes down to a choice between one arbitrary authority and another.

Psychometric Fiction

1 = Strongly Disagree

2 = Disagree

3 = In-between

4 = Agree

5 = Strongly Agree

 

I try to avoid work which is not essential

1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

It’s impossible to be warm towards everyone you meet
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

I turn up for work when others wouldn’t bother
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

It is best to do what you are paid for and nothing more
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

I am happiest when I have nothing to do
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

I cannot be cheerful all the time
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

There are some days when I just can’t face going to work
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

I sometimes find it hard to keep smiling
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

I sometimes tell lies if I think it is necessary
1 ☐         2 ☐         3 ☐         4 ☐         5 ☐

Dear recruitment agent

Do you remember when I registered with you? That bright smiling day in your office when you admired my CV and promised that ongoing full-time warehouse work was just around the corner? As we completed the paperwork we were full of hopes about our future together. And later, after a single day's work which you assured me was only an interim measure, I even gave you my P45.

Yet now over a month has passed and still this ongoing work has not materialised. I phone and you say you'll call back soon with definite news, but I hear nothing. Then, when you finally do ring, it is to offer a one-off nightshift in a supermarket... And when I give my reasons for not accepting this you seem disappointed, as if I am the one at fault, and say that you'll "get someone else..."

How did it come to this? Was our relationship doomed from the start? Was I wrong to trust you? etc.

‘Could you point me towards the anchovies?’
 

‘No, I’m afraid not Madam. I’ve never worked here before and I don’t know the layout of the shop. I’ve just been left with this cage full of products and told to get on with it. In fact I don’t even work for this supermarket. I’m working for an agency which has sub-contracted me from another agency, by arrangement with the supermarket, for just one shift. This is my first day, and my only day. Yes I’m wearing black, but look more closely: this isn’t a supermarket uniform; it’s an unmarked black jumper, frayed at the cuffs. And these aren’t regulation shopfloor trousers, they’re old jeans. The agency told me to wear black so I would blend in with the proper members of staff while I’m stacking shelves. Or rather, while I appear to be stacking shelves... See these packets of organic spelt I’m holding? I have no idea where they go. I don’t even know what organic spelt is. This place, and most of the products and people in it, are totally alien to me. I’ve visited this shop as a customer about twice in five years, and I just bought a loaf of bread or a bar of chocolate and got the hell out. Until today, that is. So no, I’m sorry, I don’t know where the anchovies are. Maybe they've moved. An addition to the usual shopping list, yes? Following a TV chef recipe? Don't worry, you'll find them sooner or later. Whereabouts exactly, your guess is as good as mine. Or even better than mine. Because really we’re approaching this whole issue from the wrong angle, aren’t we? You seem at home here, you must come in regularly, twice a week at least. You’ve got a basket full of items already. You know where you’re going and what you’re buying. I’m standing here with this organic spelt, whatever that is, and I should be asking you where it goes. It must be near here somewhere. Could you direct me towards the right shelf? Just a minute out of your busy day, please, I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes. It took ten minutes to find the right place for the last thing, and then the shelf was full so I had to put it back in the cage. And that’s when I picked up this organic spelt. I want to tear it open and spray the damned stuff across the aisle. But the supervisor won’t be pleased about that. Do you understand? I’m on a twelve hour shift. I’m going out of my mind. As a fellow human, I’m begging you, please-’

Hello, welcome to the Dispatch Room, come on in, mind your step. Is this your first day? OK, let me show you what we do here, don’t worry it’s not rocket science.

 

See these flimsy brown cardboard envelopes, filling those four big crates with another crate’s worth in a sort of mountain on top of them? Well, each envelope has an address label, each label has a number, and these numbers must be matched with the numbers stuck on these 80 or so plastic boxes along the walls. The packages have to be thrown into the boxes - or ‘totes’, as we call them. When the boxes are filled new ones must be started. As you can see, some of the boxes are stacked up on top of each other. Oops, yes, as I say watch out as there’s not much space - we have to put these extra totes down on the floor for more envelopes, so try not to trip over them as you walk from one end of the room to the other. We grab armfuls of envelopes from the large crates (or ‘magnums’), distribute them, then come back and get more. But as quickly as we empty the magnums, they’ll fill up again. See over there, that oblong container on wheels, that’s a ‘coffin’ (no, really). We use that to collect the envelopes from the room next door, where they’re filled and labelled. Careful though, one of its wheels is knackered so it doesn’t steer very well, but the supervisor won’t accept that excuse if you accidentally ram his swivel chair while he’s sitting in it, believe me...

You’d think that by now technology would’ve enabled the invention of machines to do these endless, mindless tasks of packing, collecting and distributing, but no. We’re cheaper, obviously. Perhaps robots would also be less adept than human drones at navigating the cramped space and more prone to malfunction after repeatedly bumping into each other. Besides which, they’d be more time-consuming to re-program if sent to work in another part of the warehouse, and when they became obsolete they’d have to be scrapped, whereas us humans will disappear all by ourselves.

There are usually between three and six of us doing the ‘dispatch’ job in here, collecting hundreds of packages in the coffin and emptying the contents into magnums and totes, although this varies; at one point I counted nine of us, including one inside a magnum lifting stuff out. Plus there are the three people standing at benches along the wall. They have to empty every tote we’ve filled, weigh the envelopes and put them into mail sacks which are loaded onto these metal trolleys or ‘yorks’. When they’re full the yorks are taken outside for Royal Mail to pick up. As you can see, these contraptions take up all the space in the centre of the room, leaving us to shuffle along a narrow path with the yorks on one side and the totes on the other.  

It’s not so bad, though. The fact that this room is generally seen as the best place to work in the entire warehouse tells its own story. While we are of course closely supervised and subjected to the same regimented breaks and performance indicators as the rest of the department, due to the layout of the building we are partially shielded from the concentrated, ultra-disciplinary atmosphere of the main packing room, where people have targets of how many packages to fill per hour and are routinely told off, like naughty schoolchildren, if they pause in their tasks for even a few seconds. All the while a local radio station pumps out banal pop at a volume which is either distracting or deafening depending on whereabouts in the room you happen to be situated. The international equivalent of our UK dispatch area is also located in the main room, right next to the blaring stereo.

Here in the side-room at least a self-contained soundscape is possible: an iPod can be used at a civilised volume and conversation can be carried on alongside the work – although the fear of surveillance still lurks in the background of every fleeting interaction or non-work-directed gesture.

When people are sent here for a short time from another part of the warehouse, they usually express relief. ‘Scanning’ appears to be the worst department, where the products are entered onto the stock system or put aside for disposal. After spending half a day lifting boxes onto shelves in the vast picking area, over in another building, I can confirm that the role of ‘putting away’ is also crushingly grim and potentially injurious: the signs instructing workers to ‘lift correctly’ are there to serve the company rather than the employee, fulfiling its legal requirements while leaving the worker to manoeuvre heavy loads in confined spaces and contort his body simply to get the job done.

These departments make the packing area seem positively Utopian in comparison. As if to underline this, a few weeks earlier a supervisor used his farewell speech to admonish us in the packing room on our supposed slackness and excessive sociability, which he saw as diverting our energies away from the work we were paid to do. “When I come in here it’s like coming into someone’s living room,” he said, in a disdainful tone. Surveying the benches surrounded by packaging and boxes of products, and the glazed faces waiting for the signal to leave at the end of another day of low-paid, monotonous labour, I remarked to a co-worker that it didn’t resemble any living room I’d ever seen.

So we walk up and down all day, like clumsy, glitchy robots, throwing these envelopes into boxes, talking about anything to distract us from our tiredness and boredom, remarking occasionally on an amusing name or address, apologising as we inevitably get in each other’s way and cursing the unsticky packages which we constantly have to re-seal as, due to a combination of the speed required of the packing staff to exceed their targets, the no doubt cheap materials and being thrown multiple times from one container to another, they often gape open, exposing the products inside.  

But what are the products in these envelopes that skid under our feet and tip from overflowing racks onto our heads? What are these things that we can never shift fast enough and despite our best efforts keep materialising at an ever-increasing rate? Books, that’s what; oceans of books, slapping and sloshing all around, heaving up against the walls and streaming along the floors. Books, books, everywhere, nor any word to read – for to browse or even ponder a jacket would be to shirk one’s duties. The room resembles a post-literary labour camp, a sort of Fahrenheit Minus 451 where books are all over the place, but due to some immense but unspoken disciplinary pressure have ceased to be seen as books, and have become empty objects passed blindly from one room to another, one hand to another. Only when they reach the remote customers, those trustworthy citizens far beyond the warehouse and the industrial estate, will the objects become books again.

Admittedly I have witnessed people stealing glances at pages here and there, perusals as fleeting and furtive as our conversations, and yes - and I tell you this in confidence – I have even indulged in this practice myself. But predictably, the only volumes which tend to be openly inspected and discussed with the approval of management are those titles whose subject matter is the human figure, preferably in large, pictorial format.

Still, if one did harbour an interest in such matters, the range of literature is astonishing. In the course of a typical day one might spot several Penguin Classics, Heart of Darkness, a history of the Soviet Gulags, a self-help guide to succeeding in business, several charming children’s books and glittering celebrity autobiographies, Depression For Dummies, a spongy cookbook, a monograph on the architecture of Milton Keynes and a landmark text of Marxist theory; all of varying ages and editions, some out of print, some very much still in, all bought and waiting to be delivered to eager readers.

But this is not a secondhand bookshop, at least not in the traditionally understood sense of that phrase. It is an online retailer, with all the logistical issues that term implies. And of course this isn’t Amazon, either; it’s a much smaller, grubbier operation. Nevertheless Amazon might well be the model for its cosy public profile and not so cosy employment practices. The company sells so many items through Amazon as to be practically a subsidiary, and must soon be ripe for buying up by the virtual behemoth. This company is World Of Books, and it lives up to its name. A veritable planet of reading matter passes through the gates of this compound at the end of a grey industrial estate; and its products are sent out to the whole of the UK and Europe, to the US, China, Australia and everywhere inbetween by an ever-rotating population of local and  global workers.

The Big Bang for World Of Books was eight years ago, and it has been expanding ever since. Throughout the recession it grew at a phenomenal rate. Its sales increased from £2.2 million in 2009 to £19.3 million in 2012, when it was ranked 22 in a Sunday Times list of 100 fastest-growing companies, recording annual sales growth of 107%. During this time it has colonised neighbouring units on the industrial estate and recruited a workforce (supplemented at intervals by temporary agency staff, like air pumped into a fire by a pair of bellows) which is constantly being ordered to work faster to keep up with the increasing levels of stock and orders. Back in 2009 the company reportedly had yet to make a profit, but going by the subsequent acceleration in trade and equally impressive array of fast cars in the directors’ parking spaces, it would seem that this goal of profitability has now been more than achieved.

It would appear, then, that the founders of World Of Books have alighted upon a business model as miraculous as a plot from a Harry Potter novel. How do they manage to obtain such a range of products and sell them at such competitive prices, while remaining commercially viable?

The answer is that the company buys its stock in bulk from charities. Lorries arrive regularly at the warehouse, their canvas sides bulging with hundreds of sacks, and collections are also made from charities’ premises. Books are bought by the tonne, regardless of the contents. Once unloaded, these books-as-raw-materials are manually separated according to a computerised system which decides which titles won’t sell and which will. The excess is tipped into huge containers in the yard and periodically taken away to be pulped. The ratio of books thrown away to those sold is apparently 80%-20%.

World Of Books lists its suppliers as including The British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and the RSPCA. There are signs around the place that other well-known charities are involved too. It may be that the company’s expansion has relied in part upon making deals with new charity suppliers. The company makes much of its recycling role, which it claims enables the charities to save on disposal costs. Indeed, the sign at the warehouse entrance bears the honourable motto: “recycling books on behalf of charity”. In addition the company associates itself with various charity events which no doubt generate good PR and maintain an ethical brand identity.

In reality, however, the recycling, along with the 10% of turnover given back to charities (whether this is the same as the payment-by-weight or additional to it is not clear), are not altruistic, socially responsible gestures but essential costs, necessary for the acquisition of new raw materials which can be worked up into profitable commodities. This cold hard capitalist reality is obvious in the warehouse itself which, as you will have gathered, hardly buzzes with the feeling that everyone is working together for a good cause. The charities and their projects aren’t mentioned in the supervisor’s end-of-day speeches about productivity, or used to justify the pitiful wages. There is no impression that this disciplinary regime of labour is driven by a need to maximise the contribution to any cause other than World Of Books itself.

And what stories might be told by the truckloads of books delivered to this literary abattoir? Obviously there will be several unwanted Clarksons to wade through and dispose of before reaching a Bronte or a Keyes, but the sifting process is clearly a lucrative one. The company even has a dedicated department, ‘World Of Rare Books’, which sells older, more collectible items, some over a hundred years old. But even by non-vintage standards, the quantity and quality of books they obtain in this way is startling. Some titles might even conceivably be sold, read, donated back to charities, then delivered back and sold again. School revision guides are especially popular, for instance. Customer addresses are often universities.

Many books look as if they were part of personal collections built up over years, and were not given up willingly. If a loved one died of cancer or a heart attack, what more reassuring and respectful way of disposing of their lifelong library than to donate it to the British Heart Foundation or Cancer Research? According to its website, the company also has arrangements with several hospices. Are the supporters of these charities told if their donations are destined to fund the Porsches of World Of Books directors? Some books arrive bearing charity shop price stickers which have to be cleaned off, so were presumably unsold locally, but whether all the ‘surplus’ stock has seen the inside of a charity shop is debatable. Packing staff are instructed to check books for any personal effects, such as photos, letters or bookmarks, which might be left inside. These are removed and either stuck up on the walls around the packing room or thrown away.

After decades of mass production and consumption, there is a huge reservoir of books which people don’t want to keep, or cannot take with them into the next life, and which charities cannot accommodate or sell in their high street shops. Hence this treasure trove, first stumbled upon by the founder of what would become World Of Books (so the mythic origin story goes) when he was passing a local charity shop and eyed some discarded stock. I mean, we’ve all seen some unwanted chazza gem and thought, ‘I could sell that book/record/Dinky toy on eBay’, right? A few of us might even have done so a few times, thinking there’s no harm in it. But only one man, it seems, had the vision to base an entire business plan on this thought, and the resources to implement it on an industrial scale.

Like all good entrepreneurs, he and the other World Of Books bosses are surfing the crest of a historical wave. Printed books no doubt seem like bloated relics to today’s e-book downloader, and charity shops might appear to be drowning in useless donations, but these impressions conveniently disguise the fact that if those physical books are efficiently filtered and matched with a global network of potential readers, they are still valuable. How much more money would these charities make from their donations if they set up their own organisation to perform this role, rather than outsource it to a private business, so that all the accumulated surplus revenue, not just a small percentage of it, went to the charities themselves?

Finally: for those charities campaigning on issues of health promotion and disease prevention, where, if at all, do the 200 or so World Of Books workers fit in? As suppliers to a commercial enterprise, are these charities also happy to be the conduit for low-paid, monotonous, stressful employment with no sick pay? Does this constitute a healthy workplace, or one which incubates the very problems about which these charities strive to raise awareness? After just three months I can sense the answer to this question forming in my mind and in my bones, as I drag the coffin around on its wonky wheels.

I often wonder whether any of the VIP visitors who pass through the packing room on their guided tours, scrutinising the products with barely a glance at us, are charity representatives. Or maybe they are prospective buyers, or applicants for senior jobs. It’s difficult to tell.

I think that pretty much covers everything. Now, I suppose we should-

Oh, you’re leaving already?

 

 

 

How appropriate that on the day the Chancellor celebrated the UK’s 0.6% economic growth figures with a hi-vis tour of factories and warehouses, I was reacquainted with one of the traditions of the low-paid insecure work lurking behind such statistics and within such workplaces: the enforced day off.

Where I work, all the temporary staff received a text message from the recruitment agency on Wednesday afternoon, informing us that the company “are not going to need you tomorrow but would like you back on Friday.” The message ended with the words: “Is that ok with you?” The façade of choice must be upheld and the corporate power routinely exerted over casualised labourers cannot be called what it is, namely exploitation on an industrial scale.

Our immediate supervisors made no comment on this remote announcement, or none that I could overhear, anyway. Maybe they weren’t aware of it, even as they monitored us, ensuring that we did not shirk our duties. The business does not seem to be faltering; on the contrary, it is a struggle to keep up with the expanding workload. Perhaps, just as we are expected to fit an increasing volume of products into a small space, the bosses are trying to squash more of our labour into less time, to maximise their return.

In the absence of any focus for our resentment we kept calm and carried on, as the posters say, completing the monotonous tasks required of us, as if no arbitrary chasm had suddenly opened up in our weekly incomes.

Luckily while I’ve been employed there I’ve accrued a couple of days’ paid leave, and the following morning I phoned the agency and arranged to take that day as one of them. As ever, the recruitment operative conveyed an impression of cheerful powerlessness about the whole thing. The agency’s motto could be: Don’t Shoot the Messenger [smiley face]. I had hoped to take some paid time off next month, but this was a sharp reminder of one of the first lessons the precarious worker must learn about life under the regime of flexible conformity. Thinking of accumulating your leave for a week’s holiday? Think again.

Including the disintegration of my previous job, of my 6 and a half days of paid leave so far this year, not counting bank holidays, 5 have been decided by my employers. And even this is a luxury compared to the self-employed, intermittently employed or unemployed who don’t get any paid leave at all. Just as the ‘job for life’ is now a historical cliché, no doubt soon all time off, whether paid or unpaid, will happen not when it suits you but when it suits your boss. The voice of business will sweep aside any alternative as laughably unrealistic.  “We’re all 24/7 entrepreneurs now, that’s just how it is. I’m always on duty whether I’m by the pool or in the car or in the office. I’ve never taken a day off in my life so why should my employees dictate when they work? The country would grind to a halt! My God it would be practically communism! Next they won’t want to work at all!”

The great push for growth is a convenient excuse to make ever more pressing demands upon capitalism’s conscripts, who must be constantly available and looking for work, any work, and are expected to compete with colleagues to produce more and make do with less. This is the real outcome of an economy shaped by the discourse of crisis-as-normality and the charade of unity against a backdrop of skyscraping inequality: go wherever the agency or Jobcentre sends you, regardless of pay, conditions or matters of principle, do what you’re told and more, and look happy about it.

So I’ll obey these orders-framed-as-invitations and take my time off when it’s given to me. After all, the time might not be of my own choosing but it’s up to me what I choose to do with it. It’s a free country. I might decide to go shopping, if my wages stretch beyond or even as far as the basic essentials which enable me to reproduce my labour (there’s the credit card, of course, but debt is a matter of individual responsibility...). I might even fritter away my spare time writing inane accounts of my experiences of work – but if I choose to do this rather than using that time to search for the next job and fill in application forms, well... the only person I’m punishing is myself. Nevertheless, there’s no harm in pursuing this eccentric hobby if it makes me feel better. That is, as long as I don’t jeopardise my future employability by putting my name to negative, anti-work polemics (in which case I would only have myself to blame for my lack of prospects), and as long as I don’t publicly identify my workplace and thereby endanger my current position, even if aside from its brutal employment practices and quasi-Victorian working conditions its business model is also grotesquely unethical, and even if I have already asked the agency to move me somewhere else but apparently there is nowhere else.

A so-called recovery engineered on these terms will only further aid the rich at the expense of the rest of us, being driven by unspeakable greed and implemented through the treatment of people both in and out of work as so many disposable units of short-term labour. The expansion of my current workplace on the foundation of such institutionalised insecurity and dubious morality is a symptom of this malignant growth, achieved by those at the top crushing those at the bottom, breaking their backs and their spirits so as to make them even more ‘flexible’ in the future.

Evan Davis was shocked to hear, during a Today feature on the perils of the current heatwave, that care homes for the elderly don’t have air conditioning. He must have led a sheltered life. Or rather, an air-conditioned life, a life programmed and mediated by career journalism, acted out in conference rooms, studios, airport lounges and hospitality suites, the frictionless non-places of global capitalism. Obviously this sticky issue never came up in those Oxford PPE seminars (although hothousing humans for profit must have been on the curriculum in some form, surely). But he didn’t let the revelation put him off his stride, and anyway the schedule had already moved on to some other pressing topic, such as the royal carcass or the Olympic legacy.

 

Later, reflecting on this exchange in the seething oven of a warehouse where we, the elderly-in-waiting, carried on our monotonous manual work while upstairs the air-con irrigated the cool and spacious offices of the mouse-clicking bosses (not so much a Dragon’s Den as a Vampire’s Attic), I realised this summed up my impression of the interchangeable cast of politicians, media professionals and business leaders who preside over our overheated lives: an air-conditioned existence. They are cushioned by a mental, physical and financial zephyr which is taken for granted even as it is denied both to those who most need it, and those whose labour funds the refined atmosphere to which they have become accustomed.

The heat at the core of the economic meltdown is purely symbolic; unlike the markets, the actual temperature is carefully regulated. I couldn’t imagine the CEO of RBS sweltering and glugging warm tap water as he fixed the figures for his company’s privatisation dossier, any more than I could picture the Today team propping open a fire exit as they got to grips with the latest episode in the Euro debt saga. The so-called crisis has now reached such a plateau of air-conditioned normality that every default or bailout seems only to constitute an administrative adjustment which ensures that the presenters, politicians and business leaders can carry on living in high-level comfort, while those below them search ever more desperately for rest and shade. Unless those media professionals work for a Greek state broadcaster, that is, in which case the ideological air-conditioning unit is broken beyond repair.

 

                          But such tensions seem far away from the smoothly ventilated discourse of the BBC media-industrial complex, even when it touches on those locations where its correspondents might conceivably feel the heat. I recently watched an edition of Davis's business show The Bottom Line on the BBC News channel [radio version available here], in which he hosted a breezy round table discussion with a group of travel and tourism executives. The recorded show was overlaid with a live news ticker at the foot of the screen which looped updates from sites of geopolitical upheaval - Syria, Turkey, Egypt - while above the scrollbar these people traded club-class corporate clichés, as if their entire shared worldview was air-conditioned, mediated to the point of virtual reality.

                           The participants in these shows, however,  are aware that in order to justify their indulgences they must as least appear to take account of those economic factors which affect the rest of us. Whether dehydrating in a residential home or taking on fluids in Costa Coffee, the ‘bottom line’ is no longer just a matter for entrepreneurs but the Plimsoll line of the cruise liner Big Society on which we are all supposedly sailing together. “People are re-prioritising their discretionary spend”, one of the show’s guests euphemistically observed; but the annual package holiday was not deemed to be under threat. On the contrary, the consensus in the studio was that even for those facing insecurity or redundancy, it was as inevitable and affordable as television or toothpaste. Another guest was a director of a Greek holiday resort, and while he admitted that his domestic business had taken a hit, his sales pitch betrayed not the slightest ripple of anxiety. Indeed, he painted Greece as a popular destination offering exceptional value for money due to the very crisis from which, he insisted, it was now recovering.

                          The real and virtual occasionally overlapped: the execs acknowledged that travel operators had to watch out for episodes of national unrest, as if protests or coups were unexpected weather events, matters for insurance and contingency planning. Whether it’s the Arab Spring or the ash cloud, the panel agreed, people want peace of mind. They weren’t alluding to the minds of those occupying Tahrir Square, although no doubt this has already been written into the brochures as a tourist spectacle. The same cities whose mass protests and violent suppressions  bruised the news feeds were viewed here purely as products to be sold. An easyJet executive reported, “We were barely affected by what’s going on.” UK travellers apparently keep on flying regardless of political turbulence, protected by the sunscreen of capital.

These passing references between the lines of upbeat PR were uncanny, as if some background disturbance had become momentarily audible before the mechanism corrected itself and the glitch was forgotten again. As the credits rolled, guests and host stood up and left the air-conditioned studio together, no doubt adjourning to an air-conditioned bar where they would congratulate each other on their performances, before each returned to their air-conditioned apartments for a night of guilt-free, air-conditioned dreams.

Humiliation sessions and intensive surveillance will ‘empower’ jobseekers to find work, says DWP

The latest phase of the government’s tough-but-fair approach to welfare reform has been unveiled, with two new schemes encouraging jobseekers to get off benefits and into work.

 

As part of a pilot project, unemployed people in Brougham are being handed over to private consultants Head First for ‘Empowerment Training’. The 1:1 courses, which are compulsory for all claimants referred by a Jobcentre advisor, consist of the jobseeker enduring 20 minutes of derisory laughter from an ‘Empowerment Coach’, then being made to literally grovel to qualify for their next benefit payment. 

 

A spokesman for Brougham Jobcentre explained: “This is a service run by skilled professionals and is designed to empower customers and motivate them to step up their efforts to find work.”

 

The DWP also confirmed that claimants who refuse to attend the sessions or walk out would risk having their benefits stopped.

 

The spokesman added that the “innovative” and “personalised” scheme was already showing positive results, as the number of claims in Brougham had dropped by 10% since it was introduced.

 

However the scheme is not so popular with claimants, who have dubbed it “humiliation therapy”. One person, who did not want to be named, said: “I lost my job and I was already in debt, and then I was referred here, they said for ‘advice’. I was called into a room and I asked: ‘How am I going to pay my gas bill?’ The guy just pointed to his shoes and said: ‘You can start by licking these.’”

 

When challenged on the controversial methods of the programme, government minister Liam Hoban said, “We are facing an epidemic of worklessness which demands bold new solutions. Rather than complaining, jobseekers should be grateful that we’re giving them an opportunity to boost their employability skills. If they can’t find work on their own and are taking money from hard-working taxpayers, then they obviously need help to change their attitudes and be more resilient if they’re going to be of value to employers again in the future. If they won’t do the right thing and accept that help then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to show them that a life on benefits won't be worth living.”

 

Alongside this new approach, the DWP is trialling a new nationwide online scheme, run in partnership with private firm Virtua, which it says has been set up in response to concerns from taxpayers about how benefit money is being spent. 200 people claiming Universal Credit are being identified and tracked on a database which can be viewed by the public at the website www.benefittracker.gov.uk. Subscribers can also follow the movements of particular jobseekers via Twitter. It is expected that within a year registration on the site will be mandatory for anyone claiming out of work benefits.

The site, which is automatically updated in response to community interactions or when jobseekers make purchases with Universal Credit funds, is now active and is being updated daily. Tweets which have appeared so far include the following: 

 

#UC1295383 9.03am: Neighbour reports curtains drawn, music heard last night, no answer to mobile - To monitor further

#UC0539355 11.35am: Jobseeker spent £1.50 on takeaway coffee - Adviser to give counselling re:  savings of home consumption

 

#UC0839258 15.47pm: Feedback from agency: jobseeker declined offer of 4 hours work 5-9pm Reason: “not enough notice” - Sanction applied

 

#UC0459382 10.30am: Jobseeker failed to attend Positive Thinking session, no reason given - Sanction applied

 

#UC0922521 9.45pm: Message received from Police Community Liaison Unit - This claim is no longer active

Defending the scheme against accusations of intrusiveness and bullying, a government spokesman said it was “in the public’s interest to see how their money was being spent,” and “those who were making genuine efforts to find work and not hiding a luxury lifestyle should have no reason to object.”

Heresy

 

If only, rather than wasting my time thinking about work-power relations and questioning the discourse of 'jobseeking', I would apply "smart effort with impact" and display "positive and balanced intent", and above all if I cultivated a proper work ethic, I could now be making a living writing stuff like this:



The Only Way is Ethics

 

(this and countless other righteous tracts discovered via the 'Employability Hub' @EmployHub - a "social learning community", apparently*)

 

The words would pour out of me, as if I were possessed by some inspiring inner voice. From my pulpit-blog I would preach the gospel of employability, giving new virtual form to the familiar motivational narrative: the sanctimonious opening anecdote... the history bit... the bit where I mention "the capitalist economic model" as if I stand outside of it... the vaguely threatening, Torchwood-like The 21st Century is when everything changes and you've got to be ready bit...

 

In contrast to the old-fashioned 20th Century workplace, the author tells us, "The 21st Century perspective favours values like..."

 

...fear, insecurity, competition, selfishness, 24/7 availability, emotional labour? No? Oh hang on...

 

"...independence, individuality, influencing without authority, insistence, initiative, innovation, risk, diversity and entrepreneurialism."

 

Ah, of course. Hallelujah.

 

 

* More on Hubs here