Having been signing on for six months the Job Centre have sent me the Derbyshire's Mandatory Youth Activity Programme. Working for two months, thirty hours a week, voluntarily. If I didn't comply I'd lose my seventy pound a week Job Seekers Allowance. I'm not a lazy job dodger, I want to work, I hate doing nothing but when there's up to a hundred other candidates for every position (even part time and minimum wage) it isn't exactly easy to earn a living.
The programme is government funded but isn't run by the government. Instead they use an agency to put 18 to 34 year olds on placements. I must do my thirty hours of work plus six hours job searching within the companies offices or my JSA will be stopped. If you are ill or have a day off you are taken off the placement and must resume in a different location. Daft.
The scheme aims to put the job seeker back into not just a working environment but a working mindset too but these rules are just unrealistic. They also expect me to partake in my daily job searching, whilst working full time. Ridiculous.
I've been sent to a charity shop.
On the positive side it's just a ten minute walk from home, the negative is that there is nothing to do, making the whole experience pointless. So far, I've done a week and probably 'worked' about seven hours in total. Not because I'm lazy, because there's really nothing to do and too many other volunteers. I did spend way too long steaming clothes for the sole reason that I could listen to the radio. Pretty much every task I've been given has been one created to do, rather than need, such as vacuuming the skirting boards and reordering coat hangers. May brain is going sterile, I'm just not used to doing nothing. Even at home I'm always writing something or reading something, here I'm constantly trying, and failing to find something to do.
Having this on my CV won't help with future employment, after the placement is over a paid position won't be offered, it is basically just a box that the Job Centre need to tick to keep the government happy, proving 'The Big Society' wasn't just an election campaign myth.
I have worked for free many times since graduating but I really can't see how I, the company or the society are benefitting from this one, yet, if I went back into full time education or did an internship benefit career prospects I would no longer be able to receive JSA. That does not make sense. At all.
There's two types of people claiming 'Job Seekers Allowance', those who actively seek employment and those who don't. Forcing either 'types' to do nothing in a charity shop eight hours a day isn't going to change anything, well, it just leaves me with less hours to seek a job.
I'd love to be paid to write words but I know that is extremely unlikely, just having something to do every day, with a smile on my face, something to feel worthy of and dosh in my pocket (it doesn't even have to be loads) would make me happy.
