The background
The Government’s unpaid, back-to-work scheme is not unlawful “forced labour”, a London High Court ruled on Monday.
Mr Justice Foskitt rejected 23-year-old jobless graduate Cait Reilly’s claim that being made to work without pay at a local Poundland discount store was a violation of her human rights under laws banning slavery. Reilly said that she was forced to work at the discount store without pay as part of a work experience, for up to six weeks; she also said that she was told that should she decline, her jobless benefits would be cut. Reilly, from Birmingham, was joined in her claim by Jamieson Wilson, a 40-yearold unemployed HGV driver from Nottingham, was told that “characterising such a scheme as involving or being analogous to ‘slavery’ or ‘forced labour’” is a “long way from contemporary thinking”.
The judge, however, did note that Reilly and Wilson had not been sufficiently notified of the requirements of the work schemes they were participating in – Reilly’s scheme was not actually mandatory, evidently – and criticised the Department of Work and Pensions for a lack of clarity.
High Court ruling is ‘common sense’
“Finally some common sense,” sighed Louisa Peacock at The Telegraph, welcoming the judge’s decision for offering a “rational perspective” and blaming “left-wing militants” for fanning the flames of unnecessary controversy. Of course Reilly’s human rights were not violated: “Anyone can see that encouraging the jobless young to take part in some good-quality work experience, teaching them the basics in communication, team work, customer service and budget taking skills, can only be a good thing…. The fact it took the High Court to determine this says something about our society.”
Job scheme caring, not cruel
Declaring that at the time Reilly filed the complaint, the “howls of outrage from the left-wing establishment were ear-piercing”, The Daily Mail’s James Slack cheered the High Court’s decision. “[A]n important point of principle has been established today that it is not cruel to seek to help people to get off benefits and into work. Rather, it’s trapping them in an insidious culture of welfare dependency that’s the real act of unkindness.”
Job scheme still smells like slavery
Reilly and Wilson say they were told that if they didn’t take part in the schemes, they could lose their benefits and they felt like they were being forced to work for nothing. “That looks and sounds like slave labor to me,” judged Steve Cornforth at his blog, The Virtual Lawyer. “I have to say that if somebody is made to work for nothing and will suffer consequences if they refuse, then that sounds no less oppressive in 2012 than it might have done in 1812…. I can see why a judge might not want to find that this amounts to slavery which does have a particular stigma attached to it. But if it is, or appears to be, compulsory then it is hard to know what else to call it.”
Cait Reilly: ‘I would grab a paid job in Poundland with both hands’
Back in January, when she launched judicial proceedings against the Government, Reilly argued at The Guardian’s Comment is Free section that the Government’s “forcing” her to take an unpaid work experience was “a badly thought-out system created without the involvement of parliament”. Moreover, she said then, the scheme doesn’t work: “The coalition’s commitment to getting people into work is admirable, but this is not the right way to do it. Similar schemes have not worked in other countries, and there is evidence that coercing people into unpaid work masks rather than solves the unemployment crisis.”
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