1/ As far as I can see, there has been no @uklabour critique of the Kickstart scheme, which opened for employer applications today. That's disappointing, but perhaps a bit predictable now. Anyway, here are the two massive problems with it.
2/ First, those eligible to take up placements (16-24 year olds) will be on universal credit. In most cases for this age group, people are expected to seek full-time work as a condition of any payment. Failure to comply leads to sanctions.
3/ But the Kickstart scheme funds for 25 hours per week (at the appalling minimum wage for that age group). So those employed under the scheme will still be faced by the need to search 10 top up hours, or face sanctions under the punitive UC regime.
4/ As such, this looks like a deliberate move by DWP to make this scheme just another control mechanism, sending young people into low quality work but with continued control over them.
5/ Second, and related, employers can only apply for the subsidy jobs if they can offer 30 or more such jobs, or are willing to run places through a 'representative'.
6/ This favours bigger employers of the type who are already used to exploiting people through other 'workfare' style scheme, creating a fit with the DWP's wider purpose of command, control, and sanction.
7/ Overall, this is not a job guarantee scheme. It is a scheme to exploit young people in dire circumstances, putting them on short hours that mean that they will never feel a proper part of the workforce and, whatever is said about CV etc, just creating cheap, expendable labour
8/ Labour should be questioning the design and motives of this scheme, and demanding changes to it, incl. full-time hours and an opening for small responsible organisations to use it. I won't hold my breath
9/ One more point. As part of any fightback, Labour councils should consider becoming 'representatives' on the caveat that they develop p'ship agreements with local DWP offices which 'outlaw' job search (diary) sanctions, and also develop quality standard with other employers.
10/ This does run the risk of getting in bed with the devil, as it were, but given Labour's lack of power nationally it may be the better course in terms of helping the victims.
11/ I see the BBC has just published its own piece on Kickstart bbc.co.uk/news/business-… No coverage of any Labour response (if there was one) and no mention of the UC complexity, though Federation of Small Businesses do support my point above about small firms being excluded.
