by frog
Part of the grand plan to emerge from the Welfare Working Group is to have greater private sector involvement in job placement. I guess the rationale is that the private sector does things “more efficiently”. So I decided to have a look at how the welfare reforms in the United Kingdom, which much of the Welfare Working Group’s report appears to be based on, are going.
Polly Toynbee at The Guardian reports:
Last year the Commons public accounts committee reported on Labour’s Pathways to Work scheme for getting incapacity benefit (IB) claimants back to work. The verdict was pretty damning. Not only did contracted companies miss their targets by miles – but the DWP’s own Jobcentre Plus outscored them easily. The committee summoned two leading companies – A4E and Reed in Partnership – to give evidence. Sadly its findings seem to have been ignored as the government ploughs ahead with its near-identical scheme, only stopping to re-tweak the contracts.
Steve Marsland of A4E started by claiming his company had got 42% of IB claimants into work. The committee chair, Margaret Hodge, probed and found he meant 42% of those who volunteered for the programme. Out of the mandatory participants, how many? 15% against a target of 32% – though prodded again by Tory MPs Richard Bacon and Jo Johnson, his results turned out to be even lower: Surrey and Sussex achieved just 13% against an agreed target of 50%. With targets of 31%, A4E hit 12% in south-east Wales, 14% in West Yorkshire, 13% in north and mid Wales, and 16% in Devon and Cornwall. In south London, it was down to 9%. Reed’s results were much the same.
Even worse emerged: a quarter of these “successes” fell out of their jobs before 13 weeks.
But the companies delivering those job placement services seem to be doing rather well:
The woman appointed by David Cameron to help troubled families get off benefits and into work has a joint income with her husband estimated at more than £1.4m after building a business empire based on lucrative “welfare to work” contracts with government.
Emma Harrison, the chairman of A4e (Action for Employment), was celebrating another success that is likely to boost the company’s profits, after it won five out of 40 new welfare contracts from the Department for Work and Pensions. The 40 contracts, worth an estimated £3bn-£5bn in total, are part of the coalition’s new work programme, under which private companies will be paid by results for getting jobless people into work. …
It emerged last week that another major player in the welfare to work industry, Serco, which has won two more contracts, had awarded its top executives bumper pay packets. Chris Hyman, Serco’s chief executive, enjoyed an 18% rise to £1.86m, while Andrew Jennings, the finance director, received an increase of 7% to £948,295. The company’s diverse range of contracts includes running several prisons, London’s bicycle hire scheme and the Docklands Light Railway.
Perhaps the rationale of more corporate involvement in welfare is actually nothing more than more welfare for corporates.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare by frog on Tue, April 5th, 2011
Tags: A4e, corporate welfare, Serco, welfare reform, Welfare working group
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Like or Dislike:
5 
0 (+5)
I wonder what their credentials are for being approved to find work for people? What special skills, understanding of social conditions, etc do they bring? WINZ certainly has its problems, but the local office at least is mainly staffed with local people who have been there and done that.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Probably none, Janine.
I suspect that, as in the UK, the primary credential will be the ability to bullshit about success rates.
And then if exposed, as happened in the UK, no adverse action will be taken against the corporate placement agencies anyway.
Because the agenda is to look like they are really, really busy doing something, rather than to actually place people in sustainable employment.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
“WINZ certainly has its problems, but the local office at least is mainly staffed with local people who have been there and done that.”
Dunno about that – years back I had to go to a WINZ seminar about how to find jobs, the person running it had no clues and his experience, according to his own account, was to finish varsity then be unemployed until he got the job at WINZ. Mostly WINZ staff seem to just repeat silly mantras and run through a checklist of websites and employment agencies. Worst I heard was a friend who went to a WINZ ‘training’ which was composed of a libertarian ranting at people and trying to convince them that hitch-hiking was theft.
Basically, the whole ‘job placement’ industry is a way to suck up taxpayers’ money, whether its government or private. Does create jobs for ‘job placement’ staff, though.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
I did one of these “courses” in the 90s. It wasn’t unpleasant, mostly playing confidence building games and such, but pretty useless (most people there wanted help with putting a CV together and were disappointed to find that wasn’t part of the course). The most sage advice was “if you’re not up to finding a job at the moment transfer to a sickness benefit.”
I find it hard to believe that spending money on a week of specific skills training – learning a software package, getting a HT license, food handling certificate or something wouldn’t be far more valuable for most unemployed.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)