Leaked European Commission documents seen by TheJournal.ie reveal that the government is finalising a tendering procedure to set up links with private companies who will be tasked with finding “labour activation measures” for some who have been out of work for extended periods.
Government to hire private companies to find work for long-term unemployed
@Eileen – ask @chunkymark about this; the UK has pulled this scam over past few years; these companies (usually headed by a former politician or his/her spouse) have a ‘success’ rate of about 1 or 2% and are paid absolute fortunes to place these long term unemployed
Is this like “privatizing” the New Deal? Why doesn’t UK just do what Roosevelt did in the 1930s or Putin did in the 2000s and put people to work rebuilding the infrastructure? The UK government can still pay off its buddies with cushy construction deals, and the nation gets (ideally) things that will last 50 years. Don’t call it “make work,” call it “overdue maintenance.”
They’ve done this in the UK before.
It’s a scam.
A company like this gets a commission paid with public money, for every person they find work.
However, all that happens is the company employed to find work take a bigger cut then the person will ever pay back in taxes on the minimum wage jobs they get.
Gee, this sounds just like what they did during the potato famine a century and a half ago. Back then the workers did public works and were never paid. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” A. Einstein Note: The whole point of science is to do the same thing over and over again and getting the same results.
Very astute comment on that link – these companies could find a lowpaying job at the other end of the country and insist that the unemployed guy take it. Doesn’t matter if he/she does not have the 1000s in the bank needed to move or perhaps acts as a carer for other family members, that person will have technically turned down the job. Kerrching. Money in the bank for the company. The scheme would only work if it truly takes into consideration personal circumstances and coughs up the readies for the move to a new location, with the usual safeguards.
Personally speaking though, it is just another “public-private” scam. A neoliberal wheeze to steal more money from the state. As other commentators have noted, it would tear society apart, such a totalitarian approach. I hate libertarianism but I find myself considering it more and more everyday. Governments have fallen completely into the hands of the corporations, e.g. the EU is one big neoliberal “engine of change” now. No wonder the US warned the UK not to leave.