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Title: Community Employment Schemes Author: Patricia McCarthy Date: 1995 Language: en Topics: unemployment, Ireland, Workers Solidarity Source: Retrieved on 26th November 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws95/ces45.html Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 45 — Summer 1995.
Community Employment Schemes (CE) were introduced by the Government last
year and have replaced all the other schemes, such as S.E.S. CE is
better than the previous schemes in some ways — you can keep your
secondary benefits, your rent allowance, medical card and fuel
allowance. It is much better for lone parents with young children
because a special child-minding allowance was introduced. However, apart
from these improvements it is still a ‘scheme’, with all the problems
associated with that.
There are over 39,000 people on CE throughout the 26 counties. The
scheme is only open to people over 21 who are on the live register of
unemployed or are lone parents. There are now no schemes that take the
18–21 age group, a strange omission when we think of all that is said
about youth unemployment. However they are probably the lucky ones when
we consider what people on schemes have to put up with.
Firstly, the extra money above the dole is very little because the £79 a
week for a single person is taxed. If a couple are on welfare and one is
on a scheme, they only make about £10-£15 a week more. CE is a work
scheme, not a training scheme, although lots of community groups try to
use it for training. There is a £200 per worker allowance for training
and an extra £100 each for personal development. A minority of schemes
provide good training, most provide very little.
The community sector is using CE in a big way to run all kinds of
projects and services. Many of these projects are very worthwhile in
themselves such as resource centres, drugs projects, community
development schemes, youth groups and so on. The problem is that all of
this work is being done on short-term schemes where the workers are
being exploited and have very little chance of getting work in the
project, even though they have the experience. When their year on CE is
over a new group of scheme workers is taken on and have to be trained in
the work.
The official purpose of these work schemes is to get the long-term
unemployed back into the workforce, give them some skills and restore
their confidence so that they can then go out and get a job. The reality
is very different. A survey conducted by the Dublin Inner City
Partnership and the Scheme Workers Alliance this year found that very
few scheme graduates actually got jobs, only about 17% according to
F.A.S. itself. Of the rest, 5% became self-employed and 23% extended
their schemes while the remaining 55% had became unemployed, emigrated
or died.
These figures are hardly surprising. There simply are not enough jobs
out there even though there is plenty of work to be done. This is the
basic contradiction that these schemes are showing up all the time. They
exploit peoples’ desire to be working, especially in the community
sector where so much socially useful work needs to be done.
Even though schemes are supposed to be approved by trade unions so that
they are not replacing “real jobs”, in practise that is exactly what
they are doing, especially in the local authority sector. Maintenance of
parks and community facilities such as swimming pools is almost all done
on CE now. The situation has reached such a stage of acceptance that the
unions in Dublin Corporation, who are still holding out against the use
of CE, found themselves the subject of vicious abuse by councillors of
all parties recently when the issue was debated by the Corporation.
CE workers are denied many of the legal rights and entitlements which
part-time workers have. There is no entitlement to maternity leave on
CE, for example, and no holiday pay. The Scheme Workers Alliance is
demanding that scheme workers’ conditions be improved. The demands they
list are:
choice.
This last point is very important. Although this issue has been raised
within the unions for the past five years, none of the unions has shown
any great interest in organising scheme workers. Working in schemes is
here to stay for the foreseeable future so it is essential that the
unions get their act together and organise these workers to fight for
better wages and conditions.
The real reason for the growth in work schemes is the Government’s need
to keep down the numbers on the live register of unemployed. Hundreds,
if not thousands, of people have now been on several schemes and have
done several F.A.S. courses as well. Most of them are still unemployed
at the end of all that. Lots of schemes have third level graduates
working on them. There is often competition to get a place. They have
become a major part of peoples’ experience of low paid work. In fact
schemes really are no more than state organised low-paid exploitative
work. It is an indication of peoples’ desperation that so many end up
working on them.
Work schemes are the forerunner of workfare, a system where you have to
work for your dole. This is the logical outcome of the schemes. At a
time when there are major attacks on welfare in the USA and Britain it
would be logical to expect the same to happen here sooner or later. The
massive rate of unemployment here makes it a bit harder to just go out
and cut thousands of people off welfare in one go, as has happened in
the States.
Some community groups such as the Connolly Unemployed Centre in Dublin
are now arguing that because CE is realistically the Government’s only
job creation strategy, that full-time permanent jobs should be created
where a scheme has proved to be successful. Not only should this be the
case but full-time permanent jobs should be created everywhere socially
useful work is being done on schemes.
Work schemes such as CE need to be taken seriously by the left.
Organising campaigns around wages and conditions is necessary. The
involvement of the unions is important. Up to now they have washed their
hands of these workers. 39,000 part-time workers should be mobilised,
not ignored. Apparently another new scheme is in the pipeline. The
chances are that it will take us another step closer to workfare. Watch
this space!