You lose your job. You claim welfare and are offered a job almost immediately. But the job does not pay wages (despite being with a company which can afford to pay them) and if you refuse to accept this ‘opportunity’, your welfare payments are stopped and you therefore face destitution. Welcome to a life on workfare, which is now the reality for millions of people across the world.
As should be expected with a powerless workforce, exploitation abounds. In Britain, people have been made to work without safety equipment and used as cleaners in the houses of the rich. The country which gave the world workhouses may now force people with terminal illnesses to do workfare. In Israel, people have been compelled to carry out work on Israeli Defense Force bases. When workfare arrived in New York, people were put to work in the mayor’s garden, where one person dropped dead. When the policy was introduced in Canada, the general counsel of the Civil Liberties Union called it ‘conscripting labour in a free society’. New Yorkers on workfare sum it up in one word: ‘slavery’.
