25 comments Add a comment
I am so glad the governments Future Jobs Fund programme is coming to an end and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks it hasn't worked. In theory it appeared to be an opportunity for some young people to gain some training and experience in the workplace and to assist them in their efforts to gain employment.
In reality it was more a case of trying to get employers to work miracles on the unemployable. I'm not saying that all the young people involved were the same. Some were really keen to learn skills to help them in their search for a job, and they also made a valuable contribution to the job that they worked in.
However, there were the others, the ones who regularly arrived late for work and only turned up on days they had nothing better to do. When they did show up they hadn't even attempted to have a wash first, brush their teeth or change the clothes that they would appear to have slept in. They did not show any interest in anything at all apart from their mobile phone, the time of the tea breaks and lunch break, and when they would get paid.
Some of these unfortunates attended more funerals in their brief time in this scheme than I in my fifties have attended in my life so far!
...has to be one of the biggest jokes ever
I have to say that this scheme, funded by the government has to be one of the biggest jokes ever if they are prepared to throw money at people who are abusing the system so blatantly and expect the taxpayers to try and help these no hopers. Before anyone is placed on any of these schemes, they should first have to do a course on basic life skills such as personal hygiene, learning to communicate orally, and how to manage to cope without texting boyfriend/girlfriend every five minutes throughout the day. No wonder our country is in the state it's in.
Leave a comment
Until we are ready to grapple with the overarching issue to population control, complaining about benefit scroungers is like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic...
03/11/14 Dave
0
I'm afraid it is YOU who need to get a life lee. You said 'the money is not good' but who's willing to pay a fortune to apprentices? It is sensible for young people to gain experience from working for peanuts initially and what's wrong with that? Stop making excuses for being lazy full stop.
03/05/13 Darren
-15
you need to get a life and realise that these schemes do work all employers want experience and what better way to get it than one of these schemes there are as you say unemployable people but they quit fairly soon as the money is not the best and there is alot of doubt about if a permanent job will be available at the end but the ones that want a job that the job centre do absoloutly nothing for can gain alot from this type of job I think you are just ignorant and think you have a job so why care about anybody else I seriously hope you lose your job and end up on one of these schemes so you can see for yourself.
25/05/11 lee
6
I dont know who has written this but they seriously need to wake up and smell the coffee!
As I am now leaving my FJF role I can safely say the scheme worked wonders, after being out of work for 2 years the FJF finally helped me get back into work (Something that Job centre staff has never done at all)
I was on a training programme at the time and heard the centre I was attending had an opening so applied. At first they gave the role to another person who was lazy and uninspiring to say the least (At least he wore a suit and shiny shoes, right?(!))
I got called into the bosses office and started the job the following week, I have never looked back since, the job is amazing and I love my work environment, without FJF I would probably have still been claiming JSA. Instead I am now on a 3 month contract extension and now have over 2 years admin experience which means I can go for the better paying roles.
I can safely say on the whole (For the people who wanted the jobs) that FJF was a huge success. The people you describe as layabouts unwashed etc are more than likely the ones who dont want a job who were reffered and forced to go to a FJF meeting or they would be sanctioned money, then when they started work they carried on being wasters. (By wasters I mean the sort of people who sit drinking and smoking drugs all night then never do anything to help anyone at all)
06/04/11 aribos
As I am now leaving my FJF role I can safely say the scheme worked wonders, after being out of work for 2 years the FJF finally helped me get back into work (Something that Job centre staff has never done at all)
I was on a training programme at the time and heard the centre I was attending had an opening so applied. At first they gave the role to another person who was lazy and uninspiring to say the least (At least he wore a suit and shiny shoes, right?(!))
I got called into the bosses office and started the job the following week, I have never looked back since, the job is amazing and I love my work environment, without FJF I would probably have still been claiming JSA. Instead I am now on a 3 month contract extension and now have over 2 years admin experience which means I can go for the better paying roles.
I can safely say on the whole (For the people who wanted the jobs) that FJF was a huge success. The people you describe as layabouts unwashed etc are more than likely the ones who dont want a job who were reffered and forced to go to a FJF meeting or they would be sanctioned money, then when they started work they carried on being wasters. (By wasters I mean the sort of people who sit drinking and smoking drugs all night then never do anything to help anyone at all)
5
I actually worked in one of the future jobs fund offices as part of my time on the scheme and I will say that I learnt many things while I was on the scheme, although I felt that it was poorly managed by the staff. However, being paid the national minimum wage weekly was a lot better than being paid dole money which is now £51.86 per week. I worked for twenty eight hours each week and was far better off. I was even able to pay off my mobile bill without much difficulty. However, I am now back on the dole after feeling like I have pretty much been used for cheap labour for six months, while everyone else who was in that office got a good few months added to their contract. Being paid natuonal minimum wage weekly though is better than what the other schemes pay, so I guess my view of the future jobs fund is mixed. I do not feel that it is a waste though, like your article suggests. Even if it is cheap labour for the government, young people are still getting good experience, qualifications and references from the project which will help them in the future.
20/03/11 ImmortalDamnation
-8
Your comments lack any real understnding of the scheme, its clearly not the young people that benefit more from the FJF but the employer who puts the bid in. I was on the FJF and worked very hard and demonstrated I could do things not even people working there for years could do. The organisation was paying me with the money handed to them from the government, in effect dole = governement paid, FJF =governement paid, it does not cost the organisation anything to exploit young people as cheap labour. Maybe if there was a job at the end of it or a decent qualification instead of in house training which has no real value in the outside world then it would have been ok. Dont get me wrong, I am grateful, the way I look at it is that on the dole I get £200 a month, on the FJF I was getting like +£600 a month. Still cheap labour though :P I guarantee I would leave out dirty office politics and at age 22 could run the department I was working in better than the line manager, sometimes everywhere I go I see incompetant people in employment and very strongly feel its not me that should be on the dole. The company I was working for, over one year period had like about 32 people in an out of the FJF fund. Clear indication of free labour in exchange for some experience and a few certificates which in the real world seem to be getting me nowhere. The only way forward for a young british asian male where I'm from is drug dealing or credit card fraud.
16/03/11 Rant.
-2
I think those comments are very unfair .My son turned up on time every day often worked overtime for no extra was never off sick and certainly maintained his hygiene needs.Many firms use these young people they are just cheap labour
07/03/11 Carole
-10
I second artwrker in making the point that these jobs don't always go to the uneducated and lazy. I have very good A levels and spent a year doing science at one of the countries top institutions. This scheme has given me time away from the drudgery of the job centre, whilst letting me gain some confidence and skills. I do however have to attend something called 'personal development' two days a month where i've encountered some bad eggs. I come from a bad area though so this probably depends on where you live (plus i'm used to it). As long as you choose a decent placement I think you pretty much get out what you put in.
03/01/11 rich
-1
artwrker - I have nothing to really add on this subject but on a personal note I would like to wish you luck in your search. Hope something comes up for you soon.
Best wishes
03/12/10 biddy
Best wishes
-3
As a FJF worker I would like to say the following. In the economic climate we are living in these placements don't go to uneducated, lazy, feckless young people they go to people like me. A graduate with a 2.1 form a top 20 university, with more work experience then most people in full time work have. Quite honestly the people who have me are very damn lucky because I have brought experience they don't have and am now running a major new project.Will I be employed afterward? No. Why? Because the torries have cut the arts and public services, so without the grant they are receiving now they cant pay me. So my workplace is worse off and I go out into a even worse job market. However I'm very grateful for the chance to work for 6 months and realize that I am very much worth employing.
03/12/10 artwrker
1
I, for one am very pleased to hear about the government's new 'three strikes and you're out' rule for the benefit system - but hearing that the future jobs fund got scrapped, I'm even more pleased. To be honest JSA-based training programmes cause more problems for the unemployed than advantages - employers are quick to discriminate, and some participants don't bother putting in half the work on these sort of programmes.
28/11/10 Sarah
7
Oh and another thing - as an employer you're rather looking the gift horse in the mouth. If you wanted quality staff you could have created proper jobs and advertised, sifted cvs, hired the best candidates. You got your FJFers for free and you admit several of them were good. You're not hard done by.
24/11/10 Stabs
17
I'm on FJF myself even though I'm an older worker. Some of the vacancies were available to people of any age.
For me it's been enormously beneficial. I had been out of work a year after being made redundant. Now, although I have only 2 months left on my FJF contract, I'm really confident about getting a job. I'll also be trying to start a business, an online project which I can do whether I get a job or not.
I work in the same office as a manager who oversees a few hundred FJFers and I hear her vent from time to time.
I think people get out of it what they put in. My main role when I started was filing. Instead of griping I reorganised and streamlined the filing system and am keeping it up-to-date and organised. I now get to do more interesting work because I got on top of the basic task (and got positive feedback from several managers).
I know other FJFers who are really good, really conscientious. I also know of teams who are bored, skiving, sometimes even fighting or getting drunk on the job.
I think you're being a bit hard on the scheme. As you admit, some of them are really good - those ones will get immediate benefit of walking away with a good reference and useful work habits and experience.
The spoilt kids, the 20 year olds who frankly aren't ready for work, are gaining a useful life experience from failure. They know full well they're taking the mick. After another couple of years on the dole they'll use this experience to pull themselves together and become employable.
Think back to our youth. I left school in the 80s when many teenagers had punk haircuts, skinheads, tattoos and piercings. Those people are mostly respectable middle aged careerists now with mortgages. Some people just take longer to grow up. If you're a parent and your 20 year old can't get himself washed in the morning you need to take stock.
24/11/10 Stabs
For me it's been enormously beneficial. I had been out of work a year after being made redundant. Now, although I have only 2 months left on my FJF contract, I'm really confident about getting a job. I'll also be trying to start a business, an online project which I can do whether I get a job or not.
I work in the same office as a manager who oversees a few hundred FJFers and I hear her vent from time to time.
I think people get out of it what they put in. My main role when I started was filing. Instead of griping I reorganised and streamlined the filing system and am keeping it up-to-date and organised. I now get to do more interesting work because I got on top of the basic task (and got positive feedback from several managers).
I know other FJFers who are really good, really conscientious. I also know of teams who are bored, skiving, sometimes even fighting or getting drunk on the job.
I think you're being a bit hard on the scheme. As you admit, some of them are really good - those ones will get immediate benefit of walking away with a good reference and useful work habits and experience.
The spoilt kids, the 20 year olds who frankly aren't ready for work, are gaining a useful life experience from failure. They know full well they're taking the mick. After another couple of years on the dole they'll use this experience to pull themselves together and become employable.
Think back to our youth. I left school in the 80s when many teenagers had punk haircuts, skinheads, tattoos and piercings. Those people are mostly respectable middle aged careerists now with mortgages. Some people just take longer to grow up. If you're a parent and your 20 year old can't get himself washed in the morning you need to take stock.
9
anon*; I only posted once, must be a computer erratum somewhere, sorry if this posts too much. I actually proof read assignments and exams that's how :)
21/11/10 anon
3
Stalag14
What...... how dare you mention population control!
No....we need to build more houses, concrete-tarmac over more land, destroy more rain forest, and consume the Earths natural resources until everything is gone.
When the Earth is a barren shell only then will people stop excessive breeding because there will be nothing for them to eat and they will die; already happens in parts of Africa where people out-breed the lands capacity to feed them.
One day Planet Earth will fight back and wipe us out, until then breed and consume, breed and consume, it cannot go on for ever, enjoy while you can.