Disabled & terminally may be forced to work for free or lose benefits.

Duoae wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

At some point the British people accepted big government programs that have now turned on them.

Thinking that purely capitalistic enterprises would not pull the same crap as "big government" in this situation is naive... There was a reason that the concept of minimum wage and health and safety was brought into existence.

[edit]In fact, reading the article it is clear that it is a private company - not the government - taking advantage of those poor people so your comment is even less founded in reality....

When did I ever say I wanted no government protections? I believe in good but limited government, but have no problem with basic worker or environmental protections. From what I've read and experienced living for a year in the UK, government is way out of control in that country. For one, there's a heavy-handed surveillance presence in all the major cities. Secondly, there's a large and generational underclass who have come to rely on the government for all aspects of their existence (far more than here in America). Thirdly, state spending in the UK accounts for MORE THAN HALF OF GDP.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/t...

And re-reading the article, the workers were still sent to work on the security detail by the government. The security agency claims this was a training day and that the workers will be paid during the upcoming Olympics. I'm not saying they are not being cheap or sleazy, but having worked some low-level retail/sales jobs as a teen and in college, I can say it's not unusual for a company to not pay for your first days of traiining.

jdzappa wrote:

I'm torn on this issue. On one hand, I absolutely think it's a great idea to keep the unemployed or those on welfare in the workforce in some capacity. Otherwise, the longer you're out of the workforce the harder it is to transition back. On the other hand, even when I've railed against America's burgeoning entitlement programs, I don't support forcing the terminally ill to go sleep under a bridge before pulling a 20-hour day. If anything, I see this as another example of what happens when you give government way too much control over your life. At some point the British people accepted big government programs that have now turned on them.

Whatever you think about social security provision people are effectively being asked to do a job of work and nor being fairly remunerated for it. If there is actual work to be done these private companies should be hiring workers, that's part of the deal of waged labour in a capitalist system. What's happening here is "big government" is underpaying people for their work on one hand and on the other allowing a private company to sponge off that. If you're on the left you should be affronted that people are being indentured and if you're for the market economy you should be outraged that the gov't is distorting the market by giving their mates an unfair advantage over competing companies. And distorting the costs of labour in that sector and generally making the whole thing inefficient.

It's literally slavery for the poor and socialism for companies.

Personally I'm on the left but I just don't understand why those on the right aren't just as pissed off about this cr*p.

DanB wrote:

literally slavery

wordsmythe wrote:
DanB wrote:

literally slavery

Hyperbole for fun and profit!

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/t...

Well, you know, it may not quite be slavery, but if it's "work for free or don't eat", then it's somewhere within shouting distance, at least.

Slavery != working for free.

jdzappa wrote:
Duoae wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

At some point the British people accepted big government programs that have now turned on them.

Thinking that purely capitalistic enterprises would not pull the same crap as "big government" in this situation is naive... There was a reason that the concept of minimum wage and health and safety was brought into existence.

[edit]In fact, reading the article it is clear that it is a private company - not the government - taking advantage of those poor people so your comment is even less founded in reality....

When did I ever say I wanted no government protections? I believe in good but limited government, but have no problem with basic worker or environmental protections. From what I've read and experienced living for a year in the UK, government is way out of control there's a large and generational underclass who have come to rely on the government for all aspects of their existence (MORE THAN HALF OF GDP.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/t...

And re-reading the article, the workers were still sent to work on the security detail by the government. The security agency claims this was a training day and that the workers will be paid during the upcoming Olympics. I'm not saying they are not being cheap or sleazy, but having worked some low-level retail/sales jobs as a teen and in college, I can say it's not unusual for a company to not pay for your first days of traiining.

I'd be careful if I were you relying on the Telegraph for analysis...they are still regretting the the Nazi's didn't mount a successful invasion.

jdzappa wrote:

I'm torn on this issue. On one hand, I absolutely think it's a great idea to keep the unemployed or those on welfare in the workforce in some capacity. Otherwise, the longer you're out of the workforce the harder it is to transition back. On the other hand, even when I've railed against America's burgeoning entitlement programs, I don't support forcing the terminally ill to go sleep under a bridge before pulling a 20-hour day. If anything, I see this as another example of what happens when you give government way too much control over your life. At some point the British people accepted big government programs that have now turned on them.

#1 in a just society you should be fit to work in order to be required to work.
#2 the government should have to pay you minimum wage if it exists, or the median wage of your average high school educated graduate if it doesn't.
#3 there should be labor laws on the book making it illegal to work anyone, exempt or not, overtime over an extended period.
#4 if you do require them to work out of their reasonable residential area, you should be required to provide transportation and lodging.

Malor wrote:

Well, you know, it may not quite be slavery, but if it's "work for free or don't eat", then it's somewhere within shouting distance, at least.

SixteenBlue wrote:

Slavery != working for free.

Slavery= work for free or work for free; There are your choices.

Don't forget that most slaves are also human property with little to no rights or freedoms. Being compelled to work for free is only part of slavery.

muttonchop wrote:

Don't forget that most slaves are also human property with little to no rights or freedoms. Being compelled to work for free is only part of slavery.

Beat me to it.

So more like serfdom then?

Slavery involves being owned by another person.
Serfdom involves being bound to the land--which is owned by another person.

So, no, not more like serfdom, since that's a more specific form of slavery.

"Forced labor" is probably an appropriate term. That also covers slavery, serfdom, debt slavery, and the like. We have no specific term for this form of forced labor, because it's rather new.

It's probably most closely like debt bondage or wage slavery.

It's unlike debt bondage because it's not being used to pay off an already established debt, and no contract was entered into in advance. Debt bondage also commonly involved family members, and that's not an issue here.

It's probably most like wage slavery because both are implicitly rather than explicitly forced labor. The argument is that you're not [em]really[/em] forced to work, because you could always choose to go do something else instead. Circumstances matter a lot with this sort of forced labor, because it only really kicks in when even though the workers have a choice in theory, their only practical choice is to accept the labor offered. And that labor never provides enough to allow them to get ahead and improve their lives. (Think "factory town" here, and practices like having workers pay for their equipment up front by borrowing from the company at usurious rates, and having the vast majority of their wages for a long period of time go to paying off that debt.)

It could be argued that being paid sub-standard rates for work and being forced to work rather than look for better employment is likely to have the same sort of effect: the laborers are in a position where it is very difficult to find either the time or the resources to move on to something better.

On the other hand, in modern first-world nations with dense urban centers there's a greater variety of work available, and transportation is much cheaper--which means that the worst sorts of abuses possible in the era of company towns are no longer a serious issue.

Let's call this "entitlement slavery".

It might be somewhere between wage slavery and debt slavery in seriousness. Like debt slavery, it's a condition that you can get into due to events outside of your control. (With debt slavery: things go wrong, you're desperate to survive, and the only thing you have to get the resources you need is... yourself. With entitlement slavery: things go wrong, the economy goes south, and no matter what you do you can't seem to find work.) Unlike debt slavery, it doesn't cross generations, and it doesn't take a miracle to get you out of it.

I guess it's between "weak" wage slavery (a condition that could very easily be argued to be "not real") and "strong" wage slavery (when additional conditions apply that make it even harder to leave a job, even when unreasonable demands are being made--for example, a factory town scenario, or a scenario in which there is no unemployment insurance.) It's certainly a lot less bad than indentured servitude.

It's worth noting that in my opinion part of the role of entitlement programs is to reduce the chance of strong wage slavery occurring. Having a social safety net means that if things are bad enough you still know that you'll have some support if you lose your work--and that reduces the ability an employer has to pressure their workers into accepting unreasonable conditions.