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Instant Muscle 'workfare' Job Centre contractor goes bust

Nottingham Claimants Action | 06.03.2008 16:34 | Repression | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | South Coast

Training provider Instant Muscle went into administration last week, leaving staff unpaid for February and unemployed trainees turned away from the doorsteps of their training centres. Staff were given termination letters as they arrived at work on the 27th.



As reported by Nottingham Evening Post,  http://tinyurl.com/ypzavz:
'Instant Muscle was established in 1981 as a charity providing recruitment and training. It works with Jobcentre Plus and its clients include Government departments, local authorities, the NHS and other public bodies.

Employee and father of two, Paul Kelly, 34, said: "We have turned away people today, who have turned up for training, as well as us losing our jobs and not being paid." Staff said Instant Muscle director Tony Garrett took over about a year ago. He was unavailable for comment at home.'

Instant Muscle was one of the organisations that jumped on the workfare gravy train when the Conservative Party introduced 'Project Work' in the 1990s, which became New Deal for the unemployed after the Labour Party got into power. The idea was that you would get work experience for 10 pounds on top of usual benefits. This is an example of the so called Intermediate Labour Market endorsed by the European Social Fund.

As the Tories started up Project Work pilot schemes in various parts of the UK, Instant Muscle were identified early on by activists in Groundswell (an anti-Job Seekers Allowance action network in the 1990s) as one of the main companies involved. As recalled on the Aut-op-sy discussion list:

'Apart from Grand Met, Edinburgh Claimant's Group claimed the other culprits in the Project Work provider racket include: Instant Muscle, The Training Network, Career Ahead, and East Yorkshire County Council who have been paying the jobless £10 plus benefits to paint the railings on the seafront at an East Coast seaside resort'.

In Notts, a private company Work Directions Ltd recently won the contract to run Pathways to Work, which is a new government scheme to 'help' incapacity benefits claimants into work. The Employment and Support Allowance replaces Incapacity Benefits from October 2008, alongside a new medical test to assess work capability, the Work Capability Assessment. Just before it went into administration, Instant Muscle was due to start running Pathways to Work in Surrey and Sussex.

More news:
* Redundancy for 250 staff as Pathways to Work charity goes into administration:  http://tinyurl.com/yvu4mv
* Staff shock as jobs are axed (Nottingham Evening Post):  http://tinyurl.com/ypzavz
* Staff shocked as training jobs are axed (South Wales Echo)  http://tinyurl.com/2jqxmz

Information:
* European Social Fund case study, Instant Muscle:
 http://www.esf.gov.uk/archive/2000_2006_esf_programme/case_studies/case_studies_-_east/instant_muscle.asp
* Pathways on track for national roll-out (DWP press release, Dec 2007):  http://www.dwp.gov.uk/mediacentre/pressreleases/2007/dec/drc061-201207.asp
* Work Directions Ltd.:  http://www.workdirections.co.uk

Internet forum discussion:
* Instant Muscle - Workfare racketeers - gone gone gone:  http://libcom.org/forums/news/instant-muscle-workfare-racketeers-gone-gone-gone-29022008
* Aut-op-sy archive:  http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/aut-op-sy/1997-03-23.192/msg00001.htm

Indymedia:
Welfare Reform, Not Welfare Destruction:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2006/10/352351.html

Nottingham Claimants Action
- Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/ncajsa

Additions

Is this lot to keep people in? or to keep people out?

11.03.2008 21:56











Instant Muscle - Nottingham Offices

Is this lot to keep people in? or to keep people out?

Project work and workfare in general is a government service to help people, through training and assistance, back to work. Yea, right!

I haven't met anyone with a kind thing to say about their 'services'. It is simple a method by which people are punished for their unemployment. Further, by coercive methods, is an organisation on contract, the whole object of which is to help the government manipulate their unemployment figures.

I include these pictures to give you an idea of the 'welcome' and jolly homely ambiance that greeted their clients. Now, I ask you, did this look like a place people would attend, without coercion?

____________________________________________
ALAN LODGE
Photographer - Media: One Eye on the Road. Nottingham. UK

Tash [alan lodge]
mail e-mail: tash@indymedia.org


Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Update in evening post today

06.03.2008 22:41

AXED NOTTINGHAM WORKERS FACE WAGE FIGHT
 http://tinyurl.com/2funhw

anon


Writing on the wall

07.03.2008 14:32

The writing was on the wall for ages and any of the staff actually paying attention over the last couple of months should have known this was coming. Example. Emails telling stuff to stop being paperclips etc went around earlier in the year. The company was being mismanaged to such an extent that staff were lucky to have been paid last month.

chad


Products back on the market

07.03.2008 19:45

Well, as someone who has been forced on to one of the Instant Muscle courses in the past I couldn't help but smile at this one.

Maybe the staff will be forced into a change of world view, as on the course I attended we were all encouraged to think of unemployment as some sort of mental affliction, and told that the reason that we weren't in work was that we didn't have the right attitude: we simply needed to understand that we were products - like anything else bought and sold by a business - and we just needed to learn to think of ourselves in this way and sell ourselves accordingly.

I know I'll always harbour a special resentment for the teacher in our class (Julie somebody, I think), whose patronising attitude set my teeth on edge. I can still recall this little impromptu speech she made when someone challenged her authority on some issue. She proceeded to respond by impressing on us how successful she was (how she had an expensive car, rode horses and got to go on expensive holidays) so we could recognise how much better she was than us, and how hence just shut up and listen to what she said.

Sure, in the context of the system they'll just be replaced by some other goons, but there's a very enjoyable irony in the Instant Muscle workers finding themselves out of work, sort of like when the son of Jack "Blame the Parents" Straw was cautioned for dealing cannabis.

Return the gift


Back to work

07.03.2008 23:06

Yes, these company's are a rip off. They take public money and convert it into profits for the already rich while doing something which social services are meant to be doing. It's just another way of converting tax payers money into private gain for capitalist scum while convincing those who work that those who don't are a major drain.

However, I find all this cheap sneering at Instant Muscle staff being made unemployed without getting their last months wages all rather pathetic. I know some of these people and I'm pleased to announce that many of them have already found new jobs, not that that helps cover their bills and mortgages this month but good news anyway.

quick off the block


Some history of direct action against Instant Muscle

08.03.2008 13:51

Opposition to Tories' Project Work pilot scheme as reported in Edinburgh-based 'Counter Information' bulletin No 50 Spring/Summer 1998 shows that the hatred of claimants for Instant Muscle goes back a long way... & that direct action can get results!

Quote:  http://www.counterinfo.org.uk/archive/ci50iv.txt
"DEAD TOAD HITS BACK
Recent resistance to the compulsory slave labour scheme Project Work (PW) should inspire opposition to the New Deal
Bristol Claimants report that anti PW action late last year included

* Musicians playing inside the Job Centre.
* Job Centre and Job Club windows smashed 3 times
* Deer fence and dry stone wall built by PW slave labour both destroyed
* PW provider Instant Muscle suffering - an invasion by a Welsh choir - a boss covered with red dye - a dead toad in their mail.
* Stencilled slogans on windows of charity shops using PW - THIS CHARITY USES SLAVE LABOUR.

In Brighton active opposition from led to 6 organisations withdrawing from PW. On 6 Feb. 30 antiPW protesters pushed past police into David Lepper MPs surgery in the Brighthelm Centre, a PW exploiter. This so worried Brighthelm that they pulled out of Project Work.

Groundswell c/o Claimants Action,, E.Oxford Community Centre, Princes St., Oxford. 01865 723750. Groups in Bristol, Oxford, Brighton, London, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester area, Blackburn, Edinburgh, etc.. Next conference 13-14 June, Oxford."

Nottingham Sparrow
- Homepage: http://www.afed.org.uk/nottingham


Working Links

08.03.2008 16:35

Dunno if they're still going but similar Nottingham claimant experiences have been had in the past with Working Links ... another of these private contractors.

Working Links - a raw deal
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2006/08/349021.html

Oh, and this is worth a look:
Nottingham Job Seekers To Face Lie Detectors
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/01/389172.html
Anyone fallen foul of this system?

working stinks


instant muscle

10.03.2008 06:52

I had experience of instant muscle in the late 90s.I was put on a course there but i found the staff very helpful.I learnt some useful stuff and they also paid for me to put my child in a creche whilst I was there. I remember the staff use to moan to me then about their conditions at work

aurora


Oh yesss

09.07.2008 19:09

Oh yesss. Instant Muscle are complete bastards. I was forced to go on one of their employment courses back in 2001 when I was suffering from anxiety and depression and the "tutor" there seemed to enjoy reminding us endlessly that if we didn't turn up or turned up just a few minutes late we'd have our benefits cut off.
The general view banded about by IM is that you are unemployed because you are lazy, thick and worhtless.

Dan Factor
mail e-mail: danfactor@lycos.com