On Monday 2nd December the welfare-to-work industry will be splashing out yet more tax payers’ money on their annual workfare conference in a plush Central London venue.

Workfare exploiters like the Shaw Trust and the Salvation Army will be gathering to discuss how to further profit from the huge increase in unpaid work. From April next year hundreds of thousands of unemployed people will be forced to work for free for six months or face losing benefits completely. The cost of this scheme is estimated to be £300 million. Most of this cash will end up lining the pockets of the welfare-to-work sector – companies like A4E, G4S, Ingeus and Serco who specialise in forcing people to work without pay.

Many of these companies will be present at Monday’s conference where tickets cost up to a whopping £534 in some cases. Claimants are clearly not welcome at the conference unlike Employment Minister Esther McVey and Matthew Sinclair from hard right think tank the Tax Payer’s Alliance who will both be giving speeches at the event. The Tax Payer’s Alliance recently released a report calling for permanent workfare for those out of work even if this is due to sickness or disability.

The conference is being organised by ERSA, the trade body established to represent the welfare-to-work racket along with the Centre for Social Inclusion (CESI).

Boycott Workfare will be holding a noise demo outside the conference from 12.30pm as part of the Week of Action Against Workfare and Sanctions ( http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=3096). A day of online protest has been called targeting the sponsors of the event who hope to gain some positive publicity from being associated with this workfare love-in. Contact them on social media and let’s make sure that doesn’t work out quite in the way they hoped as they are named and shamed for their support of forced work.

Delegates at Monday’s conference will be tweeting using the hashtag #ERSA2013 so add this to all tweets. Don’t forget to tweet conference organisers ERSA and CESI themselves: @ersa_news @InclusionCESI

Sponsors of the conference include:

Learn Direct, who can be found at: @learndirect

 https://www.facebook.com/learndirect

Work Programme providers the Shaw Trust are at: @Shaw_Trust

 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shaw-Trust/221553131217597

Training charity Catch 22 who recently advised the Department for Education that the new unpaid Traineeships Work placements should be shown “to provide a commercial advantage to employers” can be found at: @Catch22charity

 https://en-gb.facebook.com/Catch22charity

Spirit Resourcing are sponsoring the delegate packs: @HelloSpirit  https://www.facebook.com/spiritresourcing

Welfare-to-work recruitment agency R3 Welfare & Skills will be sponsoring the pens at the conference: @R3WelfareSkills
 https://www.facebook.com/pages/R3-Welfare-Skills/475538409128072

Also don't forget to sign the petition to scrap all benefit sanction without exceptions:  http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/benefit-sanctions-must-be-stopped-without-exceptions-in-uk