Salvos and Child Slave Labour (Or: Why Child Protection Advocates Should Worry about Work for the Dole)

lewisblayse.net
April 6, 2014

http://lewisblayse.net/

In the UK, there is a currently a vigorous and growing protest movement against the Workfare program. It’s been led by the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty. The name of the campaign is Boycott Workfare (www.boycottworkfare.org). Australians would use the phrase “Work for the Dole” to describe Workfare. Many would use the expression “slave labour.”

Boycott Workfare describes its mission as follows:

“Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare. Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage. We are a grassroots campaign, formed in 2010 by people with experience of workfare and those concerned about its impact. We expose and take action against companies and organisations profiting from workfare; encourage organisations to pledge to boycott it; and actively inform people of their rights.”

Boycott Workfare names some of the failings of the Workfare program as including that it replaces jobs and undermines wages, which gives the campaign great relevance not just to those who are caught up in the scheme, but all people in the UK. Other problems include that the program does not include only those people classed as unemployed, but sick and disabled people too. ...

In the UK, the Salvation Army is a leading participant in and beneficiary of Workfare (the YMCA is also heavily involved – see previous postings about the YMCA and the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse). This involvement by the Salvation Army is not particularly surprising, even if disappointing. The organisation has a long history of exploiting unpaid labour, including child labour. The latter was common practice in the children’s homes it ran in Australia, where children in Salvation Army children’s homes report being sent out to work to private individuals and some businesses as unpaid (well, it was the children who were unpaid, anyway) domestics and farm workers, amongst other things. Molestation by people who received child workers into their homes and properties was not uncommon. The author does not know whether money changed hands when adults were allowed to enter some children’s homes and rape children in Salvation Army children’s homes. Media reports, however, have used the phrase “rented out” to describe the practice occurring in the Salvation Army Bexley Boys’ Home in Sydney.

Should Work for the Dole come back, the first question that must be asked is whether the Salvation Army will jump at the chance to increase its vast riches with a new army of unpaid workers who must do exactly what the Salvation Army tells them to do or lose their benefits? Or whether it will do the right thing and refuse to participate in the scheme, as other Australian organisations with greater social consciences will do. This is a pressing moral issue for the Salvation Army. It will have an opportunity to resist the temptation to get in on the action and make some more profits from disadvantaged people in our society and demonstrate to Australian society that it puts people and principles above profits. It deserves to be judged harshly if it does not.