You've Worked for Free Now Get the T-shirt
Forget bidding for that signed 1970's Brazillian footie top on e-bay as Surrey & Borders NHS Trust have just launched a range of ' It's Good to be Mean' T shirts to let their disabled workers know exactly where they stand. These stylish t-shirts are one size fits all and the cotton is sourced from third world countries with no employment regulations.
To order your ' It's Good to Be Mean' T-shirt contact Surrey & Borders NHS Trust
For your chance to win a free Surrey & Borders NHS Trust ' It's Good to be Mean T-shirt answer the following question and post your answer in the comment sections. The winner will be notified by post . The judges decision is final.
The disabled workers at Old Moat Garden Centre receive:
- £3 a day
- 2.50 an hour
- Nothing
posted by simply human @ 12:22 pm
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None of the answers comply with minimum wage legislation. Can I have a ' Work for Nothing' T shirt in red for pointing this out?
Good point but No.
Well surely they get paid at least the minimum wage because that is the law?
The last comment shows how bosses in the 'supported work' scene get away with treating the disabled as cheap and unpaid labour. Activities like digging, hoeing, weeding, shovelling, planting,
moving and potting all day long are not 'therapy' they are hard manual labour which generates profits for this commercially run garden centre. And what about stuffing envelopes which these workers do in another of the SABT organisations. How is that therapy?
SABT are not closing the garden centre. According to a document they published in January they are selling it off to a private limited company called MCCH Society Ltd.
The disabled do not necessarily need any more supervision than anyone else but Sue Bri in her previous comment shows all the patronising, discriminating attitudes towards the disabled that leave these bosses able to exploit these hard workers and think they can get away with it without question.
Well countered Jill.
I note Sue Bri's referernce to ' state handouts ' and the extent of concern she expresses for those in ' real jobs' . You know Sue, those guys at the garden centre have been doing real jobs and its discrimination from people like you, conscious or otherwise, that has kept them in lets pretend unpaid jobs.
They've ceratinly been engaged in real work!
But lets look at the ' real workers ' Sue as around £100,000 is being paid out in salaries to them while the £3 a day the disabled workers were receiving is being cut.
Whats therapeutic about that?
How is working 8 hours a day for nothing therapy?
Come on Sue, you've leapt in to defend Surrey and Borders management using the term therapy so it would be really helpful if you could explain how this therapy works, what its aim is, how long it goes on for and what measures are in place to prevent it being abused in a commercial environment .
I had another mail from the minimum wage people saying there was no more information they could give me about this situation but that if I believe there are a group of workers not being paid the minimum wage I could report it to their helpline as a third party. So I have rung up the helpline and reported Priority Enterprises and the Old Moat Garden Centre. Apparently, as a third party, I am not allowed to know the progress of the investigation as it is confidential. The only way we would know what happens, I was told, is if the story goes to the press or if we hear that the workers have been given a backdated pay award.
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I attempted to do the same today Jill and raised the issue that the Tribunal phone number provided on your letter didnt work, that there was no record of the MW unit attempting to access this blog ( IP's are monitored ) and the e-contact team wasnt known to the helpline staff who took 10 minutes to figure out where that letter you received originated from. Professional organisations usually respond to complaints with a named individual taking responsibility for the letter. Now I know where if not who the econtact team are I can request them to look into matters as well and point out that public interest here requires more openess.
On that subject, a friend of mine contacted the Surrey and Borders PPI on number provided and a Forum Office stated that she could not comment on whether the PPI were looking at this matter. He was then passed on to a manager, Jeanine Judd , who stated that the Chair of the PPI could not be contacted directly as forum members are private individuals so the Surrey & Borders PPI is basically being controlled by an over anxious bureacrat based in Kent.
I'm getting a bit tired of the whole CPPIH thing with both Commissioners and forum members know knowingly opting for public office and then when they caught doing something abusive ( as with a recent Commissioner for the East Midlands ) or sleeping on the job all of a sudden they are shy retiring types afforded watertight confidentiality and anonymity to prevent anyone knowing what they are doing or contacting them.
It seems to me that a Patient and Public Involvment Forum should do exactly that, involve patients and the public. Apparently, the popmpous name isnt meant to be taken too literally,what they mean is they will involve a handful of compliant middle class types who dont mind operating behind an officious cloak of paranoia and incompetence.
I personlly do not see how Surrey & Borders PPI can be local and independent when its controlled by a career bureauucrat in another county.I certainly hope Rosemary, Kim and the other people who live in S&BP's catchment area dont allow the Surrey & Borders PPI to dodge or sideline this or any other issue they feel should be looked at as a matter of public interest.
If the Surrey & PPI forum members think I'm doing them a disservice them they should wake up to public concerns over the way PPI forums in general and the CPPIH in particular operate.
Were the Surrey & Borders forum members aware that the garden centre workers were going to have their £3 a day ' wages ' cut?
I have asked but just received nonsense back about the PPI not being able to look into individual cases . This isnt an individual case, payments were cut it seems so that the garden centre and its disabled workers would be easier to hand over to private companies bidding to run it. The Trust attempted to bury that deal under the term 'Modernisation ' and I would like to know if the PPI were privvy bto all this, what their contribution was, whather there were any objections to the pay cuts and what steps the PPI took to get the views of the disabled people who actually worked at the centre who do not seem to have been meaningfully consulted about what was happening and why at all.
I have found this government guide:
'You can work it out: Best practice in employment for people with a learning disability'
(www.valuingpeople.gov.uk/EmploymentGuides.htm)
which admits that there are a lot of illegal exploitative practices for disabled people in the world of 'work'.
And this is a direct quote from this guide:
'As services seek to help people find more meaningful activities than sitting around in day centres,
employment is acknowledged as playing a crucial role in people's lives. But success in getting
people in to paid work remains woefully inadequate.
Instead, services have created a world based on work for which few people are paid. There is a growing variety of training, social enterprises, work-related projects, work experience, workshops and volunteering schemes.
There are people who to
all intents and purposes are working, but who receive little or no payment.
This is illegal unless there is genuinely no obligation to attend and no obligation to do anything...
There are people who are described as volunteering-this conveniently gets around the issue of
employment contracts and payment. There are people who do work experience on an indefinite basis
and never get paid. These situations are exploitative.'
So the government admits that situations like these garden workers plight are illegal and exploitative. They appeal to employers and public bodies to review all their employment practices in this field and to have the heart to start doing the right thing.
Is it any use our appealing again to the decision makers at SABT to stop their illegal and exploitative pay policies at their Priority Enterprises work projects including the Old Moat Garden Centre and have the heart to do the right thing by these workers?
Do they have a heart? Or will they carry on acting in this illegal and exploitative way towards the disabled workers who do not recieve any pay for their hard work?
The collusion is going on throughout the mental health system that people can be "mainstreamed" in other words socially included. This is driven by cheapness and the desire to believe work and training will result in fitter and more mentally well people .
Although particularly targeted at IB claimants in Mental Health terms the social inclusion "logic" has escalated through Mental Health Trusts who are very well rewarded public servants doing the job of New Labour. New Labour is superficial and its anti-treament stances for a good many services users who are seen as lacking inclusion and work are being bolted on to all sorts of new systems deliveries to change the MH budgets . The latest superficial application of a therapy called CBT shows only that the Government policies have no depth to them or grasp of socially dynamic caused damages in Mental Health Service Users . . The collusion with Govt is being done by NIMHE and MH Trusts all across the UK who are trying to re-orientate Mental Health so the Fitter Services Users run the lives and directions of others around them .
This skewing of "Patient Choice" and new roll-outs in Mental Health is created by cost drivers and helped along by New Labour deluded Users who think by a having a career in NIMHE or some related puppet organisation all will be well down the track ..
We will see .. But already the track has become a torture rack for some Service Users without services or provision definition . The inherent contradictions will make their voices known probably by creating more scandals and victims first . But the fascist mentality of some Trusts is typical of the civil service mentality of : "we are okay Jack - while you are on the rack Jack ."
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=51.340175~-0.29219&style=h&lvl=19&scene=4349971
above is a link to an aerial photo of the Old Moat Garden Centre where the workers are now expected to work for nothing. If it is easier you can go to http://local.live.com/
and type in the postcode KT19 8PQ
Click on aerial view and the garden centre comes up.
As you can see in this photo the garden centre is large and looks like a mainstream commercial organisation. Think how much work needs to go into keeping all those polytunnels and plant sales areas going. So why are the workers at a commercial place like this unpaid?
WE ARE STILL WAITING FOR ANSWERS FROM SABT NHS
SABP are hoping we will shut up and go away, no chance
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