May Day in Edinburgh saw anti workfare demonstrators touring companies and charities using unpaid forced labour. Starting with an excursion into the giant Homebase at St Leonards the protestors from Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty went on to visit no fewer than 7 exploiting employers.
At Homebase demonstrators roamed the store putting up stickers – THIS EMPLOYER USES FORCED UNPAID LABOUR. Special leaflets were given to customers and workers detailing the large-scale use of workfare at the Haringey Homebase where 21 workfare conscripts are working for nothing.
The Homebase manager invited us into her office to discuss the issue. She claimed that the stores in Edinburgh did not use workfare but one of the several workers we talked to, informed us that they did on occasion have unemployed people working there, sent by “agencies”, probably providers like A4e. We eventually moved on with the manager promising to convey our concerns to head office.
Over a period of nearly three hours we picketed, stickered and leafleted Greggs, British Heart Foundation, Barnardos, Poundland, Tescos and Argos. We had phoned British Heart Foundation HQ management earlier in the week and so were well aware that they were unrepentantly continuing their involvement in the Work Programme, falsely claiming that they were doing so without using compulsory forced labour.
At Greggs a sympathetic worker claimed that Greggs in Scotland were strongly unionised and also had a different management structure to England, she said she had never heard of workfare being used in Greggs north of the border and would not work for a company which use d workfare.
Hundreds of leaflets were distributed, meeting a generally good response, with at least one passer-by joining the rolling picket, boosting numbers to around fifteen, a fair turn-out for an activity just advertised through ECAP’s solidarity network. All in all a good way to keep up the pressure on workfare exploiters in between the Britain-wide days of action, and a good way to celebrate May Day.
