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Loading ...New Deal Scandal exposes the scam that is the Labour Market System (LMS) or simply put the pool of jobs Employment Officers, New Deal Personal Advisers and Jobseeker Direct staff give to jobseekers as Jobseeker Directions and those on the jobpoints and the direct gov and jobcentre plus websites.
Employment Agencies
Jobcentre Plus’ Labour Market System is controversial in being a spamming ground for recruitment agencies.
Sometimes as much as 1 in 2 jobs are advertised by an employment agency – the job doesn’t even exist and it has been known for the same job to kept being relisted in later months.
Many jobseekers (myself included) have applied for such named jobs and never heard a response back…. ever!
There is absolutely no reason why Jobcentre Plus couldn’t allow employment agencies to advertise alongside real vacancies or on the jobpoints.
New Deal Jobs
We had recently an article on here about the New Deal Jobs where you had to ring up Jobseekers Direct to even apply. These aren’t actual jobs, just an invitation for a select few of doing a Work Trial (keep benefits don’t get paid anything by employer) lasting 30 days with a potential job at the end – but not guaranteed.
Immoral Jobs
Jobcentre Plus are happy to advertise immoral job positions as long as they are not illegal. Well, there is no law stating that Jobcentre Plus has to accept any or every job just because its not illegal just like employers are not required to advertise jobs to the Jobcentre.
I thought the Government were trying to do something regarding young girls (in particular), drugs and prostitution as highlighted a few years ago. I think the jobs in question are too close to prostitution as after they have lost all sense of moral self-respect (something that is generally lacking in society these days especially with unemployed people who can become depressed because of their situation) so when they get their benefits stopped with a 6 month sanction and have bills to pay… it wouldn’t be an unlikely option to choose.
Anonymous Jobs
A lot of advertised jobs on the Labour Market System (LMS) only mention location, hours and description without mentioning the employers’ name so jobseekers are unsure of whom they are applying for at the first instance without phoning.
“Ring Jobseekers Direct” Jobs
Sorry, but having a big system (Labour Market System (LMS)) as a central location for jobs which can be accessible in numerous different ways… doesn’t it take the point away of how 1 in 3 jobs now require a phone call to Jobseekers Direct to apply for them?
Surely, the jobcentre website, direct gov job search and the jobpoints are designed as a self-service way of seeking jobs to apply for?
So why then do you have to phone up to apply when the information could so simply be displayed like normal to the jobseeker? It is so it can be recorded on their file as a Jobseeker Direction!!
Guess what?! Most jobseekers avoid applying for those jobs, so it isn’t surprising how these days many employers stick instructions of how to apply in the description so they don’t have to ring up the below number.
Lets think about it… you are down the jobcentre, you wait to get to use a jobpoint… you print out a few jobs you want to apply for and then you have to wait again to use a telephone, a telephone full of germs from those who don’t wash their hands after the toilet or other activities, and have to shout our your National Insurance number, name and address so everyone can hear… fraudsters paradise? Oh, and thats after having to wait in a long telephone queue.
This is all so some little Hitler can try to sanction you. Lets think about it, besides from jobs you are given when you sign on or by your NDPA, if you find a job on the jobpoints or the website, print it out or write it down, phone up another number (this all before actually applying in writing or ringing another number) where you actually find out more information… how likely is it that such a person isn’t Actively Seeking Employment?
Closed Jobs
All jobs stay on the Labour Market System (LMS) for a year; they aren’t displayed after the closing date.
So, why do some jobs that have already been approved that have not reached the closing date then disappear from the system? This rather takes the point away of having a job reference number displayed on the advert.
Distant Jobs
The website search features pick two different types of matches: relevant that are green, and pink which are irrelevant. I am not questioning the pink jobs… although rather pointless, but how are some “green jobs” so far away?
Maybe it is just me, but my search today showed some green jobs… Cambridge… Colchester…, Hadleigh… Chelmsford, … all fair enough, Southend… pretty far, London… can be just 1hr 5mins by train so fair enough, “Kent Area”… rather unrealistic, Lincoln… unrealistic too…
Then the pink ones of Leicester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Devon, …. Stowmarket… Sudbury
The last two are closer than Southend… whats going on?
Shady Jobs
Wage:- “GREAT” (see FEE/22048) – where is the numerical figure?
My definition: OK/alright is minimum wage… “good” is £1-1.50 more an hour than NMW; “very good” is £3 plus more than NMW; “great” is £10+ per hour.
Salary:- “pro rata” – I always felt this was misleading, it means how much money you would get if it was fulltime … but its a part time job!
Many jobs have tracking codes in the email addresses… aplitrak.com all the recruitment agencies are using them i.e. Dave.5425.682@agencyname.aplitrak.com I am rather unaware of the technology used but what I have read so far could violate privacy, as appears to be some sort of mailing list system.
Discriminative Jobs
Please see the below example:
Job Title SHOP ASSISTANT – LEP ISF/37612
Location
IPSWICH, SUFFOLKHours
30 HOURS PER WEEK, MONDAY-SATURDAY, BETWEEN 9AM-8PMWage
MEETS NAT MIN WAGEWork Pattern
Days , Evenings , WeekendsEmployer
GrandstandPension
No details heldDuration
PERMANENT ONLYDescription
This Local Employment Partnership employer shares information about new starters with Jobcentre Plus, for statistical purposes only. See www.dwp.gov.uk for more information. Applicant must be 18+ as serving alcohol. Previous experience is essential. A driver’s licence is essential and a car . Duties include customer service, cash handling, and stock replenishment. A trial period of 6 weeks is required before a full placement can be offered. Exempted vacancy – Employment Equality Act (Age) Regulations 2006
How to apply
You can apply for this job by telephoning 01473 225473 ext 0 and asking for Chris Sudeene.
- Why does a shop assistant require a driving licence and car?
What part of working in a shop (appears to be an off licence – not sure why they never mentioned it) requires a car and a licence? The shop is on the outskirts of town of on of the largest roads in to the town centre from the West of the town. Has bus stops both side of the road very close to the shop and many bus services use the road. Plenty of ability of a car share getting dropped off into the town. Those close by can even walk to work and back. Duties doesn’t seem to include any specific activity such as delivery from the wholesalers. After all its a shop assistant probably at the National Minimum Wage – surely the shop has a manager who would be getting stock delivered? - A 6 week trial period? Full placement?
I thought it was a job not a work placement!
Labour Market System: the summary
Designed to be the primary tool of the jobseeker and from my own experience the less successful avenue to seek employment, the Labour Market System is heavily flawed – it might as well be abolished. Every job I have had and all the interviews I have had were from jobs found in the jobs newspaper, in shop windows, and on other internet sites.
To recap…
- To create the illusion that there are a large job market in existence employment agencies are allowed to advertise decoy jobs to fill the system up while the agencies themselves are allowed to cherry pick certain people into unrelated typically zero hour contracts
- Quite a few jobs are very shady and even possibly violate privacy of the jobseeker
- A lot of jobs adverts close early prior to job closing date, rendering reference codes pointless
- Immoral jobs are included for diversity reasons
- Jobs are typically over discriminative requiring driving license when the job involves office work or retail or of similar discrimination.
- The dodgy jobs with companies of bad reputations never disclose their name (includes agencies) requiring contact to Jobcentre Plus’ Jobseekers Direct line to find out information. The jobseeker therefore can’t determine whether or not a job violates their conscientious objections etc… until they have been submitted to them, so they are likely sanctioned than having to appeal
- Some jobs require you to be able to work for nothing for a months trial if you are unfortunate enough to be on New Deal, trying to gain an chance of getting a job at the end of it without guarantee
- Majority of jobs now require the jobseeker to ring up Jobseekers Direct to enquire about a job rendering the jobpoints and website search as pointless; well the intention is to force all jobs as Jobseeker Directions
- Then some jobs are far too away to get to!
So, lets take the scenario of a typical 18 year old on the dole…
- Searches the Jobpoints… straight away filters out the Distant Jobs (sadly LMS system can’t do that)
- Ignores the employment agency jobs (due to experience of no success with them)
- Has self-respect so doesn’t consider Immoral Jobs
- Doesn’t want an agency spamming inbox with fake jobs…. thus doesn’t apply for such (Shady Jobs)
- Ignores the jobs which doesn’t mention who the employer is
- Finds a job which sounds good and prints out the advert (chances are at home the reference code wont no longer work, which means cant apply for)
- Is not on New Deal so can’t even request more information on the 7260+ annual jobs that are New Deal Jobs, and when on New Deal has to sit in a classroom for 30 hours job search for 13 weeks
- Doesn’t bother ringing up Jobseekers Direct as is aware of the reasons why they want the jobseeker to, plus chances are having to wait to use a phone and in a phone queue; doesn’t want benefit sanctions
- Find a decent job… but oh wait, doesn’t have a driving license (even though old enough – in case someone mentions that lol) so can’t even work in a shop…
Any wonders why there are one million unemployed young people?
It doesn’t stop with these people neither, affects all jobseekers!
Summary of links contained in above New Deal Scandal post
Related posts
- Jobcentre Plus promotes illegal job vacancies
- 7260 New Deal vacancies advertised in the last year
- Flexible New Deal dead already?
- Unofficial Jobcentre Plus & Unemployment Survey
- The Flexible New Deal (Designation of Employment Officers) Order 2009
- Jobseekers in Recession spend up to 20% of their benefit seeking employment
the job centre cannot sit behind the blame them and “everyone but themselves attitude”,the recent job advertisement focused on the company involved and the rightly discrimination claims that followed.
however the job centre are equally liable,they carried the advertisement stating they cannot screen every vacancy,the alarm bells should have sounded when this advertisement was placed,it did not.
also the incident where candidates where treated disgracefully,paraded through a job centre onto the street for a swab test related to drugs.
these incidents amount to gross negligence by job centre plus along with other incidents reported,it indicates an appalling standard of not questioning the methods of “employers” in the treatment of job seekers.placing job adds before all else as a number one priority without question,while turning a blind eye.also allowing its employees to abuse jobseekers is a utter disgrace.
the standard of job centre plus must come under investigation.
has anyone noticed the the increasing redirected appearance of the .gov site instead of the usual internal job centre plus pages,this .gov frequently throws up vacancies that are out of date, indicating rather then give nothing found it gives previous old positions?.
i wish the site administrator all the best,and thank him for bringing people together to share their common experiences,it shows that you are not alone in encountering these dealings and problems’ with government organisations and their sub contractors’.
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Could you please explain more about this decision maker guidance limit? What it is, how it works, is it a way they can screw us that I haven’t heard of yet?
I’ve often suspected that JCP have special people to scour the press and web “poaching” jobs and non-jobs, putting them on the JCP system even when the employer specifically advertised elsewhere – just so the government can bull up how many vacancies are in the economy.
Maybe employers should be charged five or ten quid to advertise through JCP to weed out the spammers…
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The submission limit?
Well, the Decision Makers Guide is a very strange guide, so don’t expect to be guaranteed “good cause”.
DMG 34592 states sanctioned can only apply if they are reasonable.
DMG 34607 reads (I will quote):
Of course you can’t really prove if there was over 100 applicants but if you can prove that there were over 99 submissions alone by Employment Officers you stand a good chance of securing “good cause” status.
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Of course they also used the mild word “may” so pretty much at the discretion of the Decision Maker.
The 100 applicants plus limit for the vacancy is not defined under Statutory Law but under Case Law (i.e. a tribunal agreed in one case that it was unreasonable to sanction a person for not applying for a job that s/he didn’t have a likely chance of securing.)
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Ive been unemployed a year now and absolutly hate signing on.
The websites like you say are a joke, agencys advertising jobs that dont exist, and escorting jobs etc prolific in my area. Ringing jobseekers direct is a con aswell, yes they log and record calls, fair enough is free from jobcentre if you want everyone to know your name address and national insurance number, many people dont have landlines and as its an 0845 number it works out a pound a minutes and usually your on phone ten minutes so it costs a fortune.
The longer you sign on the harder it gets, the jobcentre staff usually have no interest in helping you find work but instead are more interested in trying to find fault in your jobsearch or a way to get you off there system. After six months of signing a vacancy came up in the actual jobcentre, i applied, passed the tests, but didnt get job! if im qualified and they wont even employ me what can i do. The six month reveiws are the worse you get a proper grilling, I recently had my twelve month review it was really stressful, I said i wanted to go college but the advisor strongly pushed me towards learn direct which i declined, its goverment backed but quite frankly a joke, it was a tough battle but stuck to my guns and managed to get a proper college course, but then the advisor tried to push me into voluntry work saying looks good on c.v. fair enough but why would i want to work and not get paid? have enough trouble motivating myself to work when i do get paid.
if a job needs doing you should get paid for it!!! The last thing the advisor said was “you cant expect to sit on jobseekers allowance for the next six months while you go college” hang on im going college to improve my skills, and as im still actively seeking work and applying for jobs and the course is less than 16 hours then yes I can sign on next six months and go college im entitled to until I find a job!! The systems a mess.
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oh yeh just wanted to say aswell the “seetec” course is a joke, your commited to it for 6 weeks they stop your benifits if you dont go. You’ll find yourself bunched up with a group of morons and alcoholics who have no interest in working. My first day i went into classroom and the first “lesson” was spelling. no joke the words on the blackboard were “cat” “there” “travel”….serioulsey!!! omg I have an nvq in administration and ive been an assistant manager and your teaching me at this level!?!? oh its a joke.
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jonathon they obviously think those on that course lack basic literacy and numeracy skills thereby thats why they cant find work and obviously ignore anyone like yourself who obviously isnt illiterate
my ndpa tried on several occasions to imply that i couldnt read and write and tried suggesting i go to adult literacy classes prat he couldnt even spell properly when typing up interview outcome on the computer i refused point blank pointing out that having done a library assistant qualification this surely proved that i was able to spell and read properly and reading and writing is a core skill for working in a library thats the trouble with these people they come out with these things but they never step over the threshold of the library from one years end to the other whats the betting he still reads the beano!
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ps no offence but seriously is spelt this way not the way you have spelt it
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Where can I get hold of this Decision Makers Guide? It might come in useful. I know the local lot work on the principle of sanction first for basically anything and they are, I suspect, exceeding their authority in many cases.
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i have encountered what the term is “adjudication officer” telling lies about information submitted,when this was counter claimed i was quickly awarded the decision.
secrecy is their key telling the clerk at the job centre to not let me see the paperwork on the phone in front of me.
this is all tribunal material,however it rarely get to that stage once the heat is turned up.
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WHY HAVE I GOT TO GO TO AN INTERVIEW BEFORE I ACTUALLY GO ON THE COURSE ,IF I HAVE TO DO THE FLEXIBLE NEW DEAL COURSE WHATS THE POINT OF AN INTERVIEW ?WEIRD
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Herald: the Decision Makers Guide can be viewed here:
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/specialist-guides/decision-makers-guide/
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Chris – thanks for that. Fuuuuuuuuuck, it’s complicated, but I’ve already found somehing useful
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you have a legal right to see anything and i mean anything held about you on computers by the jobcentre plus under the freedom of information act ie say to the job centre idiot under the freedom of information act i demand a copy of anything you have on your computer about me including any benefit adjuication comments or reports
if they refuse tell them you will consult a solicitor and get them to send a letter to their manager asking for this information under the foi once you mention solicitors they usually take heed
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Great article, I am having problems with jobs that in retrospect clearly never existed in the first place left right and centre at present. I got so fed up with turning up at interviews only to be told either the job has gone but we can offer you….,or “the details you got are clearly wrong we can’t pay that per hour”, And even ounce turned up for an interview for a night shift (which was the best paid shift) only to find the place had never had a nightshift but then offered me a minimum wage day shift instead. Clearly employers put up false adverts just to get you through the door to offer lesser jobs that otherwise few people would apply for. I at first took employers word for it and blamed the massive details discrepancies on Jobcentre Plus ineptitude on taking details but now I think the truth is employers just gave false details in the first place as if you ring up for an interview the person (always junior) confirms all the advert details, but when you get the interview with the boss you get told “you have the details wrong details are wrong, well Jobcentre plus copied down the details wrong”, then when you mention that when I rang up for an interview your staff confirmed all the details they say “they were wrong and must have been talking at cross purposes”. I now print out the advert details and bring them with me to interview as at least then I can prove that its not me trying it on.
If you think the Directgov site is bad (and it is) for creatively retitling and then multiple re-listing the same job, have a look at Careerjet.uk.com just how many times can they think of disguising and relisting the same jobs? In the past you can be searching away and you will find that for no reason other than pad things out vacancies wise all the (same)job(s) listed are now listed in Polish !!! EDP Jobs 24 website also seems to be a hot contender for the phoney relisting jobs crown as last week a closer inspection of my search results revealed the first and third jobs listed on the first page were without doubt the same vacancy, only to reappear on other pages, then to crown things off they had repeatedly placed an advert for the same 5 machine minding vacancies in lowestoft on the same shift 3 times immediately on top of each other making 15 jobs out of the original 5. I actually now wonder if these multiple relisting jobs actually exist in the first place, because if you have say 3 identical vacancies on the same shift you put 3 vacancies, you don’t advertise them individually as you will then get multiple applications from the same people which would make drawing up interview short lists impossible.
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