Unemployed electronics specialist, John McArthur, 59, says he is living off 16p tins of spaghetti and has been without heating, after being sanctioned by the jobcentre when he refused to work without pay for Scottish social enterprise, LAMH Recycle in Motherwell. While he says he was happy to work for LAMH under the now-defunct future jobs fund for the minimum wage between late 2010 and 2011, he now refuses on principle to do the same job without any pay. McArthur says he is surviving on a monthly pension of £149 after the DWP stopped his unemployment benefit until January as punishment for refusing to go on the 26-week community work placement (CWP). For almost three months, McArthur has spent each weekday between 7.30am and 9. 30am with a placard outside the plant reading: “Say no to slave labour”. “It was simply a case of, ‘Go here, work for nothing and if you don’t we’ll stop your subsistence level benefit,’” he said. McArthur, who says he has been applying for 50 jobs a week without joy, said the CWP programme was “entirely exploitative” and came at the “expense of poor people who’ve got absolutely no choice”.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 19:03:52 +0000