peggy wrote:
Damo, are you saying that Mencap is a vile organisation?
Yes.
Like many charities of different causes in recent years, they have abused their client base by jumping on the ‘work trial’ gravy train. In return for donation buckets in Co-Ops up and down this country, Mencap have provided Co-Op a steady stream of free labour.
I don’t know how much the public puts in these donation buckets, but I can guess that they put enough in that would pay a disabled person to work at Co-Op on the minimum wage via Mencap. Mencap could easily afford to subsidise a disabled person to work for life at Co-Op. However Mencap instead launder the donations into the wages of their marketing staff who will probably continue to think up of many more ways to fill their own pockets at the expense of their client base.
Now I believe that disabled people should not have to go through an unpaid work trial when people are given jobs in these supermarkets for merely just knowing somebody who works there. For example my cousins didn’t have to go on a work trial at a supermarket where their dad was a managing director. I have no problem with this ‘who you know as opposed to what you know’ culture that we have in this country because I think it has genuine intentions of providing someone a job who needs one. But this culture needs to be extended to disable people because they are facing unreasonable barriers to gaining employment. On top of their disabilities, they have to attended long winded interviews in the shape of an unpaid work trial which I feel is a disgrace. Especially when people have got jobs off the back of an short interview with an employer.
Disabled people are been shat on all round and most people in society don’t even know it. For some it’s just easier to label disabled people lazy as opposed to having a look at the bigger picture.
Worse of all these super markets string disabled people along for weeks and then tell them their no good after that. It’s just an excuse to replace that person who’s completed their work trial.
Yes people do get work off the back off these work trials. But only so Mencap marketing staff can sensationalise the few that do get work at the expense of those who don't in order to fill their own pockets by promising that they'll able to help more into work with more donations.
Other charity's that are rumoured to be like this are Mind and Scope.