Job agent boasted on Twitter about halting 'suckers'' benefits

Kicking people when they're down seems to be a national pastime...


Job agent boasted on Twitter about halting 'suckers'' benefits

Woman who found staff for Amazon is suspended after her comments provoked backlash



A recruitment agent who posted gleeful messages on Twitter about getting people’s benefits stopped after they missed appointments has been suspended after her comments prompted an angry backlash on the site.

Kelly-Jane Stone from Watford, who was responsible for finding staff for the online retailer Amazon, posted a series of messages on Sunday describing how she got “so much pleasure” from getting people’s benefits stopped.

Using a now closed Twitter account, @DietQueen, she said: “In my new job, if people from the [job centre] don’t turn up to an appointment with me, I stop their benefits for 13 weeks... suckers.”

Ms Stone works as a senior resourcer for the Amazon account at Transline Group in Hemel Hempstead. The company said last night she was “suspended pending a full investigation”.

Ms Stone and Amazon did not respond to an approach for comment.

Her posts began after someone with the username @Devils_baguette wrote: “Point out one thing people who chose [sic] to live on benefits contribute to society”?

Ms Stone’s second response was: “I get so much pleasure knowing what I can do if the [sic] mess me around. I’m going to be shot one day for it I bet!”

Another message over two tweets read: “I had someone who’s been claiming for 10 years and his benefits were stopped because he told me he gets more through the Government than working. Even his housing benefits stopped... bliss.”

She added: “Same thing if I offer them a job too and they don’t turn up – benefits stopped forever until a job is found. Gutted.”


Her friend responded: “More likely stabbed. Your average peasant is more likely to own a BB gun than a real firearm. God I’d love your job!”

Ms Stone was then barraged by angry messages. One called @souless-sniper wrote: “Who cares about feeding people eh? No wonder there’s an increase in food banks.”

Another, using the handle @symphonydog wrote: “Those tweets about people on the dole are really horrible. People are really suffering and you’re on some power trip? Sick.”

Linda Sinclair of the Bedroom Tax Action Group, a welfare lobby which highlighted the tweets, said: “I am quite horrified that anyone working for a recruitment agency (somewhere surely designed to help and encourage people back to work) has the authority to get someone’s Jobseeker’s Allowance and/or Housing Benefit stopped, and then appears to take pleasure in doing so.”

Decisions on sanctions, which are used as a last resource when jobseekers fail to live up to the conditions agreed when they made their claim for benefits, are only taken by the Department for Work and Pensions.

A spokesperson said: "Only the DWP has the power to remove benefits it administers."

On her LinkedIn page, which was later taken down, Ms Stone said: “I love my team and my job as there are unlimited opportunities.”

:devil: Unlimited opportunties for what ? I shudder to think...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...r-about-halting-suckers-benefits-8758207.html

 

Encouraging to see other peeps criticizing her and consequences seem to be taken against such absurd behaviour.

 

From Boycott Workfare...

It was a matter of time. Amazon – which tags its workers, use zero hours contracts, practices tax avoidance, and received loans totaling £2.5 million from the UK government – look like they could also be involved in some way with the benefit sanction ridden work programme.

An employee for the HR company Transline Group who finds staff for Amazon, tweeted her thoughts on the unemployed and the power she has to ruin lives, “I get so much pleasure knowing what i can do if people mess me around” and have their “benefits stopped forever”.

In doing so, she has revealed what many of us who have experienced A4e or SEETEC or REED know is true. Our lives are controlled and they relish in using sanctions to bully and punish people, whilst providing big businesses with cheap or unpaid labour.

Although the employee in question has now been suspended this raises questions of what is going on? Are Transline a subcontractor for the work programme as well as managing recruits at an Amazon store? If not what is their relationship with the local work programme provider?

Earlier this year in email correspondence passed onto Boycott Workfare, regional manager of Maximus, Jamie Guest, said “We have placed people into work in Amazon Distribution Centres in Slough, Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead”.

This was after someone had already been pressured about taking a low paid job there with unspecified hours with the ‘justification’ that “you’re not even working 16/20 Hrs per week” – at Amazon you’re not even guaranteed one hour. This appears that Amazon who are renowned for using zero hour contracts and firing people every 3 months are getting the many staff they need, due to the high turnover, from the work programme where people have no choice – although through a confusing chain of companies.

This all means that claimants can be referred for sanction by people such as @DietQueen (the sanction happy tweeter ) for not going to interviews, or taking jobs at Amazon, with no guarantee of hours or a ‘job’ longer than 3 months. Meanwhile the Work Programme ‘supply chain’ could be cashing in on the ‘job outcome’ of someone forced to work on a zero hour contract.

At present Boycott Workfare cannot tell you how many people are being sanctioned or if anyone has been sent to Amazon on workfare, or elsewhere, as the government are currently refusing to make this information public.

Boycott Workfare would ask people not to target the person in question. Given the facts we would ask people to instead concentrate their anger at Amazon and Transline Group, or at anyone from this growing list of workfare providers.

Transline can be contacted on Twitter (@translinegroup), on Facebook or by phone: 01422 349423.

Amazon can also be found on Facebook and on Twitter (@amazonuk).


Also, here’s a reminder of the DWP’s rules on zero hour contracts: “Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants are not required to apply for zero hours contract vacancies
and they will not face sanctions for turning down the offer of a zero hours contract.”

http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=2899

 

This behavior is becoming popular within Britain. Armed by a right wing media. People are ignorant of the truth around benefits. Isn't this lady working for a company who is one of the biggest tax avoiders there is going. I am seeing it more and more people saying that people who claim benefits are some how scum or lesser people. I am on benefits my self, and I have in counted some truly horrid eye opening comments from people. She will get a slap on the wrist. i like people like this to live a life of someone who is on benefits then see how big her mouth gets.

 

Anyone unemployed in the UK ought to check out this site - an eye-opener to some of the things going on -

http://unemploymentmovement.com/forum