Participation laws

Participation Laws, Or Why You Shouldn't Ever Want A Right-Wing Government;
an essay penned in English about the Participatiewet and its consequences.

In this article I relate about the people I meet and incidents at the Work/Learn company - I don't mention people's names to protect them, but I do choose to mention the names of the companies involved so you all know who's profiteering from forced labour.

I'm finally forced to apply for unemployment benefits. I've been able to keep it off for a long time, but now I can no longer stop it. After filling in a long on-line form, I have to phone the municipality of Eindhoven, my place of residence, to get an intake conversation. Besides any psychological hurdles I have with my phone phobia and all, the automatic answering machine is far from helping. There's no option and no "hold the line if you have another issue". So I pretend I'm on disability until I actually get somebody on the line. It's all the same people at the help desk anyway, so it doesn't make any difference.
At the intake, we begin with my ID. I grab my wallet - and find my ID has disappeared. We have to call off the intake and I spend the next two days frantically searching the house (we found a 1994 TV guide in the couch) and at all the shops where I may have purchased something, about 20 of them. Eventually the cheese seller on the market turned out to have it. I bought him a large box of chocolates.
The intake sends me to a sollicitation workshop and to the Work/Learn Company, where I'll follow a 12-week trajectory in getting me a job. This essay tells you of the things and people I encounter at the Work/Learn Company (which I'll call WLC from here on), and I hope it'll show what's wrong with this system.

The Participation Law means that, in exchange for dole, municipalities can ask for labour. This has lead to some utterly embarrassing cases - in The Hague and Amsterdam problems with discrimination are often heard. One particular horrible case is a street cleaner from The Hague, who was fired due to budget cuts. After he hit the dole, he was forced to work - as a street cleaner, at about half the pay. The judge fortunately put a stop to this individual case, but as you can see, the law comes close to setting people up to forced labour.
In Amsterdam, there is an "arrangement" trajectory for the unemployed with higher education. Three women have now sued the municipality of Amsterdam, as they were made to do work that requires a higher education at a fraction of the price one would charge for similar work. Meaning this system actually suppresses paid work.

Now that you have the back story, let's start with what happened after the intake - I'm entered for a workshop and the WLC - the workshop and WLC intake happen on the same day, which is rather frustrating. At the workshop I show up in my formal clothes set, with a black shirt with waterfall neck and a purple blazer. I feel a bit over-dressed sitting there, at the workshop.

It's the middle of October, 2015.

The workshop has some 10 people, 4 males, 6 females. All the 4 males are of foreign extraction, three are of colour and one has a Turkish name. Of the six women, only one is foreign. The only one who is more overdressed than me is only 26, and since she shares an unusual last name with a former class mate, I ask her if she's related, but she's not.
My mind reels back to school. My school proudly bore the "Without Racism"-plaque. Small feat considering there was not a single person of colour in my year of 110 students. My school had more students with a double last name than with non-European roots. In this single workshop I meet more people of colour than I have seen in my 6 years of secondary school, and as many as there were at my elementary school. Is this discrimination at work?
Hard to say. One was a recent immigrant from the UK and had been a bad boy there, another was a former music teacher in his 40s who'd moved to the worst possible city to be in this profession. I know. I'm a composer. We spend some time talking about his music school.
The workshop is an introduction to job hunting, and about 90% of time is spent on CV writing. I learn of the Personal Profile, which is a recent addition to Dutch CVs: three lines of mentioning your qualities.
The man with a Turkish name, let's call him Z, in his early 30s, is making himself known straight away: he is continually interrupting with irrelevant comments and trying to bait the female teachers into a pointless discussion, holding up the group. At one point he talks about women, and how he can read them. If he could, he'd see a large quantity of the present ladies wishing he'd shut up.

Later that day I cycle to the WLC, it's located at about 45 minutes cycling from my home. The man dealing with my case is a friendly 60-something guy, who explains to me what I have to do in the near and far future. The box with tissues on the table seems superfluous at best and ominous at worst. I even end up needing one when my past is discussed. He assures me that everybody in the WLC is in the same boat and it's in the municipality's best interest to get you out of there. The programme lasts for 12 weeks, with 60% of partakers finding a job inbetween.

A week after the intake, the programme starts. There are two classes on Wednesdays and Fridays, and two work days on Mondays and Thursdays. Tuesday is off days.

1st class day is a Wednesday, late October. We're handed out a USB stick and a lot of forms and are taught a few tricks about applying for jobs.
The group introduces themselves. The 26-year-old with the familiar last name is in my group, but she has a job application that day. And passes. We won't see her again. Another one is a 40-something lady, who has a job interview the next day, passes and we don't see them again. They're lucky.
Other people in my group are a 61-year-old refugee from Liberia with broken Dutch, a female 50-something administration worker, a cheery 40-something Greek cultured woman, a relaxed and friendly 50-ish woman of Indian-Surinam background with nearly the same name as mine, which leads to some entertainment, a 50-something male ICT-worker who was fired over his age, and some people I knew before from the workshop: the 23-year-old English/Somalian with criminal past turning over a new leaf, a 40-ish originally Yugoslavian woman who worked in the serving industry until she wanted to work regular hours and quit, and Z. Oh god. Z immediately makes himself known, much to the annoyance of our two group leaders, the friendly 60-something man who handles my case, and a woman my age who's quiet but to the point. After the group session they take him away for a bit of a lecture, and secretly I wish I was a fly on the wall.

The day after is our first work day. 8:30 to 17:00 with a total of 1 hour breaks inbetween. The morning work is drilling screws into round metal plates - these are exported to England and used in roofmaking. The power drill is fun, but heavy and RSI is lurking around the corner. Bits of metal fly around as they are sanded off. We're not given any safety goggles and when some gets in my eye I'm lucky it's not earnest. I have eye problems after all - on the 9th of November I have an appointment.
For the afternoon I have an escape - there's a speeddate to get new cleaners, for a company called Asito. I attend. As they are interested in somebody to become a full-time cleaner and my CV clearly shows I'm looking for something on the side to help me out until I find something better, it's a waste of time. Blast. I'm stuck.
Labour continues for the rest of the day. We have to push pre-printed cardboards out of cardboard pages. These are for Maxicosi. This is almost finished when I arrive.
After that, it's labelling boxes of instant coffee. For Zeeman. A ton of big boxes with 9 little boxes are opened, the little boxes are priced and put back, then the big boxes are closed and stacked. At first I start with labelling, but soon the box closer gives in and I end up taping the boxes shut. It's too much work for 1, too little work for 2, and it isn't long before I stress out. At 4:45PM it's clean-up time and I'm exhausted. But I help with sweeping. Time to go home. It was barely light when I got here, and it's almost dark when I leave.

Friday morning I don't get to sleep late, I still have stuff to do. The ad brochure delivery that I do arrives early with a gigantic pile of future waste paper. Just before 12 I leave for the market, so I can get back home with the cheese, flirt a bit with the cute guy at the delivery counter, put the cheese in the fridge and go to the WLC with my stuff.
First we relate of what job opportunities we've landed - oddly Z relates of the failed Asito workshop. We both left before the speeddate - but he also managed to come in late, quite a feat since he was waiting in the canteen to be picked up before anyone else. The guy holding the workshop even pointed him out on being late. The case manager explains to him, in a slightly agitated manner, that walking out on a job application (like what I did, but I shut up about it) is not a good move when you're working at the WLC. Their path is to get you a socially accepted job no matter how badly it suits whatever it is you did or do or can or can't - deviation from it is dangerous.
Was I to accept that job then? With a college education? Their aim was to find new cleaners - professional cleaners who stay on, not temporary workers with a good education trying to get out.
Again the class is about the CV, where we're learning about exactly the same stuff I learnt in the workshop a week before. Most of it is familiar, but I get one handy tip - at monster online vacancy sites like Monsterboard and vacaturesite.nl, CVs are often checked by a BOT rather than an actual human being, and if the bot can't see specific words from a job description in any CV, the sollicitation is tossed and the person who painstakingly wrote a motivation letter gets an unceremonial "we're looking for someone who fits the profile better" note.
So, lesson: copysome of the demands literally into your CV.

That Friday evening is spent until 1:30 AM sliding brochures into each other, which I have to deliver the next day. On Sunday I'm volunteering in a theme park, which was fun but exhausting.
The next 4 days I'm off to work, even though it's a temp job, at the book fair. It's physically a lot more demanding, and I put many more hours into the work than I would at the WLC, but it's a lot of fun - great people and a LOT of books! Before the fair starts, it's setting up and laying tables, removing books from containers and pallets and putting them on tables. On the day of the fair it's putting books back in place and doing miscellaneous chores. That day is a 13-hour work day, and I'm exhausted, but it was great!

Friday it's the next class. Z is not present - temp job, the young Brit/Somalian has a job and the Greek lady is ill, but both our group leaders, the Liberian, the ICT-man, the Indian-Surinam lady, the administration lady and the Yugoslav lady are there. We're set around the table to play the Quality game: we get 5 cards with qualities, we keep 2 that have qualities on them that we think apply to ourselves, and hand the 3 to other players and tell them why we think they have that quality. I give Open to the Yugoslavian, Sober to the ICT-man and Attentive to the Liberian, and I receive Creative, Convincing and Disciplined. Something to put on your CV.

Friday evening I stay up late with the papers again, which I have to deliver on Saturday, and on Sunday is the last day at the book fair. I'll miss the friends I made there.

Mondays I am starting to feel unwell - the morning at the workplace is again spent turning screws into metal plates. In the afternoon my group splits up and I sit with a near 60 electronics expert (my father was an electrician in his younger years and is still a hobbyist), we have a nice conversation while, for a transportation company called TANS, we unscrew and take apart USB-dividers. These were company gifts and need a new paper sheet with the changed address on them. Electronics Guy often remarks on how sloppily the motherboards are soldered. One is so bad it would short-circuit and damage your computer.
We talk a bit. He tips me to a German digital radio and asks me to look for synchronous clocks.

Tuesday is my first day off in two weeks. I collapse with migraine, sit at home with my bad right eye closed.

On Wednesday I drag myself to class, which is a 45-minute bike ride, with a head full of migraine. We're in the class with the bright red floor (my head! My poor head!) with 3 new people - the group has become so small we're merging early. It's Dress To Success, the day we're taught on how to dress and given a ticket for a free set of clothing, we're discussing colours and how formal they are. First impressions matter.
I came prepared in my job application clothes with the purple blazer, and the Dress To Success lady compliments me on them. Nice! Thanks to my sister who selected them.
Z is again there and making himself known, to the annoyance of the workshop lady and the next organizers. The Dress thing only lasts until the break, and after that we have to grade each other: pick a top 3 of people you'd most like to work with. It's a matter of statistics - only one of the three from the other group gets more than 3 points. I get 6, not much but I was absent for a week. So was the Yugoslav woman who works odd jobs on the side, she gets 3. The Indian-Surinam lady, Greek lady and ICT-man are proven very popular and are hired.
There's one who gets no points - it's Z. We're asked to give him tips and explain why we wouldn't hire him.
Quiet.
Then, Indian-Surinam lady mentions he can't be serious, and I mention he doesn't know when to stop - immediately Z shoots in the defense mode against me and I defend back. What follows is an ugly conversation which is eventually resolved by the teacher telling Z that, until he can say what he thinks he can change about himself, he can sit in the hall and use the PCs for job applications. He gladly accepts and immediately after he leaves there's an odd peace in the class. Some compliment me on holding my back, but I feel this incident has changed other people's perception of me - I'd never have spoken like this if it wasn't for the migraine.
Afterwards I visit a second-hand shop and find a synchronous clock. And buy it.

Another Thursday. Brought the clock in to show to Electronics Guy. He's interested but will only buy it if it works.

There's a ToiToys shipment awaiting labelling. A number of toys need prices in Swiss franks. First a set of toy dune buggies, then toy horses, then dragons, then dinosaurs, then dollies, then dumper trucks, then jets, then horses. The inner child sets to work with most of the WLC people. Some are talking on "this would be great for my son", but others are in a more playful mood. I take a particular shine to the dragons. The dinosaurs prove tricky to put back in the boxes.
The dollies are plastic with three different plastic hair sets and two different plastic dresses and an extra plastic set of shoes and miscellaneous accessories. They're in heart-shaped blister packs that lock into each other, making it hard to get them out of the box without injuring yourself. One way around it is to put the long boxes upright and move all 12 packs in one large stack out of them. I'm trying this as the clock strikes 12:30, the lady in charge yells "Break!", I lose my concentration and get a blister pack in my left eye.
OUCH!
My right eye was already blurry and I was awaiting hospital appointment to have it checked out - now both of my eyes were so blurry it was like I was looking through water. I make my way to the mirror and notice my eyes are both bloodshot, but luckily it's not bleeding. My eyes water incessantly. I splash some tap water in them to cool them down - it's soothing for a few seconds, but hurts some more in no-time. Electronics Guy and Lady In Charge and A Guy In Charge all ask me what happened - somehow it upsets me. They invite me to go back home - a 45 minute bicycle ride, no way I could make it with so little vision, so I spend my break hiding in a dark corner with my eyes shut.
After the break I go back to work, labelling - they're all concerned and make sure the boxes don't pile too high so they can keep an eye on me.
The labelling goes faster than expected and the afternoon is spent making the roofing nails.

Friday morning is spent doing little, by 11:30 I visit the little jumble sale to talk to my old boss, by noon I buy cheese, take it home and cycle back to the WLC. At the introductory talk on how everything is, I relate of my misadventures with my eye and of some job opportunities I've entered. The topic of the day is elevator pitch - a short talk where you introduce yourself, say what you can, what you want (job-wise) and ask the person you're talking to a question.
Job central Manpower is holding speeddates, and I subscribe. It's for next Wednesday, when I also go to Dress For Success. Busy day for it!
When I come back home, my father has done most of the paper folding. I finish up and have a nice Friday.

Saturday delivery, Sunday visit from a friend...

Monday is normally a work day, but I have an appointment with the eye doctor. She gives me a thorough exam and a follow-up for Friday.
Then I leave for WLC. It's an hour of bicycle riding. I arrive at 13:20.
At the WLC, the project is Nesquick bars. Tons of chocolate bars need a label. The labels are on big rolls and the bars are in boxes. My job is to cut strips of 20 labels from a big roll with 10,100 labels. I finish it on the same day. Reading "Milk chocolate" all the time isn't pleasant for a chocoholic like me, but it must be worse for the people actually putting labels on them behind my back.

Tuesday is my day off, which I celebrate with a migraine and with folding cranes for a Japanese injured guitarist.

Wednesday, 11-11, is a crowded day: classes, stylist day, and a speeddate with Manpower for callcenter work.
The class is small today - about half of the people show up. We were supposed to continue elevator pitches, but because there's so few of us, we're left to apply for jobs online. However the day starts with handing out the forms and gear for our work continuation - work at the WLC stops for us, we're all sent out to different companies. With a subsidiary of Ergon I'm sent to Veldhoven for two days a week - considerably farther away. There I'll have to work at a textile cleaner's. My job requires steel tip shoes, which are handed out to me. I get to keep them afterwards.
At one point, Surinam/Indian woman asks the to the point question: imagine the dole is refused, for whatever reason? If it is, there's no way we're being paid for the work that we did on the floor - the denigrating, depressing production line work that we have to do for 16 hours a week. This is essentially slave labour. It doesn't feel like it - our overseers are attentive and also do work, everybody is pleasant, there is free coffee and designated break times - but we have to do this in order to receive our minimum benefit - which amounts to working at about 50% of minimum wage.

We're sent back, my case manager invites me for a chat since I need to inform him of the medic procedure and about my father's political stint. He invites me to talk with one member of the Job Team (12 people who scrounge companies for vacancies) who has work for me at Spotta, a company that spreads postal advertisement.
The member in question is an OMOTT, only male on the team. OMOTT tells me that working at Spotta is work with 90% foreigners and that the culture there is rough; furthermore there is no future at this place. It is also repetitive work shoving piles of paper into machines. He advises against it.
After the talk is over, I have to rush off for my appointment with Dress For Success.

Dress For Success actually does great work distributing free styling advise and even handing out clothing sets and haircuts. That doesn't stop this sort of thing from being incredibly depressing. I'm tall, broad and full - not exactly of feminine built. Buying clothing is dreadful for me - I hate it, most shops give me migraine and actually fitting clothes is something I loathe. And shoes! Typically I wear men's shoes since women's shoes are almost always too tiny for my broad feet. They're also flat and often get too wide in zones that are generally narrow in women's shoes.
After the intake, I get two scarves around my neck, one with warm colours and one with cool colours (for the colourblind / generally ignorant on this subject: yellowy and reddish are warm, and blueish and greenish and greyish are cool). I'm set for warm colours, particularly of the orange/brown variety as not to bring out the circles in my eyes too much. Since my clothing cabinet is based on dark blue and black, I feel myself a right clown in the colours that are picked for me.
My body type (as in: is the weight on the top, or on the bottom, or in the middle) is "balanced" with even a hint of waist. The stylists recommend me to wear tight trousers, and a longer jacket with waist. Eventually the point comes where you have to give up your sizes. Since Dress For Success runs primarily on hand-me-downs, there isn't much in my size. Fortunately the first pair of stretch trousers fits like a glove. The jacket is more problematic - a red one is too short, a brown one is too coarse, there's a black one that fits but they feel it might bee too harsh in combination with my black trousers...
The shirt underneath takes some tweeking too, but when at one point they bring out a lovely shiny shirt with flowers, my mood is lifted.
My black men's shoes are deemed as too much of walking shoes (I bought them to be tidy, but now they're everyday shoes) and about the complete range in my size is brought down. The first set is knee-high boots, they don't ges arount my bicycling calves. Many more sets follow - mainly brown ones, which look hideous underneath all the black. The two-inch-high heel ankle boots come. They say they fit, but my feet tell me otherwise. They're too tight, too high and much too painful. Since there isn't much alternative, I end up taking them.
In the realm of winter coats - they only have two available and feel both are too fattening. I'm given a necklace to go with the rest, and a brown handbag. I never use handbags. Ever.
I'm given a voucher for a free haircut, as they mention "it's only cutting, if you want to get rid of that grey streak you'll have to pay for it".

It's confronting, but I return to the WLC with two pairs of shoes gotten in one day - there are women who would be thrilled by that.
At the WLC's shower (a note on the door warns users to let the taps run for 3 minutes to prevent legionnella) I change into my new clothes. I'm complimented on them. By now I have so much stuff with the shoes and my writing gear, I have to put some at the reception. Locker's too small.
The talk is short, a nice lady with a shrill voice tells me that Manpower will check if they can find me a vacacy in the callcenter realm that fits my lack of experience, and I'm phoned back on Tuesday. And then I have to take all my stuff home.

Thursday - last work day with the infernal radio with a stupid game - guess the sound and win over 40,000 euros. For 8 hours, we have to unpack Nesquick chocolate bars, put an ingredients label in Dutch on it, then put them back in the boxes. 8 hours, in which I see over 60,000 chocolate bars with a combined weight of over 6000 kilos and more than half of that is sugar.
Oddly the chocolate doesn't smell at all. I only smell cardboard.
My speed at labelling is very high - about twice as high as that of ICT-man next to me, so I do some on the side: mainly removing all exess sticker labels from the table. With 13 stickerers these quickly become huge piles of wads. I put them in the large belly pockets of my vest - one of the males on the table jokes that "that's for putting babies in". Still haven't decided what to do with that remark. Report? I don't know who said it.

Friday's the last day of the first section. We're informed that our lockers will be emptied, but we get to keep our working gloves. Yay!
We're wrapping up the elevator pitch. Mine is a bit of a fail. Quite much of a fail actually. As soon as I stand up, I choke and all the infos from my head has drained.
My worst problem is getting from a solitary artist to a person who likes to work with people in my pitch - case manager gives me some tips to resolve it. As a large amount of the class has to leave early for job interviews and alike, I get leave early too. After a bit of a chat with ICT-man. I'm glad to escape the radio and the red floor.
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This is the end of Phase 1. Phase 2 will be described as it happens.