The issue is recent guidance for the private firms delivering the Work Programme's Youth Contract, a scheme which pays employers up to £2,275 for each young person they employ on a 26 week placement. It's surely already a scandal that we subsidise the likes of Poundland for hiring a succession of unemployed youngsters as drudges - I'm old enough to remember job creation schemes for roles in youth centres, community projects, museums and country parks - but the DWP's latest guidance opens quite different doors for the workless young people of the UK: doors with words like 'Massage Parlour' or 'Sex Shop' lit up in neon lights over the lintel.
The actual guidance for 'providers' sourcing opportunities in the 'Adult Entertainment' industry is within this document.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269379/wp-pg-chapter-20.pdf
The DWP are at pains to point that the work must be legal, and certain specific jobs cannot be sponsored through this scheme, helpfully providing a lengthy list which clearly and rightly forbids the young person being employed as any of the following:
- Lap/pole/table/dancers
- Web-cam performers
- Male/Female Escorts
- Masseuse/masseur in saunas/massage parlours
- Strippers
- Porn actors/actresses
- Glamour models
- Presenters/hosts/dancers for adult channels on digital TV
- Sex chat-line operators
- Strippograms
- Kissograms
- Topless bar staff
- Topless cleaners
- Dominatrix
- Mud wrestlers/cat fighters
- Dance troupes (e.g. burlesque, Chippendale)
'Acceptable' posts include:
- those involved in the sale, manufacture, distribution and display of sex related products;
- auxiliary workers in lap/pole dancing clubs – e.g. bar staff, door staff, receptionists or cleaners;
- auxiliary workers in strip clubs – e.g. bar staff, door staff, receptionists or cleaners;
- auxiliary workers in saunas/massage parlours e.g. bar staff, door staff, receptionists or clearers;
- glamour mode photographers;
- web-cam operators;
- TV camera operators, sound technicians, producers/directors for adult channels on digital TV;
- TV camera operators, sound technicians, producers/directors for pornographic films.
If you're dismissed for 'misconduct' or leave of your own accord without 'good cause', it's a benefit sanction of at least 13 weeks. And you can be sanctioned for turning down one of these opportunities without 'good cause' too.
Is a job in 'Adult Entertainment' ever going to look good on the CV of someone who doesn't already aspire to that kind of work? Surely there are more potential jobs you can kiss goodbye after a junior technical post in a porn movie company, if only because the interview could be excruciatingly embarrassing for the potential employer ('So, tell me what you did in your last job!') and what unfair inferences might be drawn about the young woman who says she was the 'receptionist' at a massage parlour?
We've already seen escort agencies advertising on the Government's Universal Jobsmatch site - which is so badly policed that one witty prankster successfully placed ads for a pirate crew a little while ago - but while this apparently caused red faces and the advert's swift removal, there are clearly blurred lines at the DWP. Where work associated with sexual services is concerned, they should say 'no' and mean it, and with young people potentially caught between sex work and sanctions, it's not just Channel 4 who stand accused of promoting 'poverty porn'.
The DWP seriously needs to examine its conscience.
