“Force them to work!”

A lot of people (including some my friends) think that unemployed people should be forced to work. After all, if they receive social security payments; they should contribute to society.

My question to you is this: How do you imagine this to happen?

What jobs should they be assigned to? Teach your children at school? Work in a financial institution? Go into politics? Do your hair? Take care of your grandparents in the nursing home?

Think for a moment about that one co-worker you have who gets it wrong; who gets it badly wrong, a lot, and often. That one co-worker who brings down the morale of the entire team. Would you want to have more of these people in your team? Do you want to have to watch them like a hawk, to train them on the job every single day? How would your team or your company look like then? Would your company still do well?

I’m guessing at this point you would say that we should assign them the shitty jobs: the cleaning of toilets and wiping of bums, the taking care of the unwanted elderly, and possibly waiting on tables; because those are the jobs for which companies struggle to find employees. Companies struggle to find employees because they are shitty jobs with shitty pay.

Forcing people to work is really not that different from slavery. Do you want to bring back slavery? The reason I’m asking is that back when slavery was still acceptable, most people were poor and did shitty jobs for shitty pay. Because, why should companies pay someone well, if they can have one of those cheap slaves; or should I say “unemployed people that are forced to work”. This is why, when there were slaves, most people ended up either enslaved or living in poverty. Unless you are one of the super rich, who can afford a few cheap slaves, you’ll most likely end up poor yourself.

Now, think about your own situation. If you were to lose your current job, would you want to be forced to work, to do one of those shitty jobs? No? Why not? Because you have a university degree? Guess what, so do many of the people who you think should be forced to work. You are no exception. You will be forced to work in one of those shitty, cleaning the toilet jobs too.

In summary, before you make a flippant comment like: “We need to force them to work,” please stop and think for a moment what you really want to achieve with this – and how it will impact you in the long run.