On Saturday 8th September, South London Solidarity Federation
continued its campaign against Workfare, a collection of government
"Back to Work" schemes that result in unemployed people being
forced to work unpaid, undermining the conditions of all workers.

After our success in forcing Holland and Barrett to withdraw from the scheme, we decided on Poundland as our next target.

We held a picket at Poundland's shop in Brixton, We held our banners across the front of the shop, talked to its workers about our opposition to the Workfare programme, handed out leaflets, and dissuaded customers from shopping there.

The public response to the our presence and leaflets was entirely positive, people who were unaware of the government's Workfare programme where disgusted by it, and people who  were aware of it were pleased to see a campaign being carried out to oppose it. The management of Poundland took an "out of sight, out of mind" approach to us, completely ignoring our presence until we entered the shop to leaflet customers.

This is just the first of our actions against Poundland - we will continue to escalate the campaign until they pull out of the programme, and then we will move on to our next target, until Workfare is defeated.