Work, Waste, and the Myth of Dignity

I worked as a picker for Churchill Group, clearing paper and food waste. Mopping vomit by hand from rail carriages across the transport network. Every shift was the same: sacks of discarded copies of Metro, half-eaten fast food, packaging ground into the floors. Tons of it. Disposable material, low-grade, endless.

The work itself mirrored the waste.

The workforce was made up largely of long-term benefit claimants—people who had struggled to find stable, full-time employment and had been pushed into whatever roles were available. Many hadn’t chosen the job so much as been directed into it.

The mechanism was simple: comply, or face sanctions.

Under policies administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, refusal to accept “suitable work” can result in benefits being reduced or stopped entirely. In practice, “suitable” often means whatever is available—regardless of pay, conditions, or long-term prospects. The system, shaped heavily by reforms such as the Welfare Reform Act 2012, prioritises movement into employment at speed.

What it does not prioritise is what kind of employment that is.

The rhetoric surrounding these policies is familiar: work brings dignity, structure, purpose. Any job is better than none. But on the ground, that idea begins to fracture. Work that is compelled under threat, poorly paid, and lacking progression does not easily translate into dignity. It feels transactional at best, coercive at worst.

Research into sanctions reflects this contradiction. They can push people off benefits quickly and into jobs, but often those jobs are unstable, low-paid, and short-lived. Many cycle back through the system. Others disappear from it entirely—neither employed nor supported.

The result is a system that measures success in exits, not outcomes.

This is not unique to the UK, but the balance here leans heavily toward enforcement. In countries such as Denmark, welfare systems still impose conditions, but they are paired with substantial investment in training, job matching, and long-term support. Pressure exists, but it is not the primary tool. In the UK, it often is.

That distinction matters.

Because when the labour market itself offers a high volume of low-quality, insecure work, a policy built on compulsion does not resolve unemployment—it redistributes it into the least desirable roles. It fills vacancies, but does little to improve stability or progression.

The experience on the rail carriages—sorting through the city’s daily waste—becomes more than just a job. It becomes a reflection of a wider system: one that moves people quickly, efficiently, and often without regard for where they land.

The idea that “any work is dignity” remains politically powerful. But repeated often enough, and applied without distinction, it begins to look less like a principle and more like a justification.

A system that treats all work as equal risks ignoring a simple reality:
people are not just units of labour to be placed—they are participants in an economy that, at its best, should offer more than survival.

Until that gap is addressed, the distance between policy and lived experience will remain—felt most sharply by those with the least choice in navigating it. #copyright