Ides Nicaise, professor at KU Leuven and researcher at HIVA, doesn’t think compulsory community service is a good idea at all. “If it were voluntary community service, that would be completely different. But this goes against the principle of the right to work and therefore also the right to free choice of work. That is already very flawed from a legal point of view.”
Nicaise researched similar systems abroad. “If you try to use them on a large scale, governments are unable to provide quality labor. Then you get all kinds of forced labor to keep people busy. If people think it’s pointless or doesn’t suit them, they are sanctioned, which eventually turns into a suspension machine.”
There is also a risk that the unemployed will no longer look for a more decent job, suggests Nicaise. “It also stigmatizes job seekers. Employers will turn away from those candidates because they think they are no longer motivated and have been forced to commit.”
What’s more, compulsory community service can destroy regular employment. “It is much more interesting to hire someone in such a fake status, because it costs next to nothing. That way you undermine the working conditions and destroy employment. Evaluation studies abroad show that the net employment of such systems is 0. And if you take into account the displacement of regular work, it is even negative.”
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