One would have thought that, given the absurd extravagance of the queen's jubilee, those hired to steward the event would have been paid, if not a royal, at least a decent wage. But no. As the papers revealed subsequently, this was, in every aspect, a grotesque celebration of social inequality.

So, a company called Close Protection UK, which got the stewarding contract, used a so-called "charity" run by a Tory peer, to recruit 80 jobless from outside London. They were made to work 16-hour shifts in the worst possible weather conditions, without shelter, proper protective clothing or decent food, and their "accommodation" was a wet campsite! 50 of those jobless were paid the "apprentice" rate of £2.80/hr (to learn what, in 48 hours??), while the remaining 30 were taken on under a workfare scheme and not paid at all!

They're sweating the jobless

But this is only the visible tip of a much bigger iceberg. Close Protection UK is just one among a galaxy of companies making fat profits out of the various schemes created by the government to sweat the unemployed - including the most vulnerable among them - on the cheap.

In this respect, the responsibility for launching this private sector-driven exploitation of the jobless lies with Labour. The mastermind behind these "welfare-to-work" schemes was "Baron" David Freud, a welfare adviser under Blair and Brown, before turning Tory and becoming under-secretary of state for Work and Pensions.

It was as a result of Freud's recommendations that a "workfare market" was created by Labour, whereby private sharks were invited to line their pockets by running schemes supposedly designed to "help the jobless into work". Cameron only had to follow Labour's lead, and he did!

Earlier this year, the scandal caused by the fact that jobless youth were being coerced into working for free for wealthy retail chains, forced Cameron to withdraw the compulsory element of the "work experience" scheme. But only on paper. Because, in practice, many youth are still being bullied by private job "advisers" into doing such placements for free, under this or other schemes, for lack of information or lack of confidence.

By now, hundreds of small cow-boys are thriving on this bullying business. But there are also some very big fishes. Next to giant service company Serco, for which workfare is one business among others, five giants dominate the "workfare market", sharing almost £2bn worth of public-funded contracts. In addition to A4e, the shady company run by Cameron's former "family tsar" Emma Harrison, there are subsidiaries of the temp agency giant Manpower, and City heavyweights like financial consulting firms Deloitte and Ernst & Young. Big money is obviously expected there!

A stake for the whole working class

By the end of this year, the ConDems aim at 250,000 placements on the "work experience" scheme - meaning 60 million hours of unpaid labour for the bosses. In addition, 850,000 are to be referred to the compulsory "work programme". And that's only 2 out of the 5 workfare schemes!

The aim of this harassment of the jobless is not just to provide profits for placement companies, however. It was always made clear that, for instance, mandatory work for the unemployed through the "work programme" could (and should) be used to by-pass the minimum wage regulations.

While bosses use the fear of unemployment to try to blackmail workers into agreeing to all sorts of cuts in their terms and conditions, the government uses workfare and the jobless to cut the capitalists' wage bills and push wages down for all workers.

This is why all the employed, including those in "secure" jobs (but is there such a thing?) are directly threatened by the ConDems' attacks against the unemployed. And why it should be the duty of the working class movement to oppose these attacks, not just in words, but in deeds!

Union leaders, however, have a record of letting anything go, to preserve their "partnership" with the bosses. They've already allowed the rise of casual work to get through, without batting an eyelid. Today, they enthusiastically endorse the introduction of wage cuts and worse conditions for new hires. And as regards the attacks against the unemployed, they just do nothing!

Fighting the threat of unemployment for those in a job and fighting workfare for those who aren't, are part of the same struggle - to make it compulsory for the capitalists to share all available work between all available workers, on decent wages. But we'll only have a chance to win this fight if it is undertaken jointly by all, employed and unemployed, without relying on the union machineries to do it.