Big Issue Vendors now have to meet Sales Targets

Posted by Ray Schaufeld on Sat, 21 Jun 2014

It's wrong! I sold BI for four months in 1999 and we were simply given the rules, badged up and allocated a pitch. Then we worked.

I spoke to a new vendor in my town asking him where the last vendor was. He told me she had been moved because she had not met her targets. She was a friendly lady and a lot of us got to know her and her dogs. The new guy said the changes had been recent 'These days it's more like a business.'

Anyone can become homeless through no fault of their own. Like I said, it's wrong.

Comments

Submitted by celticman on

The Big Issue is played out. My partner sold the magazines to vendors in Glasgow for years. She was shafted to move someone into her slot with no experience who was paid more money. This was done by altering her terms and conditions of employment. She won her tribunal case, but was still sacked. She was offered other jobs and then shafted again by the Big Issue Bank (renamed Grand Central Savings). I rambled on incoherently about this at that time http://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/big-issue-1

The Big Issue keeps management happy by sweating their labour. At the bottom of the pile are vendors, who the executives make much of at committee meetings and when applying for funding, but really, it's the equivalent of The Donkey Sanctuary keeping donkeys in horseboxes and claiming they're well cared for and adequately housed. 

 

Submitted by scratch on

Holy shit.

 

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

It is a pity the BI has become so cut-throat and that your partner was so badly treated by them. Back in 1999 they were OK.  I had a poem published in their millennium edition under my vendor number. I lost my copy a few years ago when I moved house. Recently I enquired and e-mailed here and there including an email to A John Bird, asking if they archived back numbers as many publications send a copy to the British Library. One person mailed that she would look into it and then the trail goes cold, leaving me to rewrite from memory.

I remember your previous, righteously angry article.
 

Submitted by celticman on

the big issue idea was imported and it spread to most other countries. I remember reading a book about how American vendors were making money hand over fist (excuse the cliche). Good pitches in Glasgow were also a premium and there could be fist-fights if somebody stole your pitch. The backlash followed predictable lines. It was giving money to junkies and alkies. People that didn't want to work. Now it's we're giving money to Bulgarians and Romainains. The truth is we were giving money to a top-heavy managament structure. The saintly John Bird orchestrated the cull in Scotland of staff, in which my partner was unfairly sacked. Arseholes all.