Workfare contractor LearnDirect’s bosses were told to get themselves a proper job yesterday when demonstrators occupied their Edinburgh offices.

Over a dozen protesters from Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty swept into the firm’s Morrison Street headquarters, with banners making their message clear: “If you exploit us we will shut you down!”

The welfare privateer has been handed lucrative public-sector contracts as part of Tory Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s widely-reviled “mandatory work activity” and “community work placements,” which demand up to six months’ unpaid work on pain of losing jobseekers’ allowance.