The long term unemployed

The BBC web site has a howl of protest on its comments page, about government plans to put the long term unemployed to work for short periods.
200,000 of those claiming benefits have been unemployed for 3 out of the past 5 years. 76,000 for 5 out of the past 7 years.  About 3 people in every 1,000 of the population. Say 600 people in Swindon.
If they each did a month's work a year, that would be a group of 50 people throughout the year, available to do useful work in the community that would otherwise not be done.
What is wrong with that?
It's not an unreasonable demand to make on someone who has been saying for a year that they are available for work, but have found none.
No one else would be put out of a job, if the work is selected intelligently, and I'm sure the unions would watch like hawks over this (quite rightly).