As The Guardian notes this morning:
Unemployed workers will be forced to take up a job in any sector or face swift financial sanctions under a crackdown designed to fill hundreds of thousands of vacancies in sectors from social care to construction, ministers have announced.
Claimants will be given just four weeks – down from three months – to find a job within their preferred sector. After that point, if they fail to make “reasonable efforts” to secure a job or turn down any offer, they will have part of their universal credit payment withdrawn under a tightening of existing Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy.
I am appalled. The last remnants of the social security safety net for those without work in the UK is to be withdrawn to keep Boris Johnson in a job. This is, very obviously, what Theresa May called the Nasty Party at work.
I am as appalled by the sheer absurdity of this proposal. What it means is that a person might now be sectioned under the Universal Credit regime before they have even received the first payment from it. How on earth could anyone have thought this up?
But what most annoys me about this proposal is the sheer lack of respect it shows for a person who has lost their job who is now required to react by getting another within four weeks when the decision-making processes involved in that situation are profoundly important to most people, and quite difficult to take because of their wide reaching consequences, none of which facts are respected by this proposal.
No one, from Beveridge onwards, thought that we should have an unemployment support system to maintain those who never want to work, whilst saying which I am aware of the arguments for universal basic income, which I think to be somewhat different. What, however, was proposed as part of the past-war settlement was an end to the curse of poverty, fear and long-term loss associated with involuntary unemployment. The aim was always to provide those in this situation with the support that they needed whilst they re-orientated their lives to new work. The process respected the people in question and was critical to the creation of a society in which all had a chance to prosper.
There is quite literally nothing left of that respect in this proposal. The unemployed person is treated as an object to be redeployed for the benefit of an employer, without any concern for the person's own situation, aspirations, fears or hopes. Humanity is simply stripped from the system: the unemployed person becomes a cog in a machine.
When a political party has reached this state of depravity it is no longer fit to govern.
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Also, I think, without regard to the experience of those with whom the enforced employee is working. There are vacancies for carers everywhere at the moment, people needed to work with all kinds of clients. How will people with educational needs, or the disabled, or the very elderly fare when their “care” comes from someone totally unqualified, unsuited and unwilling to provide it is thrust over their doorstep by this law?
Good question
The paragraph that struck a chord with me was “The government’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, found no evidence that benefit sanctions work, and concluded that they were as likely to force people to stop claiming benefits without getting a job as they were to get them into employment.”.
In my personal situation I was threatened by staff with sanctions to which I could say “or you’ll what?” and as I didn’t receive anything there was nothing they could do. I stopped going after that so I suspect I’m now one of the invisible people.
Not here…..
I was forced out of HMRC 12 month’s ago, by its office closure program. I’m over 60 (just) and had 30+ years service, so my pension is adequate, though not particularly large. I am, however, 18months short of the necessary contributions to get my full state pension. So, I signed on to get the NIC’s credit. For the 1st 10 months I got a nice phone call every couple of weeks, to ask me how I was getting on. We talked about the pandemic and my upcoming operation, but there was no pressure from them to find a job. Not that I have any intention of looking. But, this last couple of months the tone of the calls has changed, they are now very insistent that I should be looking. Fortunately work in the specialist are of VAT I dealt with aren’t to numerous. Happy to make any attempt to sanction me last as long as possible.
I share your concerns. My father is currently reliant on four visits a day from a local care company. They are currently ridiculously short-staffed, at least in part due to COVID isolation.
It used to be a locally owned and managed company, but was bought by a “professional” couple living a hundred miles or so away. The management are abysmal, clearly driven by nothing other than the profit motive, caring not a jot for the welfare of the people reliant on their service.
The saving grace however are the carers who turn up to my parents house and almost without exception provide the best level of care they can, competently, respectfully yet not without humour. With care in other words.
I have worked in that industry myself, it is incredibly hard work, mentally, emotionally and physically. I have the utmost respect for everyone who does it as a career. How someone pressganged into doing it under threat of destitution would cope, I hate to think.
I do not see why my father, and others like him should be collateral damage in the current cabal in the Nasty Party’s continuing attempt to keep power.
Since the dawn of neo-liberalism the number of those seeking work has always been greater than the number of vacancies.
This puerile Tory attempt at reviving a failed policy from the late 20th Century is implicitly premised on an idiotic assumption – that unemployed people can create jobs by trying real hard to look for them.
If this same policy is their response to the Great Resignation then they really don’t get it. The people who resigned and those who are on benefits quite often aren’t one and the same. They’re not going resolve the resignation related issues by bullying the wrong people or by trying to force some enormous mismatch of skills and qualifications.
You say “The aim was always to provide those in this situation with the support that they needed whilst they re-orientated their lives to new work.” I don’t think that was it at all. Social security started with Bismarck, the idea being by giving small but regular amounts of money to the unemployed, the sick and disabled, and those too old and infirm to work, those people were turned into economic assets. Necessity dictated they spend the money they were given, increasing the velocity of money in the economy and creating an environment which encouraged corporate investment. Normal taxation, then as now, took care of any potential problems with inflation. This created what’s now known as a virtuous circle, one we should, if we had any education and sense, be emulating. Instead, we’re cutting benefits. This has the effect of reducing the amount of money in circulation, damaging the economy. Remember, the claimant spends it with the butcher who spends it with the baker who spends it with the candlestick maker. Social security is security for the whole neighbourhood as, when govt’s doing its job, despite the onset of hard times they know there’ll still be money circulating in the economy overall. Financial attacks on claimants are popular but they really shouldn’t be. The fact they are just shows up yet again the ignorance of too much of the electorate.
Thank you Bill Kruse for pointing out so clearly what happens to money after the Government spends it. Yet every time you open a paper or turn on the TV you are likely to hear an expert demand “Where will the money come from?” When what matters is how well the money that the Government spends circulates
Precisely
I might add too, by way of criticism of this absurd policy, there’s no mention of employers and their wishes here. How do the DWP plan on forcing employers to take on completely unsuitable candidates, I wonder?
It is ironic that the puppet masters in the City, whose subjects in government impose this fear and destitution on “scroungers”, are actually a part of the most parasitic and socially useless institution in modern Britain.
UBI could free people to pursue what they are actually good at. Hell, it’s got to be a catalyst for more entrepreneuralism, which I thought was a virtue for conservatives (no Tories to whom I’ve raised this point have ever had a good retort).
At the very least it would lead to more cultural enrichment with artists not struggling just to eat.
I’d much rather we pay artists £1,500 a month to paint whatever they feel like than the QE billions funding a money trader’s yacht holiday in the Med.
At the end of the day, it’s just numbers that matter to the Tories. Not the collective good. They just want blunt figures of lower unemployment, lower welfare payments and ‘balanced books’, without caring about the long term effects.
We are living in the neofeudalist age.
I have some sympathy
Couple of proof reading errors Richard Para “Sanctioned” not “sectioned”; this occurs twice.
“Past-war settlement” – s/be “post war settlement.”
Sorry, was writing through quite a lot of pain this morning
There should also be some sort of guarantee built in to ensure that someone who finds themselves re- employed in a job that they do not wish to remain in can access time for verified training and interview time. Many jobs do not leave much time to take back any control of one’s future.
I wonder if this policy would apply to all? In particular, would it apply to ex-prime ministers? Can you imagine a person needing personal care finding Johnson on their doorstep?
This could lead to a LOT of people taking any job, as required and getting fired within a week or just after their first paycheck.
And in the same paper the Guardian reports HMRC has probably lost £4.4bn in Covid fraud – I assume vastly more than they may save on benefit claim reductions – but this is typical of the Tories – punish the poor and protect the rich
This is so maddening. You can just imagine the overfed, overpaid greedy selfish tories and hangers on sitting round a polished table with their drinks (paid for by us) and smugly grinning as they assign the poor to yet more stress and worry. It is pure evil. Terese Coffee knows nothing of the plight of surviving in low pay Britain. She is evil. Never once does it occur to tory nasties that jobs on offer are too low paid to run a house on. Never once does it occur to the nasty party to ensure employers pay decent wages. Never once does it occur to the nasty party that this added stress and worry WILL result in more alcoholism,domestic abuse, drug dealing and burglaries etc etc etc as it leaves people depressed, angry and hopeless with little alternative but to commit crime to get by.
It is also a myth that there are “hundreds of thousands of unfilled vacancies. Anyone who cares to look at job boards WILL SEE that the same jobs are listed over and over again. MOST of them are listed by several agencies BUT IT IS THE SAME JOB THEY ARE LISTING. The jobs advertised, as anyone who applies for these jobs will know, ARE OVERSUBSCRIBED WITH LOTS AND LOTS OF APPLICANTS.
I applied for a weekend breakfast assistant job at Atlas Hotels paying just £9.35 per hour to cover 6am-10am Saturdays & Sundays. Not a career, not a well paid job, not enough to live on AND I STILL NEVER MADE IT TO AN INTERVIEW!!!! If there was a shortage of workers, and a surplus of jobs, as the tories want us to believe, ATLAS HOTELS WOULD HAVE HIRED ME ON THE SPOT! It is yet ANOTHER TORY MYTH WHICH THEY BELIEVE GIVE THEM JUSTIFICATION FOR PUNISHING THE UNEMPLOYED.
There are also lots of reasons why someone might not feel comfortable in certain working environments. Shyness, social phobias, workplace bullying is commonplace, fear, lack of social skills etc etc etc.
The arrogant tories should remember there but for the grace of God go them.
This policy at a time when the poorest in work and those on benefits are taking very little from the pot already while the rich employers and share holders grow even wealthier on the backs of the poor is sickening and the work of evil minds. So much for “listening to the Labour voters who gave their vote in 2019.” What a joke. The tories have failed to provide decent well paid jobs, they have failed to provide decent affordable housing. We pay more in tax now than ever before as a percentage of income when all the stealth taxes are taken into account as well as income tax AND WE GET THE LEAST BACK FROM GOVERNMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
A SOCIETY is judged on how its weakest members are treated.
This is an absolute disgrace in a so called civilised society.
Thank you
And good luck
Sorry to be pedantic, but I think “nasty” must be a spelling mistake.
All it is, is a very highly developed form of forced labour using lack of money as the leverage.
Reprehensible.
Most people would not be a care worker on the current minimum wage – that’s what stops people doing it. If you started paying £16 an hour and rightly more, you’d might get more take up depending on the cost of living from area to area. People who would be motivated to do it. That’s what our elderly need.
We under value care work as a society horrendously.
Richard, Radio 4 – 6am news,2.37.18 in.
Therese Coffey, to BBC, when the BBC questioned whether these sanctions worked…..replied,”Tax payers, your listeners, are paying for people to get those benefits every week” And the BBC lets them/Coffey get away with it ,by design or ignorance?
. Regards JF.
Ignorance, I think
30 or so years ago I spent some time with a few older Jobcentre staff.
They were very keen to ensure that they always sent good candidates to potential employers because they wanted employers to use them. They were also willing to make decisions about their clients and werewilling to decide that some candidates were ‘unemployable’ and put them on order books – remember those? so they no longer had to sign on.
The proposals make no economic sense, we have a labour and skills shortage so we need to make the best use of peoples skills, that means time to get them in the job they are best suited to, and in the case of a half way decent job that takes time.
The last thing employers want is to be deluged with unsuitable applicants who RE pplying because they have to, not because they want to.
What would help though would firstly for Job Centres to befriend and assist people with a history of long term unemployment or low paid or insecure work so they can get into better paid secure work.
Secondly the Job Centres need to look at how to cut public spending, not by pushing people into low paid work but into well paid secure work, to the extent of nt offering their services to employers who dont provide quality jobs.
I so agree
I remember previous eras of enforced job allocations when I would get fork lift drivers applying for accountancy jobs just because they had to
I know someone who was ordered to interview for a welding job or have their benefit cut. He was epileptic. He tried to tell the advisor he was epileptic to no avail. Result one seriously pissed off employer.
This depends on what constitutes “reasonable efforts” to get a job. Presumably many unemployed will be canny enough to make applications for inappropriate jobs carefully constructed to make it clear they are not suitable / qualified / experienced / etc for a vacancy.
The policy is to keep Tory voters on side which in itself is obscene. Employers won’t employ unsuitable candidates and they may start to tighten up person specs to ensure they don’t have to. The problem will come if they do employ inappropriate applicants and then have to sack people who will then be left unable to claim benefits for a designated period.
This is “punish the poor.”
Tories are more frightening at every turn, they act more like robots than we could ever imagine.
It’s the upbringing, packing them off to public school damages them and giving them Boarding School Syndrome. They’re ill, and it’s being recognised now. They clearly shouldn’t be anywhere near authority.
‘They’re ill’.
I’ve never seen it like that before and I must say it sounds rather compelling.
And somewhat compassionate.
Personally I have grown to hate them – all of them – if you are a Tory to me and in Government you are not worth a light having seen what they have done at first hand since 2010.
I’m not proud to admit such hate but that is how they make me feel. At least I’m not targeting that hate at immigrants, teachers, the public sector and the EU as the Tories and UKIP would like me to do.
But this idea that they are ill and therefore unable to have empathy is quite striking, and it makes the case for removing them and excising them from our society all the more important. And also, the way we do that.
If we ever get a progressive government again, that government will have to be a bloody courageous one – taking MMT seriously and dealing once and for all with public schooling – the cesspit that creates these maladaptive human beings who end up ruining peoples lives because make no mistake that is what THIS Tory party has done.
And it also calls for us – as Timothy Snyder suggests – to learn to understand their point of view or what their needs are – what drives them (it’s not just money – money is an enabler, but it is deeper than that).
It’s a pity in that I always thought – looking through the work of Esping Andersson – that the norther European countries – Sweden, Demark, Finland – had answered that question about what sort of democracy you could have. It struck me odd that Britain never went down that route, choosing instead the American way.
Food for thought.
People write books on this, Pilgrim, try Wounded Leaders by Nick Duffel, also by him try The Making of Them, then there’s Boarding School Syndrome by Joy Schaverien, and the latest on the subject, Sad Little Men by Richard Beard which toute le monde are reading at the moment.
An interesting read which helps understand why we so often get privately educated ministers https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/19/eton-david-cameron-memoirs-leaders-power
Richard, the errant nonsense/myth re. “tax payers money” can be heard on R4 daily, amplified to the extent that it has become part of the BBC news DNA which allows (non critical) tax payers to “bash” benefit claimants who of course are also tax payers. I would suggest, the BBC is guilty (whether knowing it or not) of perpetuating the Government’s insidious and underhand game of divide and rule.
Kind Regards, JF.
Bill,
I’m conversant with the public schooling system and what sort of people it produces. This factor is only one aspect of our mis-rule. Portraying the results as an illness was striking and thought provoking and I rightfully acknowledged that but one swallow dos not make a summer (or should I say ‘dysfunctional society?).
The main emphasis for me however is money and its unequal distribution in society.
I maintain and contend the sort of wealth that is allowed to accrue these days changes people’s behaviour toward their fellow man.
During Thatcher’s ‘get rich economy’ and since, not all the protagonists had to go to public school to be able to treat people like shite or pervert the political system. There is a fair smattering of ‘poor boys done good’ in the establishment.
Dealing with public schooling (I once read an excellent article/history in the Guardian about the history of public schools in the 1990’s I think and it turns out that today’s public schools were essentially good schools stolen from the public and turned into exclusive schools by people whose methods would have put many a Trotskyist to shame) is long over due – changing their name (which is a blatant lie and a clue to their past) would be a start.