As the Guardian has reported:
Thousands of jobseekers have been referred to a mandatory work scheme that has done nothing for their employment chances, has made them more likely to claim benefits in the long run, and may have had adverse consequences on their physical and mental health, government research has found.
Published late on Tuesday evening, the Department for Work and Pensions' own assessment of its mandatory work activity (MWA) programme was filed at the House of Commons library just three hours after the employment minister, Chris Grayling, announced that he would be pumping in millions of pounds of extra funding to expand the scheme so it could take up to 70,000 referrals a year.
That's evidence free policy making again, therefore.
But the scheme is no doubt great for the outsourced service suppliers, and no doubt that's the whole motiavtion for its continuation.
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I don’t think it is evidence free policy making at all.
Welfare is an economic tool and the expansion of workfare was part of both parties platforms, it is nothing more than a minor expansion of a financialisation of welfare that has been going on for years. Ed Miliband was clear 100% employment without an industrial policy using welfare. The purpose of welfare is to keep wages low and in 1997 the ground started to be laid for workfare, which has been expanded in many forms since. Welfare has been expanded under every government since the eighties to keep wages low and workfare is the natural result. When Universal Credit is rolled out, half the working families in the country are going to find themselves subject to that demonisation and in receipt of a benefit where ultimately they will be pushed to workfare at some point.
The division between the employed and unemployed is largely a political construct to justify the expansion of policies like these, but it is a construct which allows an entire political media culture to keep busy while we have our futures taken away.
This is maintained because left and right are actually just divisions within our political media- and this is an issue of political consensus so it is never discussed. Most DWP workers fully expected to work for social enterprises and organisations like A4E within a two years of the election regardless of who won.
THis is not a case of policy without evidence. This is a case of a natural progression of policy which has always been allowed because media are only concerned with demonising or patronising those welfare is paid through.
Patronising or demonising us is the bread and butter of public political debate- while the expansion of welfare and use of welfare as a tool of social control has been allowed to go up o the point where both parties were expecting to be able to quietly kick the remains of the welfare state to death.
There is a great deal of evidence to support this policy, the only unexpected thing with this policy, is that those affected shared a platform with our political media and made it impossible for this to continue. In teh year since the cuts the labour press, and the people who deigned themselves ‘leading the fight against the cuts’ because they were thath left wing portion of elite media, including those making bones out of being anti-workfare- worked very hard to push the issue of welfare reform away from discussion. The problem is that our political press are not expected to understand the role welfare plays. This is what allows it to be used this way.
I am not sure I 100% agree
But equally I see the merit of your argument and will reflect on it
Thanks
Lisa
While I follow a lot of what you say about the media presentation of work and welfare, I would say the issues are even more complex. I find it difficult to believe that welfare is deliberately designed to keep wages low. The “supply side” enthusiasts tend to believe that welfare is too high and should be made more difficult to obtain. There was an article on that today in the Daily Excess given free by my local shop-to entice me to buy it next week I suppose.
I do see lots of evidence that people find it “pays” them to be on benefits as wages are so low, especially here in the West Country. Many prefer to work.
I work in mental health and see some people who would be prepared to do almost anything to build up a work record in some cases, and in others, just to get back into work. I also meet some who will try very hard to avoid it; some out of fear and some out of laziness.
I agree with Richard’s recent comment that we have to tolerate a minority of these in a civilized society but there also should be some effort to get them into work if possible for their own sake and that of their families. Short of a modern version of the workhouse, I’m not sure how.
I also heard of a local resident coming through Heathrow and seeing a sign about our local Somerset town advertising jobs in a supermarket distribution centre. He recently worked there and was the only local man in one department.This is backed up by a man I spoke to earlier this year. He had a steady semi-skilled job for twenty plus years and then applied for a similar job at this centre, The post, he says, went to a Pole. His friend reported a similar experience.
I have a lot of respect for the Polish people I meet so I’m not making an anti-immigrant point. Some local employers have told me that they will hire them ahead of British with no recent work records. Much of this is employer prejudice and not fair in most cases.
So at what level do we start to think about improving things? The invisible framers of government policy who want low wages as you imply: the actual politicians:the media; the employers (perhaps molded partly by the media):low wages or the “underclass” as described by Charles Murray?
There won’t be any Universal Credit. Firstly they’ve dropped any plans to include Council Tax in it so it won’t be universal. There goes its raison d’etre right there. That exclusion means councils will have to devise their own individual systems which will all have to integrate with the proposed UC system. That’ll be difficult because it doesn’t exist and there’s no realistic suggestion it will by next year or even next decade. The Tories are backpedalling about its introduction already and are now saying only a piece of it will be introduced, for new claimants only, next year. We should forget it until it happens, if it ever does.
Ultimately the tories can rely on the ignorance and disinterest of the left wing media, which is why they didn’t receive any opposition this year. The left wing media and Labour press deliberately erased workfare from political narratives SO it could be expanded and were quite happy to do whatever it took to keep it that way.
Exactly Richard, even the department that is running the MWA can’t find any evidence for its success, so what is the point ot it? To provide private profit via the taxpayer, and probably to try and make unemployed peoples lives even more miserable.
No surprise that this ever expanding pool of free labour is now having a serious impact on the availability of paid work. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence coming out about companies ditching paid staff one week, and the next replacing them with a conveyor belt supply of unpaid MWA serfs.
In keeping with my jobseekers agreement I do regularly peruse the Job Centre Plus listings. Things are already very grim, Grayling’s plans are only going to make matters worse. It is interesting to note that a core component of Conservative dogma is not intervening in markets, and yet this ideological precept seems to have been set aside with regards to the employment market.
And also driving down wages.
I agree with Lisa above that the “left wing media” are ignorant. In particular, the Guardian witters on ad nausiam about work on this scheme being “unpaid”. It isn’t unpaid: those involved get the same as they’d get on benefits.
Maybe that pay is insufficient (per hour or per week). But that’s a separate point.
The Guardian is clearly into the business of propaganda rather than serious analysis, which just induces me to keep myself informed by looking at other sources of information.
They get benefit plus reasonable travel cost.
That would be about two quid an hour, for a forty hour week.
In many cases their “employer” would be a company contracted to the DfWP, and would ignore things like the HSW act and the working time directive. In effect they are the English “gangmasters”. To be honest about it…….finding work through the jobcentre is a waste of time……many of their advertised “jobs” are self-employed (look at the revenues definition of self-employed), commission-only or no longer available. In truth the jobcentre is only a job agency for low-paid work.
The whole workfare issue is an absolute waste of time and money. There are far more unemployed than there are jobs, and putting them with a private company that tries to force them to get a job makes no difference to that.
Mandatory Work Activity is a punishment for a naughty doley that doesn’t apply for work, or reneges on another part of the contract that is signed when signing on for the jobseekers allowance.
The unfortunate doley is then forced to work, for an amount of time as a sanction. If this were administered fairly I would have no problem with it, but it isn’t. If the miscreant were to do some kind of community work it would not be so bad, but they aren’t. They are forced to work for a private company for nothing more than there dole. Ralph, you are either naive or maybe you’ve suffered from the awful things that the tories did to education last time they were in power?
MWA is nothing more than another encroachment on the working class, forcing us to be scared, and to accept any old crap job for the minimum wage, or in this case even less than that.
Why should tesco, and all the other large companies that have been given workers recently pay wages when they can have staff for free? Would you pay for things if you could have them for free?
It’s yet another way for the rich to get richer and the poor to get nervous.
I’m fighting it, and I suggest that others do the same, look at the boycott workfare website for more details…