Tories and unemployment benefits

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pooley P
pooley Aug 18, 2008 13:47:18
Replying to grufty jim

grufty jim wrote:
pooley wrote:
As an employer, I find it extraordinary that there are more people than jobs (as you claim, I don't know the figures so cant agree or disagree).
pooley, it took me (literally) 30 seconds on google to discover the following (direct from the UK government's National Statistics Office):

The unemployment rate was 5.4 per cent for the three months to June 2008, up 0.2 over the previous quarter but unchanged over the year. The number of unemployed people increased by 60,000 over the quarter and by 15,000 over the year, to reach 1.67 million.
...
There were 634,900 job vacancies for the three months to July 2008, down 47,400 over the previous quarter and down 23,200 over the year. Most sectors showed falls in vacancies over the quarter with the largest falls occurring in distribution, hotels and restaurants (down 17,700) and finance and business services (down 16,200).

So there are almost a million more unemployed people than there are jobs available. It's a point that needs to be answered by those who argue that actively punishing those who are on long-term benefits (making them work, in often very unpleasant jobs, for substantially lower than minimum wage) is in any way acceptable.

And it's worth pointing out that extra million is just going to get larger during this economic downturn.

I must admit, I wasn't interested enough to look it up! but am glad that you did....

I think, and this may not be popular, that if you are on benefits for a long time - and are not a full time parent, disabled, whatever - then it is only right to put something back into the community.
It doesn't have to be a degrading job. Volunteer work - with OAP's, Children, Drug dependents, homeless are all worthwhile. As are sports programs for hard up children, counselling, samaritans - fuck the list is pretty much endless.
Get out there, help out, put down the PSP!!!!

G grufty jim
grufty jim Aug 18, 2008 14:35:30
Replying to pooley

pooley wrote:
I must admit, I wasn't interested enough to look it up! but am glad that you did....

I think, and this may not be popular, that if you are on benefits for a long time - and are not a full time parent, disabled, whatever - then it is only right to put something back into the community.
It doesn't have to be a degrading job. Volunteer work - with OAP's, Children, Drug dependents, homeless are all worthwhile. As are sports programs for hard up children, counselling, samaritans - fuck the list is pretty much endless.
Get out there, help out, put down the PSP!!!!

I suspect our positions on this issue are actually so far apart as to make a middle-ground very difficult to find. But I don't disagree with much of what you just said there. So at least we can agree that "encouraging people to take a more active role in their community, rather than sitting at home playing video games" is a good thing.

The thing is. That's actually not what will actually happen if that gets run through the government mangle. And I assume we can, realistically, both agree on that too?

What will happen once this idea is implemented by New Labour or the Tories is that people will have their benefits withheld (essentially threatened with hunger and homelessness) if they don't submit to a regime of mind-numbing menial jobs.

This isn't a return to some bygone age of full employment where the few who were 'between jobs' helped out at the local OAP home or sports club. This is a million-strong army of below-minimum-wage labour entering the market under compulsion. It is a cast-iron guarantee that this will significantly lower the standard of living of those who are currently earning minimum wage for doing mind-numbing menial jobs.

Why? Because private contractors will be given the job of running the scheme. It will become profitable for them to expand their market. In fact, as corporations beholden to shareholders, they will be legally obliged to. Other private companies, eager to cut costs, will begin to farm out their low-skill jobs to Back-To-Work Contracts PLC who have a steady stream of cut-price workers.

And that's not even the half of it. But could you honestly say -- hand on heart -- that the Tories or Labour won't end up with something that looks suspiciously like that?

And still that doesn't even begin to address what I see as the fundamental wrong-headedness of this approach. As I've said before, I view society's obsession with economic activity, with getting people to work, as being completely deranged.

P PMM
PMM Aug 18, 2008 21:26:39
Replying to pooley

I used to be exactly the kind of person you're referring to pooley.

I'm currently a productive member of society. In fact, I want to work more than I do, but I don't like doing promotional work for myself.

I did spend a long time on the dole, and then on the sick. I'm talking about maybe ten years. When I left school, I had sporadic short term shitty jobs, but the longest lasted for only 18 months. That was working as a postman. Getting up at 4 am every morning was playing havok with my drinking, and I stopped hearing the alarm clock go off. Many of the jobs I had were casual labour, for far less than minimum wage. In some cases my "Employer" didn't even pay me. Hardly the greatest incentive for me to pull out all the stops and give my best.

Things do go hand in hand. If you have a problem with substance abuse, you tend to think of your life being very chaotic. In fact it's really very structured. I structured my life around my fortnightly giro and hand-outs from my mum, and structured each day around getting drunk and/or stoned, and playing computer games.

I was bored and lonely beyond words. Much of what I was doing was because life without drink or weed was even more boring than life with it. I knew I had a problem, and didn't want to spend my whole life stuck in that rut. Yet I lacked the vision/courage/whatever to get out of the routine for a very long time.

As to forcing me to work???

You take someone with personal problems and no self confidence, and you force them to do something they don't want to do. That person has to work with people that treat them as scum (ever done agency work and worked alongside wholly employed staff?), doing a job that is meaningless and unfulfilling. What do you think will happen?

The process of climbing out of the holes we dig for ourselves has to be self-motivated. For example, there's no point sending an alcoholic for alcohol treatment if he doesn't want to stop, because he'll just relapse as soon as you put him back into the outside world. Far better to concentrate your resources on those that want to be helped.

In my case, it wasn't about money. But it was about self-worth. I started working a few days a week in a charity shop. Voluntary. For nothing. But something that meant something to me, personally. If you'd forced me to work in the charity shop, I'd have told you to fuck off, or at best I'd have turned up, and done as little as possible all day, just because.

The voluntary work led to a job as a charity shop manager. The volunteers were often a pain in the arse. If I'd had someone there because they were being forced to be there, they'd have been a far bigger pain. I think that if I were running a litter picking crew, I'd want pickers that were motivated, not pickers that I had to cajole and nag and keep an eye on all day in order to get anything done.