Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants #WeAllPayYourBenefits - In Victorian Britain, those unlucky enough to form the ranks of the newly unemployed in the process of industrialisation and urbanisation were placed in workhouses. In return for shelter and food, they were required to work as many hours as the master dictated. Sadly, centuries on, workers in the UK are heading back into the workhouse conditions their predecessors fought so hard to escape. Unemployed people seeking work at their local jobcentres have been appalled to find that the jobs being advertised are not actually jobs, but workfare placements. The Government has a whole host of programmes purportedly in place to support the jobless back into paid employment. Workfare refers to all of the programmes which are mandatory, long term and paid less than minimum wage. No one is arguing that relevant, short term work experience is a useful offer for young and mature jobseekers. But offering an unemployed 21 year old History graduate 2 weeks work experience with the British Museum, at their request – is quite a different proposition from forcing the same 21 year old into 8 weeks stacking shelves at Tesco under threat of sanction. The Government’s Work Experience Programme, Sector Based Work Academies, Community Action Programme, Mandatory Work Activity scheme and The Work Programme all fall into this latter category. It really is the most cynical of ploys – force worker wages below the cost of living, then capitalise on their desperation to remove any remaining rights…then…what? Then the door would be open to zero job security, no unfair dismissal cases, no restrictions on hours, no minimum wages, and no protection from unhealthy or dangerous working conditions. This is the end game. There is an old adage which says ‘the economy makes a great servant but a terrible master’, meaning the economy should exist to serve the society and not the other way round. Unfortunately, the neoliberal project is about making the economy (for ‘economy’ read ‘the short term interests of a narrow pool of capitalists’) King – and workhouse conditions for the poor are just the very tip of that iceberg.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 21:44:28 +0000
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