[DaveO]

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 1:12 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

Making the unemployed work to earn their benefits is a perfectly reasonably policy. They are getting paid anyway, so why shouldn't the community benefit from that? There are always tons of community projects that never get done due to the cost that could be completed. Sure there are logistical issues and set up costs to all this, but once setup, I can't see how anyone can argue with it?

It's very easy to argue with it if you give it just a moments consideration.

In New York they implemented a similar policy and got the unemployed to work on the parks. The net result was the parks staff employed by the city lost their jobs. The were replaced by the cheap labour the city now had available to it.

That is one kind of side side effect. How would you suggest we avoid a similar outcome here? I mean if we get the unemployed cleaning chewing gum of the streets or picking up litter there really is no need to pay someone a full time wage to do the same is there?

You also seem to be ignoring the fact there aren't any jobs to go to. The number of vacancies is far less than the number of unemployed so what is to be done? If the government can create jobs out of thin air for these people why can't it pay them a proper wage to do it? In a weak labour market such as we have now this scheme will do absolutely nothing to find these people proper paid employment so the only conclusion is that it is some kind of punishment for daring to be unemployed.

If your community projects require labour then they need to be paid a wage for doing it otherwise they simply undercut paid employees resulting who would normally do it being made redundant as well. We can either afford these projects or we can't. It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest we can get them done using slave labour which is what your really suggesting even if you think you are not.

If you look and do some research there is plenty of evidence out there that such schemes are counter productive and actually encourages employers to avoid anyone who has been these schemes as it stigmatises those on them.

Finally the maximum community sentence that a judge can hand out is for 300 hours, but claimants on six-month workfare schemes are already being forced to work without pay for 780 hours. The four-week Mandatory Work Activity scheme is already the equivalent of a medium level community service order that a person might receive if they were found guilty of drink driving or assault. In other words being long term unemployed gets you treated as a criminal. What a fantastic country we live in!

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 1:12 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Since they couldn't get anyone to report yesterday's demo of 50,000 in Manchester – or were barred from it by G4S ...

Yet they could report on the two Ex Service men who stood up to Philip Hammond but no word on the the NHS demo, crazy, crazy world of reporting.

[DaveO]

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:04 pm  

There is an excellent comment in the Guardian as to why this proposal is basically imorral http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27479082 In case the link doesn't work it says this: Where's your 'morality' in making someone in their 50s, made redundant 2 years ago because of the financial crash, having worked since they were 16, being made to do workfare because employers are loathe to take on older people? Someone in their 50s, having worked since they were 16, paid in all those years, did the 'right thing' and now told they have to clean graffiti to 'earn' the paltry amount they're given on JSA/UC? Where's your 'morality' when, as with existing workfare programs attached to retail workfare providers, people in paid jobs lose hours/shifts/over time and even jobs, because employers know they don't have to employ people any more than they have to because of now endless conveyor belt of exploited labour from the JobCenter? First it was retail, now it's carers (the people paid to make old people's meals &c) and now it's council staff paid to collect litter and clean graffiti. Many prisons are already allocated small industry jobs for prisoners. So you now have retail, care work, manual cleaning &c, and light industrial jobs going to people who aren't in proper employment. Yet you can't see the pattern? The overall picture? PRO-TIP: there's no dignity in working a full time job, under the threat of a random sanction, for £71 a week. There is also another comment immediately below it which is one of the best put downs for those who claim to be left leaning but can see no problem with this policy. http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27479519 Again, here is the text in case the link doesn't work. Once more your points are hypothetical & therefore irrelevant to the brutalism of the objective situation. The ordained proposal-to-policy is 30 hours a week of unpaid 'community work', accompanied by circa a further 10 hours a week of evidenced job hunting. Failure to fulfil will result in immediate & summary suspension of subsistence level social security net payments, which will lead to rapid destitution for people who are already severely impoverished. The majority of people longer term unemployed have been prior employed - prior, that is, to the mosts extensive & catastrophic economic downturn since the 1930's. So the contribution of many has been made - via taxation & NI payments. You're perhaps unaffected - not everyone directly has been. Many have, through no direct fault or failing on their own part - & have been catastrophically affected in numerous cases. You say you are 'left-wing'. I'd consider you to be no other than petite bourgeoisie, according to the standard definition: "Petite bourgeoisie (French pronunciation: ​[pətit buʁʒwazi]), also petty bourgeoisie (literally small bourgeoisie), is a French term (sometimes derogatory) referring to a social class comprising semi-autonomous peasantry and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance is determined by reflecting that of a haute (high) bourgeoisie, with which the petite bourgeoisie seeks to identify itself, and whose bourgeois morality it strives to imitate. The term is politico-economic, and references historical materialism. It originally denoted a sub-stratum of the middle classes in the 18th and early-19th centuries. In the mid-19th century, the pre-eminient theorist of socio-politico-economy, Karl Marx, and other Marxist theorists used the term petite bourgeoisie to identify the socio-economic stratum of the bourgeoisie that comprised small-scale capitalists such as shop-keepers and workers who manage the production, distribution, and/or exchange of commodities and/or services owned by their bourgeois employers." Osborne & associated scum will be well happy to encounter & to continue to control your kind of non-existent 'left-wing'. Two of the best comments I have ever seen in relation to why this policy is totally wrong.

There is an excellent comment in the Guardian as to why this proposal is basically imorral http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27479082 In case the link doesn't work it says this: Where's your 'morality' in making someone in their 50s, made redundant 2 years ago because of the financial crash, having worked since they were 16, being made to do workfare because employers are loathe to take on older people? Someone in their 50s, having worked since they were 16, paid in all those years, did the 'right thing' and now told they have to clean graffiti to 'earn' the paltry amount they're given on JSA/UC? Where's your 'morality' when, as with existing workfare programs attached to retail workfare providers, people in paid jobs lose hours/shifts/over time and even jobs, because employers know they don't have to employ people any more than they have to because of now endless conveyor belt of exploited labour from the JobCenter? First it was retail, now it's carers (the people paid to make old people's meals &c) and now it's council staff paid to collect litter and clean graffiti. Many prisons are already allocated small industry jobs for prisoners. So you now have retail, care work, manual cleaning &c, and light industrial jobs going to people who aren't in proper employment. Yet you can't see the pattern? The overall picture? PRO-TIP: there's no dignity in working a full time job, under the threat of a random sanction, for £71 a week. There is also another comment immediately below it which is one of the best put downs for those who claim to be left leaning but can see no problem with this policy. http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27479519 Again, here is the text in case the link doesn't work. Once more your points are hypothetical & therefore irrelevant to the brutalism of the objective situation. The ordained proposal-to-policy is 30 hours a week of unpaid 'community work', accompanied by circa a further 10 hours a week of evidenced job hunting. Failure to fulfil will result in immediate & summary suspension of subsistence level social security net payments, which will lead to rapid destitution for people who are already severely impoverished. The majority of people longer term unemployed have been prior employed - prior, that is, to the mosts extensive & catastrophic economic downturn since the 1930's. So the contribution of many has been made - via taxation & NI payments. You're perhaps unaffected - not everyone directly has been. Many have, through no direct fault or failing on their own part - & have been catastrophically affected in numerous cases. You say you are 'left-wing'. I'd consider you to be no other than petite bourgeoisie, according to the standard definition: "Petite bourgeoisie (French pronunciation: ​[pətit buʁʒwazi]), also petty bourgeoisie (literally small bourgeoisie), is a French term (sometimes derogatory) referring to a social class comprising semi-autonomous peasantry and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance is determined by reflecting that of a haute (high) bourgeoisie, with which the petite bourgeoisie seeks to identify itself, and whose bourgeois morality it strives to imitate. The term is politico-economic, and references historical materialism. It originally denoted a sub-stratum of the middle classes in the 18th and early-19th centuries. In the mid-19th century, the pre-eminient theorist of socio-politico-economy, Karl Marx, and other Marxist theorists used the term petite bourgeoisie to identify the socio-economic stratum of the bourgeoisie that comprised small-scale capitalists such as shop-keepers and workers who manage the production, distribution, and/or exchange of commodities and/or services owned by their bourgeois employers." Osborne & associated scum will be well happy to encounter & to continue to control your kind of non-existent 'left-wing'. Two of the best comments I have ever seen in relation to why this policy is totally wrong.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:17 pm  

Chris28 wrote: O/T but Sky News this morning had a reporter and crew outside his old house as the place was demolished. The infinite facepalm picture sprang to mind. I hope the BBC haven't sent anyone to report it BBC story online, on the front page. So of national importance. Rather than a peaceful demonstration of 50,000-plus from across the UK, about a national subject, organised by a national organisation, in front of a national political party's national conference.

Chris28 wrote: O/T but Sky News this morning had a reporter and crew outside his old house as the place was demolished. The infinite facepalm picture sprang to mind. I hope the BBC haven't sent anyone to report it BBC story online, on the front page. So of national importance. Rather than a peaceful demonstration of 50,000-plus from across the UK, about a national subject, organised by a national organisation, in front of a national political party's national conference.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:18 pm  

Mintball wrote: BBC story online, on the front page. So of national importance. Rather than a peaceful demonstration of 50,000-plus from across the UK, about a national subject, organised by a national organisation, in front of a national political party's national conference. We're all going to hell in a hand cart

Mintball wrote: BBC story online, on the front page. So of national importance. Rather than a peaceful demonstration of 50,000-plus from across the UK, about a national subject, organised by a national organisation, in front of a national political party's national conference. We're all going to hell in a hand cart

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:20 pm  

Chris28 wrote:

We're all going to hell in a hand cart

Aye.

Well – the fourth estate pretty much has.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:37 pm  

A guy on radio said that as things stand he is left with around £16 a week for food, the bus fares to the job centre will be about £4.20 a day (£21 a week), which means after about a week he will collapse from starvation, or sooner if he has to physically work for 30 hours with no money for food left.

Well at least it gets the blue rinse brigade clapping and cheering.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:39 pm  

rover49 wrote:

A guy on radio said that as things stand he is left with around £16 a week for food, the bus fares to the job centre will be about £4.20 a day (£21 a week), which means after about a week he will collapse from starvation, or sooner if he has to physically work for 30 hours with no money for food left.

Well at least it gets the blue rinse brigade clapping and cheering.

I don't know why as they'll be next. Hasn't one numpty tory already said somewhere that pensioners should work for their pensions?

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:51 pm  

Hull White Star wrote: I don't know why as they'll be next. Hasn't one numpty tory already said somewhere that pensioners should work for their pensions? Community work, dear: community work.

Hull White Star wrote: I don't know why as they'll be next. Hasn't one numpty tory already said somewhere that pensioners should work for their pensions? Community work, dear: community work.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:59 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

...Making the unemployed work to earn their benefits is a perfectly reasonably policy. They are getting paid anyway, so why shouldn't the community benefit from that? There are always tons of community projects that never get done due to the cost that could be completed ...

I can see how that is, on the face of it, a tempting idea.
Why should anyone be paid for doing nothing?
But when you look deeper, if someone is doing work, shouldn't they at least be paid the minimum wage?

Either way, this government is keener on sacking public employees than creating new public sector jobs, so we won't see that kind of community work for the unemployed.
Gideon and IDS would far rather donate that workfare time to some already highly-profitable conglomerate who probably shifts their profits overseas.
I can't decide whether they are very stupid or very shifty.