Re: Work for benefits : Mon Oct 07, 2013 7:43 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

Part of the answer is the nature of those jobs being of a short term or "casual" nature - I work with a lot of employment agencies and they are very good, extremely proficient in sniffing out and then filling posts for two shifts a week, or ten days shift work spread across three weeks, or similar.

Which is fine and dandy if you are a single person in short term rented furnished accommodation that can be changed with little notice, your own transport and availability 7 days a week - a newly arrived immigrant for instance - but much more difficult if you have been permanently resident in your district for some time with children in local schools, a wife working, a reliance on public transport and most important, a reliance on tax credits or other benefits or even JSA that will be stopped when you take up temporary work, requiring you to go through the whole long winded process of re-applying, and the waiting period, when your temp work comes to an end.

Interesting. You've just provided anecdotal support for what I've suspected for some time. From what I've heard/read, there's also often a situation where the migrant worker will put up with pretty lousy accommodation because they don't intend to stay long-term.

I think I mentioned elsewhere the difficulty of people being able to sign back on after seasonal work – which can cover everything from any form of work in places that benefit from tourism to the agricultural sector, never mind Christmas.

But what you're saying suggests a culture/system that is not geared to the long term and security for the individual/workforce.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:04 am  

Saddened! wrote: Another interesting question is how many of those 2,500,000 want those 500,000 jobs? ... I'm not sure of your point, unless you're trying to suggest that most of them are lazy good-for-nothings. Let's look at the numbers. Best estimates are that there are about 475,000 long-term unemployed ... this will be the category that contains the workshy, so we are still looking at a number greater than 2 million who DO want work. But, of course, not all of those 475,000 will be workshy, there are many and various reasons for being long term unemployed (e.g. 90% of employers don't feel confident hiring someone who has been out of work for more than six months(*) ) ... so the over-2-million estimate of those wanting work is probably a very low one. Saddened! wrote: ...Why are there still skills shortages in a lot of industries in this country... Again, I'm not sure of your point. I'd suggest there are many reasons for skills shortages but I can't see how workshyness is a logical contender as a major reason. Saddened! wrote: ... and why do so many Eastern Europeans regard the UK as easy street because of how easy it is to find jobs? Do they? Reports I have read suggest that more than half go home disillusioned and broke, having not found the streets paved with gold. Also, many (or maybe even most) Easterners who arrive here are single, mobile, have no ties, are used to much lower wages and have few outgoings to pay for. (*) Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs ... -work.html Whilst the BCC is crap at economics, it can conduct a poll adequately enough.

Saddened! wrote: Another interesting question is how many of those 2,500,000 want those 500,000 jobs? ... I'm not sure of your point, unless you're trying to suggest that most of them are lazy good-for-nothings. Let's look at the numbers. Best estimates are that there are about 475,000 long-term unemployed ... this will be the category that contains the workshy, so we are still looking at a number greater than 2 million who DO want work. But, of course, not all of those 475,000 will be workshy, there are many and various reasons for being long term unemployed (e.g. 90% of employers don't feel confident hiring someone who has been out of work for more than six months(*) ) ... so the over-2-million estimate of those wanting work is probably a very low one. Saddened! wrote: ...Why are there still skills shortages in a lot of industries in this country... Again, I'm not sure of your point. I'd suggest there are many reasons for skills shortages but I can't see how workshyness is a logical contender as a major reason. Saddened! wrote: ... and why do so many Eastern Europeans regard the UK as easy street because of how easy it is to find jobs? Do they? Reports I have read suggest that more than half go home disillusioned and broke, having not found the streets paved with gold. Also, many (or maybe even most) Easterners who arrive here are single, mobile, have no ties, are used to much lower wages and have few outgoings to pay for. (*) Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs ... -work.html Whilst the BCC is crap at economics, it can conduct a poll adequately enough.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:10 am  

Mintball wrote:

Interesting. You've just provided anecdotal support for what I've suspected for some time. From what I've heard/read, there's also often a situation where the migrant worker will put up with pretty lousy accommodation because they don't intend to stay long-term.

There is also the oft-quoted but still very prevalent issue of a lot of well educated young people coming to the UK with a debt to repay to families back home, whether that be a real hard money debt run up during education or a moral debt to support elderly relatives, in eastern european cultures its much more common for the young to support the elderly in their own family and "sending money home" is very common - hence the low cost multi-share accommodation being popular to cut down their overheads.

I was in an agency last week when a young Polish (I assumed) lad and his girlfriend turned up at the desk, they had arrived the previous day and were registering for work immediately, he spoke very good English, his girlfriend didn't, he explained that they didn't have transport at the moment but were lodging locally with his ex-girlfriend and that he hoped to buy a cheap car in the next few weeks - their willingness to do any sort of work was almost painful to watch and the good news is that she was offered a job "in the fields" where she'd be transported to wherever they needed her each day and he was offered a post starting the next day in a hi-tech local factory which he said he could get to, he was a degree qualified mechanical engineer and they got him on their books as quickly as possible.

So yes, jobs are available and they aren't always jobs that are advertised in job centres because part of the agencies role is to visit all sorts of businesses and sniff out ANY small opportunities, one day a week will do to get a foot in the door and total non-commitment from the employer is ideal for them to fill a post that they wouldn't even think about advertising at the job centre until it became a necessity.

Working with agencies has opened my eyes a lot, the workplace is a totally different world to that which I entered in 1974

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Oct 07, 2013 6:49 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

Another interesting question is how many of those 2,500,000 want those 500,000 jobs?

Why does that matter? Are we not better off concentrating efforts on the say 2450000 ( a figure plucked out of thin air, it seemed to be the nature of this thread) that are desperate to work? The time to chase the workshy is when there are the jobs for them to do, something Blair?Brown should have done before importing cheap labour.

Saddened! wrote:

Why are there still skills shortages in a lot of industries in this country and why do so many Eastern Europeans regard the UK as easy street because of how easy it is to find jobs?

These are related?

Skills shortage happen when employers won't or don't train their own staff but seek to recruit for employers that do.
Eastern Europeans often return home after roughing it and finding the streets are not paved with gold or fill the transient, low skill and short term jobs that some think are beneath them or are trapped in a benefits quandary thanks to the ending of rapid reclaim.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:42 pm  

Some reasonable knock downs I guess. What would your answers be?

Merrily paying benefits for eternity because it's too hard to get a job doesn't seem like much of a way forward.

Re: Work for benefits : Mon Oct 07, 2013 10:30 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

Some reasonable knock downs I guess. What would your answers be?

Merrily paying benefits for eternity because it's too hard to get a job doesn't seem like much of a way forward.

So make it easier to get a job.
Provide proper, personal assistance to those who are unemployed rather than 7 minutes every 2 weeks.
Train those who need it in basics like using a computer.
Help provide funds to those who need it to buy a computer.
Provide help with childcare for those who need it.
Provide transport assistance for those who need it.
Provide much, much more assistance and encouragement to the unemployed to start a new business/idea/product.


Those things would help, but the biggest issue is the lack of jobs.

Re: Work for benefits : Tue Oct 08, 2013 6:00 am  

Him wrote:

So make it easier to get a job.


Those things would help, but the biggest issue is the lack of jobs.

I know I keep making the point but the biggest issue is the lack of 40hr a week Mon-Fri jobs, which lets all be honest, is everyones impression of what they mean when they say "get a job".

As others have pointed out though, what might be needed is a change of attitude towards what the employers are looking for, a more flexible attitude to how and when you work, for the last five years the boot has been firmly on the feet of the employers hence the epidemic of non-committal work contracts, but maybe its how things have to be - after all we are all consumers and its our demands for cheap goods and foods almost 24 hours a day and our demands for retailers to open 7 days a week and stay open for longer, that have at least partly driven the need for a more flexible workforce, we are all to blame not just the employer.

My wife works in the hotel industry where the business is a true 24 hour 365 day a year business and the idea that she or ANY of her colleagues would ever do a 40 hour Mon-Fri routine is laughable and yet the turnover of staff across that industry is huge even though the quantity of weekly hours are generally available to anyone who wants them, maybe they just don't want them ?

Re: Work for benefits : Tue Oct 08, 2013 7:19 am  

Saddened! wrote:

... Merrily paying benefits for eternity because it's too hard to get a job doesn't seem like much of a way forward.

Do you really think that that is what is happening?

What about the number of jobs available as opposed the number of people officially listed as seeking work (there are many people who are working part time, but who want more work. However, as long as they're doing a couple of hours a week or even on a zero-hours contract, they do not count on the unemployment figures)?

Re: Work for benefits : Tue Oct 08, 2013 8:19 am  

Big Graeme wrote:

...something Blair?Brown should have done before importing cheap labour...

I got so concerned about British staff being sidelined in favour of bringing-in non-EU employees that I enquired, via my MP, whether it was legal.
It turns out that it not only was (and still is) perfectly legal it's pretty much encouraged.
Where a company has a presence in, say, India and the UK, it can perfectly legally obtain visas for the Indian employees to come to Britain, temporarily, to do the work.
They are not supposed to be allowed to recruit outside the EU specifically for a UK project but that rule is pretty much unenforceable.

The people thus imported may well be very nice hardworking people with the right skills and I have no beef with them personally, I'd do the same in their position ... but that is not the issue.

It used to be the norm (maybe still is?) that, for a non-EU national to get a visa, the UK employer had to affirm that they couldn't reasonably get anyone in the UK with the right skills and, after maybe a couple of years, they'd be told that they should have trained someone by now and the visa renewal would be refused.
This rule does not apply (or, if it does, is not being enforced) where the employer has a presence in both countries ... I think it ought to.

Re: Work for benefits : Tue Oct 08, 2013 9:10 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

... It used to be the norm (maybe still is?) that, for a non-EU national to get a visa, the UK employer had to affirm that they couldn't reasonably get anyone in the UK with the right skills ...

I thought that that was still the case: there was certainly discussion (at the least) a few years ago, at Parliamentary level, to that effect – or perhaps that was just possible caps being discussed. I remember jockeys coming in the category of skilled workers of whom there was a UK shortfall.

El Barbudo wrote:

... and, after maybe a couple of years, they'd be told that they should have trained someone by now and the visa renewal would be refused...

Not entirely unrelated to Ed M's recent policy proposals, then.

El Barbudo wrote:

This rule does not apply (or, if it does, is not being enforced) where the employer has a presence in both countries ... I think it ought to.

It seems partly to come back to the point that's been discussed here more than once of employers expecting that any new employee is fully trained before they start a job, and thus requires no investment in training by the employer – to the extent of the CBI (IIRC) complaining, a few years ago, about how school leavers were not trained in customer relations.

I don't personally recall employers in 'the olden days' expecting this – or expecting not to train a new employee themselves.

Globalisation and neo-liberalism at work again, it seems.