TUC Side With Bosses To Back Tory Workfare Scheme

Posted on August 2, 2014 by johnny void “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” In an astonishing and genuinely sad day for the trade uni0n movement, the TUC have teamed up with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to issue a statement supporting unpaid work. The TUC have sided with the bosses to sing the praises of the Tory Traineeship programme. This unpaid scheme can involve up to five months full-time work, sometimes for giant profit making companies like BT or Virgin. The placements are used to ‘prepare’ young people to be Apprentices, although there is no guarantee that they will be offered even this at the end of the scheme. Just like Margaret Thatcher’s despised YTS schemes, Traineeships represent a wealth grab by greedy employers. Once companies recognised they had to pay young people whilst they trained – now the tax payer will pick up the tab whilst the worker gets nothing. And just like the YTS programme was used as political cover to strip benefits from 16/17 year olds, Traineeships will be used to undermine social security payments for those under 25. George Osborne has already announced that under 22 year olds who refuse a Traineeship will soon face the prospect of six month’s workfare somewhere else instead. Despite Osborne’s announcement, the TUC say in the statement that Traineeships should be voluntary. As claimants themselves know, very little is voluntary such is the current mass benefit sanctioning culture at the DWP. This doesn’t seem to bother the scabs running the TUC who seem to have decided that Traineeships aren’t workfare, and even if they would rather they were voluntary they appear to back them anyway. This is an appalling attack on not just young unemployed people, but all workers who will see their own wages and conditions undermined by an army of unpaid staff. It is hardly surprising that the CBI are salivating at the prospect of this huge subsidy for business at the expense of the working class. Tory Skills Minister Nick Boles has joined them saying he is ‘delighted’ that the TUC support this scheme. They no doubt dream of a day when they don’t have to pay people under 25 at all. That day may not be far away and that the TUC are helping to bring it closer is as shocking as it is shameful. This blog has no sources of funding so here’s a quick reminder that you can help ensure it continues by making a donation. Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

The RNIB, benefit sanctions and the DWP

Whilst many of my blind friends have their views in terms of the RNIB I do think this issue needs bringing to that attention. I personally have no problem with them as it stands and to get nit picky with an organisation that is looking to put sight loss on the mainstream is foolish at best and stupid at worse. In the guardian today a RNIB spokese person had the following article published which I felt worth sharing for all. “Charity considering dozens of cases against department relating to their failure to send out benefits letters in braille or large print • • The Guardian, Wednesday 19 February 2014 20.29 GMT The RNIB said one claimant was forced to take out payday loans to feed himself after DWP advisors stopped his ESA and housing benefit. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is threatening the Department of Work and Pensions with court action for suspending the benefits of a blind man after he missed appointments which he was only informed about through letters he was not able to read. The RNIB has prepared five legal cases against the DWP and said it was looking into a further 50, which relate to the department's failure to send out benefits letters in braille or large print format . In a number of cases, the DWP suspended recipient's benefits leaving them in desperate circumstances, the RNIB said. The charity's intervention emerged as the DWP published figures showing the total number of sanctions against benefit claimants in the year to September 2013 was 897,690, the highest figure for any 12-month period since jobseeker's allowance (JSA) was introduced in 1996. The figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions cover employment support allowance (ESA) and JSA. The figures published yesterday also showed that independent tribunals were upholding nine out of 10 appeals against the DWP. Before the coalition, the number of successful tribunal appeals in any 12-month period was well under 2,000. It has risen to more than 14,000. The RNIB said one claimant – a blind man in his 30s who only wanted to be named as Robert – was forced to take out payday loans to feed himself after DWP advisors stopped his ESA and housing benefit on numerous occasions over a two-year period. After having worked most of his adult life, the man from Essex began receiving ESA in October 2011 and asked the DWP to send him communications in braille. But discrimination lawyer Samantha Fothergill who is representing Robert in the county court for full financial damages and injury over his benefit suspension, said he was only ever sent regular print letters which demanded further information and his attendance at appointments. The deadlines for the DWP's demands lapsed before Robert could get outside help to read the correspondence and his benefit payments were stopped. "His benefits got suspended but the letters also telling him they were suspended weren't accessible to him. So he didn't know. The first he heard about it was when his direct debits from his bank account stopped getting paid." Racking up bank charges, and extra payments, Robert was eventually forced to take out a payday loan at a steep interest rate to pay for food. Fothergill said he eventually received backdated payments plus a consolatory payment of £50 but remains "very angry". "We get these complaints all the time," said. She added that the DWP's system for sending out accessible information was "appalling" and "not fit for purpose". The DWP were "making blanket decisions" to sanction people rather than looking at their individual circumstances. The DWP said it could not comment on individual cases but that forms were available in braille or large print and that advisers were "on hand to help". "Anyone who has their benefits suspended should contact us and can, if necessary, appeal," the spokesperson added. The RNIB's threat of legal action comes as Archbishop Nichols, the most senior Catholic in England and Wales, said the Coalition's benefits system was becoming increasingly "punitive" and was leaving people destitute. Responding in the Telegraph on Wednesday, David Cameron rebuffed the criticisms saying that benefit reforms introduced by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, were part of a "moral mission". The total number of JSA sanctions in the year to 30 September 2013 was 874,850, the highest since the payment was introduced in 1996. It compares with 500,000 in the year to 30 April 2010, the last month of the previous Labour government. In the year to 30 September 2013, there were also 22,840 sanctions imposed on claimants of ESA – the chief benefit for the sick and disabled – in the work-related activity group. This is the highest for any 12-month period since sanctions were introduced for claimants in October 2008. The figures were taken from the latest quarterly set of sanctions totals published by the DWP. Ministers have conceded the issue needs addressing by setting up an independent inquiry into how benefit sanctions are communicated to claimants. Critics claim the DWP is operating a culture of fear with jobcentre staff given implicit targets to sanction claimants. The large numbers come before the government introduces tougher rules that will require claimants to do more to prove they are actively seeking work. The success rate of those sanctioned claimants who take their cases to an independent tribunal ran at 20% or less under the previous Labour government. Under the coalition, it has risen dramatically to 87% in the 3 months to 30 September 2013. Duncan Smith said: "This government has always been clear that, in return for claiming unemployment benefits, jobseekers have a responsibility to do everything they can to get back into work. Research by the Disability Benefits Consortium, the RNIB said, showed an increasing number of disabled people are becoming reliant on food banks as a result of sanctioning policies. Steve Winyard, RNIB's head of campaigns and policy, said that thousands of disabled people were losing payments as a result of sanctions, and that included many blind and partially sighted people. "Too often DWP and its agencies are not providing people with the information on what they need to do to receive benefits in accessible formats, like braille or large print. RNIB has won cases against DWP for these very failures. But sanctions have led to blind and partially sighted people being forced to rely on food banks whilst they wait for the government to correct its own mistakes," Winyard said. “

This week: take action to stop workfare and sanctions

The Week of Action Against Workfare and Sanctions begins tomorrow (Monday December 2nd) with a noise protest outside the annual welfare-to-work conference. There will be online actions everyday, announced on the Boycott Workfare website (and probably here a bit later). Tomorrow will see online action aimed at the ERSA conference where delegates will be tweeting using the hashtag #ERSA2013 – more details are to come on how to challenge the poverty profiteering conference online. Please help spread the word and share, tweet and blog details of all events both on and offline! Here’s the list of what’s taking place so far via Boycott Workfare: Things are very wrong: each month 70,000 people face hunger and hardship due to benefit stoppages – ‘sanctions’. Millions of hours of work which should be paid are being replaced by workfare. But we’re taking action and having an impact. This week, from 2-8 December, join thousands of others across the UK to push back against sanctions and workfare – with action online and on your high street. Here’s the latest list of actions planned across the UK. Let us know if you’re planning something too and check back here Monday-Friday to take online action every day. Edinburgh: flyering all week and a demo on Saturday 7th Cardiff: Wednesday 4 December at 6:30pm, Marks and Spencer – 72/76 Queen Street, Cardiff London: • Noise Demo at workfare industry conference at the University of London, 12.30pm 2nd Decemeber • Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group demo at Hammersmith Job Centre against the introduction of Universal Credit. Meet 11am on Wednesday 4th December at Hammersmith Job Centre, Glenn House, 22 Glenthorne Road, W6 0PP • M&S picket, Islington – Sunday 8th December 1pm outside Holloway Road M&S • M&S picket, Wood Green – Sunday 8th December 2pm outside Wood Green High Road M&S (Nearest tube: Turnpike Lane) Reading: Saturday 7th 4pm at Reading town centre. Planning meeting for the action on Tuesday at 7pm. Please sign/share/tweet the petition calling for all benefit sanctions to be scrapped without exceptions: http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/benefit-sanctions-must-be-stopped-without-exceptions-in-uk?bucket&time=1385073159

Disabled people feeling the pain from workfare, the misery must end !

The number of claimants on sickness and disability benefits facing sanctions looks set to have doubled since December last year. 11,400 claims were slashed for failure to participate in work related activity or missing a meeting with the Jobcentre in the seven months between December 2012 and June 2013. This compares to 10,130 sanctions inflicted on claimant's of sickness or disability benefits in the previous 12 months. Sanctions have also soared for people on the mainstream unemployment benefit Jobseeker's Allowance, with the DWP boasting today that over half a million claims have been sanctioned between November 2012 and June 2013. Benefit sanctions lead to desperate poverty and are often handed out for the most trivial of reasons. A recent report by Citizens Advice warned that sanctions have led to people to attempting suicide, becoming homeless or resorting to begging or going through bins for food. This is all wonderful news according to Employment Minister Esther McVey who today proclaimed: "We always make the rules very clear – it’s only right that there is a penalty if people fail to play by them." The trouble is many do play by the rules as they are known but still find themselves sanctioned and in deprivation as a result including many disabled people. There are many reports of people being sanctioned for some incredible reasons and many are quite farcicle if we are honest. At the fantastic Johnny Void blog who i follow closely now on a recent post Johnny writes "Astonishingly many of those who have faced sanctions will have been plunged into poverty by charities who have been only too happy to sell out their service users for free workers and lucrative Work Programme contracts. Household names including the Salvation Army (@salvationarmyuk), YMCA (@YMCA_England) and The Conservation Volunteers (@tcvtweets) have all defended these vicious measures whilst employing countless unpaid workers under threat of sanctions on mandatory workfare schemes. Members of the Disability Works coalition have also got their snouts in the trough. Some of those on sickness or disability benefits who were sanctioned will have had benefits slashed due to 'compliance doubts' raised by charities such as SCOPE (@scope), Mencap (@mencap_charity) and MIND (@mindcharity). These so-called charities are Work Programme sub-contractors and have agreed to report back to the Jobcentre if a claimant misses a meeting or fails to attend 'work related activity'. Charities claiming to support disabled people are now complicit in destroying people's lives by snitching to the DWP that they aren't trying hard enough to find a job. This is despite these claimants having undergone a notorious Atos assessment which has agreed that they are unable to work at present. Appalling however sick and disabled claimants can still be sent to work unpaid on the Work Programme or face sanctions. They may be unfit for work, but they are fit for workfare in the eyes of the DWP. With yet more workfare planned, alongside ludicrous new 'conditionality' for unemployment benefits which expects people to spend 35 hours a week looking for non-existent jobs, the number of sanctions is likely to rise even further. The poverty now being socially engineered by the DWP is unprecedented in living memory in the UK. In one of the richest countries in the world people are now being left to go hungry or homeless with the collusion of charities - whilst the Labour Party boasts they will be even tougher on unemployed or disabled claimants than the Tories. It is down to claimants themselves - and all those who support a welfare state that does not abandon people to destitution for any reason - to fight back against this callous war on the poor. A good place to start is the Week of Action Against Workfare beginning on 2nd December, please spread the word, tweet and share: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=3060 There is also a petition (I know) on 38 Degrees calling for all sanctions to be scrapped. Please sign/share etc: http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/benefit-sanctions-must-be-stopped-without-exceptions-in-uk (It's not all doom and gloom. Disabled people fighting the closure of the Independent Living Fund today had a major victory in the courts.) Above pic via the Benefit Claimants Fightback group on facebook. Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid For quotes and extracts with thanks to Johnny over at http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/benefit-sanction-rate-doubles-for-sick-and-disabled-claimantss/

Stop the sanctions solidarity with boycott workfare.

In the last few days Boycott workfare who can be found on twitter @ boycott workfare and their brilliant website at http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=2474 Were set upon by Youth Fight for Jobs a front organisation for the Socialist party with a vicious piece ripping into them calling them all sorts and not really coming up with any real way to fight sanctions for the unemployed all apart from yes you guessed it the good old ever present call for a 24 hour general strike which lets be honest is not going to happen anytime soon in reality. The article in question which was put out yesterday on the Youth Fight for jobs website written by PCS deputy General secretary John McNally it would seem and Socialist party member was this http://m.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/17601/22-10-2013/how-civil-servants-should-fight-government-attacks-on-welfare "So it's not a moral argument, it's a political question" - err, okay, yeah. Who ever disputed that? In the piece the socialist party claim that "Labour used to draw certain lines in the sand which the Tories and big business couldn't cross" –this is Stupid and wrong from history we only look back at labours time in government and in opposition even back to the YTS scheme labour did not oppose this back then either. But these sanctions can and must be challenged and taken on. The socialist party and the PCS leadership use the saem arguments labour councils do to not fight the cuts and this is quite ironic seeing as the socialist party urge labour councils to not pass on the cuts and to instead to stand-up and fight. Well why can’t the PCS and SP members in the PCS do the same and stand in solidarity with claimants and given solidarity to the working class, the same class they claim to want to represent. The boycott workfare piece is below: Current welfare policies and reforms represent an unprecedented attack on claimants and on the welfare state itself. Conditionality, workfare and the huge rise in sanctions are driving claimants further into poverty and destitution. At the same time a vicious campaign of hatred driven by the media and political classes has stigmatised those on benefits and poisoned public debate. Workfare forces claimants to work without wages under the threat of sanctions. Those on workfare are exempted from legislation that protects the rights of people at work and denied access to union membership and representation. Sick and disabled people claiming ESA can now be forced onto workfare. Workfare drives down wages and conditions for all workers and it is in all our interests to end it completely. Between 2009 and 2011 the number of sanctions handed out to claimants tripled to reach over half a million. In January this year 85,000 people were sanctioned, suggesting that the number of sanctions could reach one million this year. People are now having benefits withdrawn for up to three years (including for failure to participate in workfare). As the PCS have said this increase in the number and severity of sanctions is purely a political decision. As conditionality and sanctions have increased and become more severe so the range of claimants subject to them has been extended. Sick and disabled people found “fit for work” by the hated Work Capability Assessment are now subject to this regime as are single parents with young children. Plans for in-work conditionality will see sanctions applied to part time workers and the self employed. The introduction of Universal Job match and a requirement for claimants to spend 35 hour each week on job search or workfare will inevitably lead to more sanctions and is intended to do so. Plans to make hardship payments a recoverable loan will force those who are sanctioned into debt. Housing benefit is increasingly being suspended where people are sanctioned. This systematic removal of welfare support is causing sharp increases in homelessness and the use of food banks. Boycott Workfare welcome the fact that the PCS have spoken out against workfare and the huge rise in sanctions. We also understand that the primary role of the PCS is to represent their members including around 84,000 staff in the DWP. It should be obvious that there is a tension here where the PCS are campaigning against policies that their own members are required to implement. But there is also the possibility that the PCS could take concerted action to defend the welfare state in the interests of both claimants and their members. Government policies cannot be implemented without workers to implement them. At meetings with the PCS we have raised the possibility of action being taken. Sadly the PCS have been dismissive of our suggestions and they have been met with arguments for inaction. PCS leadership has argued that anti-strike laws prevent action being taken in solidarity with claimants. But the interests of claimants and PCS members are intertwined and these policies directly impact on the working conditions of PCS members. Increased aggravation between PCS members and claimants put both at risk. And under Universal Credit many DWP staff will themselves face conditionality and sanctions. The right of workers to withhold their labour is fundamental. Laws which undermine this right do not comply with international obligations and should be challenged. Without those prepared to take risks and challenge injustice we would not have unions or a welfare state. This is not about blaming those PCS members tasked with implementing unjust policies. We know that the blame lies elsewhere. This is about the role that unions could and should take in building solidarity between workers and claimants and in empowering workers to take action. If the PCS are sincere about campaigning for social security justice then they should refuse to cooperate with the implementation of unjust policies. Words are not enough. Boycott Workfare therefore calls on the PCS to take action to protect welfare provision and to frustrate the imposition of policies designed to undermine it. Boycott Workfare would like to thank those PCS branches who have signed our pledge and those members who have taken part in our actions. We are grateful to members of the PCS in the Civil Service Rank and File Network who put forward a motion to this year’s PCS conference. We urge all PCS members to call for proper debate and practical action on challenging sanctions With thanks to Boycott workfare, The Civil Service-rank-and-file Network