Confused re attitude to benefits and work experience

going with the prevailing MN philosophy: is DP wasting his time encouraging the children in his school to be the best they can?

are the children wasting their time trying?

Hunty your post on page 14 of this thread has to be THE post of the MONTH.
Talking of childcare falling through, i remember a woman bringing her eleven year old daughter into the office where i worked ten years ago because her babysitter cancelled at short notice and she couldnt afford proffesional childcare.
Thing is it was a sex chatline office so really not an appropriate place for the child to be.
But her mum only had two choices.
Take the kid to work with her or lose a whole nights money and not be able to pay her rent.

and i would expect it to take years.

hunty - if i wanted to save for qualifications i could not afford, i would post on moneysavingexpert & ask for advice about how to cut costs and see if there is any funding i could access.

The physical impossibility of actually doing certain jobs has hit me several times in the last few months.
I was offered a brilliant job in another town. If the bus there ran more than 3 times a day I would have been able to take it.
It's soul destroying.

Actually Hunty, I disagree (although applaud everything else you've said so far).

My nephew left sixth form after a term as it wasn't for him. Got a job as a shelf stacker in sainsburys. He's a bright boy but just not enthused at school.

He's now a Deputy Store Manager. He worked really hard, always on time, always willing to stay late, staff and customers loved him - so the management gave him a chance and put him through the training.

My other nephew worked really hard a university, gained a good degree in a 'proper' subject and now can't get a job for love nor money.

yy @ hunty, and that's if you can do a job in a supermarket.
They are open from 8 until 8. And all weekend. Ditto call centres.
In many parts of the country retail and call centre work is all thats available. Single parents usually can't do shift work.
Obvs thats our fault for not being clever enough to keep a decent man, but it does make it much harder to find work that you can do within childcare hours.

The facts as I see it are thus:

Real jobs in real industries have been massively diminished, leaving service industry McJobs.

Wages are artificially low and businesses are being subsidised by the government, leaving millions of families dependent when they really don't want to be.

The majority of people on benefits are actually working-this is a fact, it's in the figures from HMRC.

Transport costs are soaring (seen the news this morning?) at the same time bus services are being slashed, making it harder and harder to even get to work.

The poorest and most struggling are having their lives made even harder to placate the misguided and gullible members of the electorate who seriously beleive that the deficit is caused by the welfare bill.

How do you PAY FOR THOSE BLOODY QUALIFICATIONS THOUGH???

Tilly, I fear you just don't live in the real world. I so WANT to do an OU course. It costs over 1/3 of my TOTAL income that I need to feed my dc and keep them housed. As it would were I in employment. I JUST CAN'T AFFORD IT, regardless of whether I am in work or not.

Anything less than a degree level course is just tinkering at the edges, for my own amusement - because it just WON'T lead to a greater income, in my town. A town where a manager of a large supermarket only commands a wage of £25.2kpa. In my town IN the SE - that is classed as a wage that most could only DREAM of. And they are expecting a degree in Business management as a prerequisite of the job. So anyone without a degree is unlikely, in my town at least, where we have VERY high housing costs, and very high childcare costs, to earn much more than £17k MAXIMUM, in a SKILLED job, without a degree.

Try surviving on less than £11k before tax - that's what the lowest paid have to do. Then imagine that they still have to pay the same living costs as you. Without any top-ups from Tax Credits and Housing Benefit - it would be impossible.

According to OP we should hand over what we did buy when working, we have no right to own it. Job prospects look bleak and worsen every day as it is one day longer on the scrap heap for employers to look down their nose at.

hunty - If you start a job as a shelf-stacker today, you will still, in 99% of cases, be working as a shelf-stacker when you retire.

only if you stay in that job. & there might not be other jobs now but in 3 years the economy will be back up & running. time enough to get more qualifications etc.

And YY to Wooly's post about the lack of real, meaningful career progression in low-paid jobs. It's practically IMPOSSIBLE now for a basic shel-stacker to progress to even lower management positions - these all go to University graduates, even if the applicant has worked in the company for 15 years, and therefore has plenty of RL experience. If you haven't been to Uni, you can kiss goodbye to ANY chance of becoming even an Assistant manager, let alone anything higher.

If you start a job as a shelf-stacker today, you will still, in 99% of cases, be working as a shelf-stacker when you retire. Your wages aren't enough to enable you to support a family AND get more qualifications, so you cannot hope to educate yourself out of your position in the company, your career progression route has been closed off as the position MUST be advertised extrnally, which means that Uni graduates apply, and who is going to take on a shelf-stacker as lower management, when they will NEED to be trained to do the job, when they can hire a Uni graduate who has done a degree in business management (because their PARENTS can afford to support them through Uni), who won't need anywhere like as much training.

So there is just no way out of the position of being low-paid. Yes, your wage will rise when you turn 21 - but it then stays the same until you retire. A shelf-stacker who has 20 years of experience is paid no more than a 21yo who started the job yesterday. And THAT is real life for most of those in NMW jobs now.

rabbit - do you take on people with no experience in your sector? depends on the role.

hecuba - of course hard work doesnt stop redundancy. but hasnt your DH 'shard work benefited him/you in the past & will do in the future?

That poor man he could have sat back on benefits but he tried so hard to do the right thing and is punished for it. Never mind though eh, at least it will keep people like tilly and the OP a poor person getting proper punishment. His MP won't need to bother about him, after all he can't vote now. Winners all round. .

You work hard, do a very low-paid job, for no recognition towards your contribution to society, then end up being made redundant (without redundancy pay) when the NMW goes up, and your employer decides he has to let one member of staff 'go' in order to continue to pay the others the new, higher NMW. Which not only leaves you BACK on benefits - it can leave you without any help with your rent for 6+ weeks while the Housing Benefit department reassess your income - which can mean that you get evicted for non-payment of rent.

You take a succession of short-term jobs because that is all that is available for you locally - you then meet the same situation wrt housing benefit, there is a case local to me where the dad in the household took a job for 4 weeks, to get off benefits, and this meant that his Housing Benefit was put in a pile to be reassessed when he came OFF JSA, and then put in another pile to be reassessed when he went back ONTO JSA when the job finished - but the first reassessment hadn't been completed. In the end, he was evicted from his house, he and his pregnant girlfriend are sleeping in his car, he is unable to find any employment because he is of 'no fixed abode', the council will not even temporarily house him because he made himself 'intentionally homeless' by being unable to pay his rent, and his 7yo DD (from his first marriage, the mother died) is having to stay with his old neighbours.

You tae a job, you work hard, you expect to be able to afford to cover the essential costs of living IN THE UK and some of what the OP calls 'luxuries', that other, higher paid workers get to enjoy, like a washing machine and the internet.

OK, people in other contries have it worse than us. But that ISN'T going to change the fact that successive UK Governments have seen the lowest paid as 'tools' to utilise to forward economic success of 'UK plc'. We are expected to work hard for LESS than it costs to SURVIVE in this country, in order to increase wealth for a select few. We low-paid tend not to give two shiny shits about increasing wealth for a select few if we aren't allowed a standard of living that allows for covering the costs of housing in this country (Rent and Council Tax), the costs of staying alive in this country (Gas, electric, water and food), the costs of GETTING to that job WITHOUT having to walk the horrific distances that those in the third world are expected to do (Petrol for a car, and the associated costs of running a car, OR the cost of public transport), and to cover childcare (Employers in the UK would take a MUCH dimmer view of people turning up to work with their baby strapped to their back, or a 4yo running around), and a few labour-saving devices like a washing machine, the internet and a vacuum cleaner. We also expect a small amount of money to spend on leisure pursuits - such as a TV and a TV license, money to take our family on a day-trip two/three times a year.

We expect for our families just a tiny proportion of what the wealthy get - we don't expect our wages to cover a week's holiday, even in the UK, much less abroad. We don't expect our wages to cover a sports car. We don't expect our wages to cover a house big enough for two children to have a room each, much less to have spare rooms. But WHY should the people who DO the work that enable to wealthy to have these things, and much more besides, when we can't even have a fraction of that?

People on MN talk about how a SAHM 'enables' their DH to go out to work, and they should be afforded the respect that goes along with doing that - well the low-paid 'enable' the wealthy to become wealthier, and we expect to be afforded the respect that goes along with THAT. NOT to be treated like we should shut up, stop answering back, and accept that the wealthy get to pay us peanuts (give us no money to spend and have to go cap in hand to them, on bended knee, no different from the men that those on MN say are wrong) and yell at us for not working hard enough (equivalent to not doing the housework that some men moan at SAHM's about while they are HARD AT WORK, as if the SAHM isn't). Well - using that analogy, the Wealthy are behaving like a controlling partner who most on MN would yell 'Leave the bastard' at.

CAn you see YET why the low-paid are getting fractious? It's no different from the SAHM who has to go cap in hand to her DH when she wants a haircut, and is made to justify herself, or who gets shouted at for not doing the housework, i.e. not working hard enough, while he is at work. If a SAHM shouldn't put up with being treated like that, and should 'call' her DH on that behaviour, then why should the low-paid put up with being treated like that, why shouldn't they 'call' the wealthy on that behaviour??

Well said wooly.

Can I give an example? Yes. I work in Education for an institution that employes over four thousand people. For every 'senior' post there are literally hundreds of 'junior' posts. Every time a senior role is advertised (infrequently) there is a huge number of applications - usually more than a hundred. There simply are not enough better paid roles for people to move into, so people stagnate in roles for years, or even decades, despite having Masters levels or Doctoral qualifications. If they could find work outside the organisation they would, and no doubt a few manage to do so each year, but our local paper had seven jobs advertised this week. Yes, seven.

I don't know why you're being so obtuse about this, Tilly. Do you really believe that if people 'word hard' they will be rewarded? Do you believe there is a proper career path for bus conductors, shelf stackers, canteen staff, admin workers, call centre staff, that means EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO WANTED TO and was prepared to work hard to achieve it could have career progression? If you really do believe that, then I would respectfully suggest that you're talking out of your arse.

TheRealityTillyMinto - do you take on people with no experience in your sector? Or do you expect other employers to have started them off for you?

People can work hard and still become unemployed. You are right about one thing tilly you really don't get it. These people didn't aim to become unemployed, they worked hard with the aim of staying in work.

My Dh worked hard; he went in early, worked late (without asking for more pay), worked through lunch, he walked miles to still get to work when we had the bad weather yet he was still made redundant.

I know quite a few successful people who don't believe in hard work for the sake of hard work.

Putting money into a pension and hoping to get more at the end of the day than you put in is trying to avoid hard work, isn't it? You don't want to work until you die, so you try to beat the system. You don't invest your money on the stock market to help companies' finances, you do it to help your own. It's called capitalism. Capitalists expect their money to work for them, they don't necessarily expect to have to work for their money and they see others benefiting at the same time as an occasional by-product of their own activities, but not an essential one.

Hecuba - the HR person was probably from a large company. i always look for the great person who can easily be overlooked because they are a good opprtunity for me & i for them.

What sort of staff development do you offer? newest technology which is what staff/clients want
Is everyone in your business on an upward projectory? yes, except the receptionsit who is nr retirement.
Can they all look forward to meaningful career development with comensurate pay rises? yes, i would be stupid to underpay good staff. they would just leave sooner.
this is the bit i dont understand: Lots of people work hard in dead end jobs and never progress. please can you give an example.

I think there are some who don't believe in hard work. The main problem is that there is a culture of tarring every unemployed person with the same brush. i.e the employer reads no current job and automatically assume they won't work hard.. A poster on another thread who worked in HR said that anyone who was unemployes were automatically rejected at the first sift. What chance do people have? It's prejudice that's the biggest barrier.

can you tell me more about this please: "There's no point pretending to people that hard work is enough, because it isn't. Some people will work really hard to end up in exactly the same place they would have ended up if they hadn't worked so hard. "

i dont get it.

Lots of people work hard in dead end jobs and never progress, never get more than an inflation-linked payrise (if that). You say you employ people, Tilly. What sort of staff development do you offer? Is everyone in your business on an upward projectory? Can they all look forward to meaningful career development with comensurate pay rises? Does 'hard work' always, without exception, mean that they end up in better circumstances?

The bit where someone unemployed worked really hard to get there?

Which bit don't you get?