to think most part-time workers don't know what's about to hit them?! (Universal Credit)

[aufaniae]

Do you work part-time and get Working Tax Credit or Housing Benefit?

Did you know that once you're on Universal Credit, you'll be expected to attend the Job Centre to prove that you're looking for better paid work / more hours, in much the same way as unemployed people must prove they're looking for work.

If the Job Centre find an interview for you, you will have to attend (with 48 hours notice) even if it clashes with your paid work.

If you are offered a job with more hours, or better pay than your current one, you will be obliged to take it, even if you have good reason for not wanting to e.g. it's only a temporary post (whereas your current one is permanent) / has no training & worse prospects than your current job / makes picking your children up from school impossible / requires you to travel much further / has nothing to do with the career you're following.

If you don't attend the interview and/or take the job, your UC will be sanctioned, you will lose the UC for months or even years (depending on if it's your first infraction).

You will be forced to continue "upgrading" your job until you earn the equivalent of minimum wage for 35 hours a week.

I suspect there are lots of people (e.g. parents who work part time so they can pick their kids up from school) who will be affected by this, but don't realise it yet.

More info here

Mosman you really don't know what you're talking about.

"If you are going into Nursing then the obvious choice is home care, do you have a car ? If so I'd almost guarantee you'll be offered some shifts with your background. Have you spoken to the course facilitators about HCA roles that might fit around your studies."

Working is discouraged while doing a nursing degree, because of the level of work required for the degree. It's not like an ordinary degree. There is an hourly limit you're allowed to do (I forget what it is now) although you're encouraged not to at all, and if they find out you're doing more than that you'll be asked to leave the course.

In practice most student nurses don't work while studying because the time doesn't allow for it as you have to do your study on top of placements (which are ful time, and can be night shifts, or a even a combination of day and night shifts on the same placement). Nurses don't get the long summer holiday most students get. In my uni for example, they get 2 weeks summer holiday, as they have 3 semesters (whereas the vast majority of degrees have 2 semesters, spread over 3 terms, holiday-wise).

Nurses have been given bursaries while on their degree which have helped, but the funding for nursing degrees is undergoing a review atm, so this may change.

I share a house with a student nurse in her final year, so I've seen with my own eyes the level of commitment required to pass the course - let alone to pass with flying colours.

Mosman also, you really do seem to be having a problem with maths. Let me help you.

"it is bad, of course many people need to retrain, start thinking outside the box, networking.
What I am 99% sure will not work is firing off 10 CV's or applications a week, that's too random, I know it's what the job centre want they are playing the numbers game but a more targeted approach will work."

Yes, there are things an individual can do to increase their chances of getting a job.

However, that's not the whole story. There are not enough jobs. If everyone improves their CVs and does networking or whatever, there will still be as many out of work!

"Between October and December, employers were looking for 463,000 new workers ? though this is some 18,000 fewer than a year before...

The official count of unemployed people ? anyone who is actively looking for work and is available to start immediately if hired ? is 2.68 million.

That is around six people for every vacancy in the country. "

Link

lazybastard I've sent you a PM

Also, the UC works precisely against the kind of thing you are talking sound Mosman, retraining will only be possible if you can find it yourself or if you can fit a full time job around it. When you get to the job centre they want to know ony about the jobs you have sent your CV too.

*The only reason people arent working is because they are not prepared to take a low paid job (hotel work, packing veg etc) as they are better off on benefits."

this isn't true. no-one is better off on benefits than being in work, especially people with children due to working/child tax credits. apologies for cut and paste:

A person under 25 working for the minimum wage for 37 hours a week receives a net salary of £204.36. Jobseekers Allowance for those under 25 is £56.25. The maximum available Housing Benefit for someone under 25 in Birmingham (for example) is £55.

This means that a young person in work, in almost all areas of the UK, is almost twice as well off as someone on unemployment benefits. Even in expensive Kensington & Chelsea the maximum Housing Benefit payment to those under 25 without children is £123.50. This is an exception due to the staggering cost of properties in a London borough which also has it?s share of children growing up in poverty. However a young person working in this borough (on minimum wage) is entitled to £30.49 a week in Housing Benefit. Or at least they were. George Osborne plans to change this.

The situation for working families with children is equally clear. Sadly even some workers at the lower end of the pay scale have bought into the relentless bullshit and bemoaned how they would be better off on benefits. They wouldn?t. No-one is. This is another lie and it?s time to nail it once and for all.*
^^^^^^
I think this bears repeating. Sadly, so many people would rather believe their own ill informed predjudice than the FACTS johnnyv has provided.

And as for working on a nursing degree-you can't. As others have said a nursing degree is work. They are on work placement most of the time.

Antipag just wanted to make sure you were aware of the PPC scheme, so at least if you can pay £30 ish for 3 months that would cover all your prescriptions.

TheLightPassenger, NO I WAS NOT!!! Thank you VERY MUCH!!!! Why had nobody ever told me about this before, or is it something they don't like to tell people because they don't like saving people money???

www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/1127.aspx. It's better to phone rather than e-mail to buy, as if you phone, they tell you the reference number, which pharmacies will accept if the card hasn't arrived in the post yet. I didn't know about this for years either, until my local pharmacy suggested it would be cheaper!

Ifnotnow - yes, people are worse off on benefits, although not 'technically', iyswim. The issue is when you're earning, you lose entitlement to free prescriptions, free school meals, some of your housing benefit and council tax benefit disappears, you have to travel to work and you have to have work clothes which need keeping clean. The biggest issue is childcare - if you have more than one child, the chances are on a full-time job at minimum wage, your childcare costs make it not worth working. Of course, tax credits pay 70% of your childcare, but that still leaves 30% to find. I have three children at a cost of approx £750 a month - which means I'd have to find approx £225 a month on top of everything else (that's about a week's wages at minimum wage). I am sure you can see that at minimum wage, you're coming away with nothing/very little at the end of the month. So technically, you do have more money in your pocket if working than on benefits but how much of it you have left at the end of the month is often very little.

Of course, there are the arguments around not having gaps on your CV, that working leads to promotion and better prospects etc. but when you have to live it, it's very difficult. What needs to be done more than anything is providing good quality, genuine career-orientated education at no/very low cost. I was lucky: when my life imploded (husband walked out leaving me with nothing at all as I was a SAHM), I had a mum to fall back on financially and an education that I was able to manipulate to give me a new career. Probably even more fortunate that I had a baby so I was able to sit on Income Support for a year and volunteer to get some experience to get on a teaching course. I now work full-time but I can see very clearly how life might have gone if things had been different - no family support, lower level of education, no entitlement to Income Support - you take away one of those things and things would have been very different.

As it is, I'll be worse off under Universal Credit and the CSA still hasn't been able to get my ex to support our children. That's not fair at all.

Auf is correct it is a 46 week per year 40 hour per week course. Study and assignments are on top of this. On placement you tend to follow the shift pattern of your mentor for that placement. The course is weighted towards placements. Holidays are split up throughout the year and sometimes are right before exam time. This of course makes me lazy because to think anything else would not feed preconceptions and prejudices against people like me.

It suits the Government for people to think this because it gives a focus for people's anger and hatred rather than them thinking about the state of the economy. It suits individuals to hate us and tell us we deserve it because then in their head they can convince themselves it could never get that bad for them. Sadly it can happen to anyone.

Redundancy is a difficult situation to handle made more difficult by some peoples' determination to make you feel worse. Believe it or not compassion and empathy are not weaknesses. Some people would really benefit from taking a step back and consider how they would feel if it was them then how they would feel if in addition they had to cope with people telling them they are lazy/ stupid/deserve it/can't be trying etc. Look on the bright side, how much energy would be saved by not spouting ill thought out vitriol.

This is a actually the second time I have been made redundant. The first time I was out of work for 2 weeks, didn't claim a thing my last pay cheque was more than sufficient. I can assure you the employment market has changed a lot in the years since then. Not only did I have a job in 2 weeks, I had a choice of jobs within 2 weeks. In the intervening period I have become more experienced and this time I have worked harder at job hunting. So 'just get a job' is patronising and naive. Not having a better job is not through lack of trying.

Another daft Job Centre story :

I have fairly severe epilepsy. Medication does not fully control it. I am barred by law from holding a driving license. The Advisor told me to apply for a travelling salesman job where the job description included the words "MUST have own car and clean driving license." She called her supervisor over when I told her I would not get the job so it was a waste of time applying. She wanted the supervisor to sanction me. Thankfully the supervisor had a modicum of common sense, and saw the flaws in sanctioning someone with epilepsy that cannot LEGALLY hold a driving license for refusing to apply for a travelling job that needed a car and driving license.

Had it been a different supervisor, I may not have been so lucky.

Mosman I'm confused. If I am being selfish and irresponsible to retrain as a nurse why are you now recommending retraining?

Just caught up on the thread and wanted to address scrazy you seem to be saying because you worked (I'm guessing ft) since your dd was three months that is the right choice for everyone.
Can I ask you to read my post about being a single mum if four? I will cut and paste in a second. Also I noticed that you say you raised her alone for 18yrs but that she is now a med student. Doing some maths I presume you were not a lone parent until your daughters infant years were over??
I also was interested to hear your brief thoughts on uni fees?
You obviously feel that the govt should pay for people to be educated which us a separate issue but still classes as that "sense of entitlement" being spoken of here.
My dc whom I raised partly alone whilst working part time did not choose to go to uni but are all contributing to the welfare state by working full time One has been in the front line earning in fact not much more than nmw.
It's no different if the country allows one parent to split their time with their children whilst earning a living than it is paying people's uni fees but the one that affects you I notice you don't agree with.
Interesting.

Auf I've tried to reply to your pm but having technical difficulties so will try again later.

ledkr Sat 02-Feb-13 12:34:49
happy I take it from your user name you have one child? Yes you can work ft as a lone parent of one and still have some time for them I'm sure but try four lots of homework, after school activities which normally all start before work ends and the upkeep of a large family home. Not to mention cooking and shopping for five people plus washing etc.
I am now re married thus can share the load giving the children the parenting they need as well as working. My dc get to attend their activities get support with education, one of us can always attend their school parents evenings and productions.
Why should the children of lone parent miss out on things like that? You cannot compare them with two parent families.
Not scaremongering at all. I have worked with troubled children for most of my adult life. Children need adequate parental input in order to thrive not a knackered over stretched parent with very little time for them.
My other point is school holidays. Myself and my dh can use our leave to be with the children so that they can enjoy their school holidays rather than be shoved into play schemes. A lone parent will have half that amount if holidays to use up so the children will often be in holiday care. That is until they are teens and don't want to go so then are left to their own devices for long periods, and that is never a good thing.

Cut and pasted from page 19 ^^

I don't quite get this thread.

On the one hand there is the scary threat: If you are offered a job with more hours, or better pay than your current one, you will be obliged to take it

then there are the posts saying There are not enough jobs. If everyone improves their CVs and does networking or whatever, there will still be as many out of work . . . That is around six people for every vacancy in the country.

It sounds like scary threat is quite unlikely to happen, if there are six people chasing every job.

Sorry, haven't read the whole thread (tis very long) but surely the simple answer is just to make minimum wage an actual living wage so that working people don't need a top-up from the government. I am endlessly baffled that the minimum wage is not actually high enough to live on!! I'm probably endlessly naive. But I just don't understand why the government is just snatching more and more from the poorest people, most of them decent, hard-working folk or people genuinely unable to work, leaving them with less than nothing, but not expecting business to step up and make their own sacrifices.

I understand that we need businesses to keep the economy going, and we can't make them pay out too much as they are also struggling in the current economic crisis. But it seems the plan is to recover the entire budget deficit from the poor and vulnerable, with is neither fair nor viable, as they really don't have anything to give. If we really are "all in this together", then that includes the business world, and they should start paying their staff an actual living wage.

"I want free childcare for under 5 year olds so I could work.

Currently I would earn nmw just to pay a cm nmw to look after my child. Whats the point?"

Sense of entitlement much? So you choose to have children but then others should pay for that choice be it either in free childcare or paying benefits whilst you chose not to work. This is why things need to change. Add in the "i cant work outside term time school hours, i wont use childcare etc and there is a whole host of people actively choosing not to work.

It will be interesting to see what happens with regards to students, presumably they will be made to self finance via student loans and only able to claim if they work along studying. OU can easily be done alongside work. Given the amount of young graduates there are, there wont be enough high end jobs for all and many will start at the bottom anyway and work their way up. Its a little unrealistic to expect to work into a high paying job because of a degree when competition is very fierce and employers having a wide choice of people to chose from.

mumandboys-yes childcare is very expensive, and more for you than for me, as I have one child not three, but when I have done the sums, with a lone parent advisor, and taking into account council tax, travel, childcare and even lunches at work, It still benefits me to work. Only by about 30 quid a week, but 30 quid is a lot to me.
Also, the years when children need so much childcare are finite, so it becomes less of a strain.
I agree that the move from 80 % of costs to 70% has impacted families massively.
When the government talk about things like people on low wages/benefits having to stump up "small" amounts for things like extra council tax and childcare, they don't take into account how vital these "small amounts" are to a lot of people.

Why is it a sense of entitlement to want paid a living wage for hard work but not a sense of entitlement to want a high wage for higher status work? why do prisoners have higher status than those on NMW?

The amount you pay in taxes is although the most easily quantifiable not the only way you contribute to society. The work of lower paid employees helps make the profits of businesses or facilitates others doing work that generates profits eg childcare. Voluntary work contributes to society also. If the amount of tax you pay is the only measure of your contribution to society then how much are those in tax avoidance schemes contributing. Some have paid less than me so it is in the interests of the rich to measure contribution to society by more than your personal tax return.

The problem in the UK media is that whenever the subject comes up of people in fullt time work not being loads better off in real terms than people out of work or in p/t work, the conversation always moves immediately to "how can we make life worse for those not working full time", rather than " how can we make things better for full time workers".
The fact is wages have not risen.
Most admin jobs in my town are paying the same as what I was earning 12 years ago. Yet rent has doubled, groceries have at least doubled, heating, water bill, council tax, bus fares. All gone up massively.

My parents (baby boomers) bought their house in the Seventies for 8 k. That would have been about 4 times what they were earning running a small business.(not a lot)
These days the same house is worth around £350 k, meaning that a couple buying it now would need to be earning around 85 k a year to buy it, which a young couple running fledgling small business would simply not have.

Living standards have stalled. Just ground to a halt.
And the current shower of arseholes running things have cut cut cut so fast and so viscously that growth is totally stymied.
Most actual economists are saying that the things Osbourne is doing are NOT WORKING and are sending us full pelt into a depression.
You can't intimidate and threaten your population with sanctions for not taking jobs that are not there, lay off thousands of public sector workers,force people to move endlessly from insecure place to insecure place, remove employment rights, stifle enterprise and hobble small business with even more beaurocracy, without the markets losing confidence, investment shrinking and wages going down in real terms, not to mention an ex- workforce that no longer has money to spend.
I can't help thinking the Tories must know this, in which case they are purposefully driving the country right in to the ground and will use the escalating economic crisis as an excuse to totally junk the welfare system, the NHS, the Post Office and just about anything else they can carve up and sell off to the highest bidder.

Surely paying 70% of child care for every family claiming UC will cost the government more than each family might receive in credits if one parent stayed at home to take care of the children.
Rather than removing credits for those who don't take on extra hours, couldn't the UC just treat each working family's income as if they were earning minimum wage for full time hours? Surely that would be an incentive for parents to increase their income?

So when uc comes into effect and mothers like me who dh work for nmw and I use tc to feed and clothe our children are forced back to work the unemployment figuar will sky rocket and there will be more than 6 people per job.

My.dh is disabled and works ft for £900 per month. Im dyslexic and have depression but willing to work and we have two children under 5. No family help and I cant drive but I do have a degree but have never earned over nmw.
Im still bf the youngest.

Is it entitled to want to work but my careing responsability and my healthy is a barrier to work. Last week I was in hospital. Life is fucking hard. We live in a shoebox but cant afford to move.

I fully intend to go back to work in a few months but im scared there will not be a job for me and that I will be worse off for working and paying childcare than not working and having nothing!

Also when people are made homeless is ss going to take in all the homeless children?

Is there enough council houses for the homeless?

The country has no money, there are no jobs and resourses are more expensive, people are being made redundant and the only outcome will be homelessness and people stiving or dieing from untreated illness.

I hope there are a lot of creative people out there to find a way forward, I dont think it is the torys.

So us sahms mums have to get jobs. But what about holidays? We can't take 13 weeks holidays a year from a supermarket job or retail job. I and my husband certainly aren't working full time to pay 3 lots of full time child care in the holidays that would be work out at £105 per day!!!!