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

Right, I've actually joined mumsnet to comment on this after long time lurking.

My DH earns around 15 and a half thousand a year, we claim CTC and WTC. I stay at home with my youngest who is 3. The tax credits are just about equal to 15 hrs NMW.

So when youngest starts reception (Sept 2014) I have always planned on getting a 16 hr contract. Hopefully in a school as I am a qualified nursery nurse and pre children worked in a mainstream school as 1 to 1 support for children on the austism spectrum, but I am aware these jobs are getting more difficult to come by and I may have to do something entirely different.

At this point we would stop claiming tax credits as we would not need them. Am I correct to assume that these UC problems wouldn't apply to us as I wouldn't be claiming them? So couldn't be forced to work longer hours because we would not be getting extra support.

On a more general note I think it is a good idea to sanction people who have no intention of working but seems utterly ridiculous for people who have jobs to have to chop and change on the job centres say so.

Alibabaa and aufaniae, policy documents released last summer did indeed say that part-time workers on low pay would be treated exactly like JSA claimants, with full conditionality and requirements to drop permanent jobs in favour of temporary ones.

The fact that this has now been reviewed is an example of this government's enthusiasm for pushing through the most dramatic changes to Britain's economic and social structure in nearly 100 years, without proper consideration of how it will work. The rules are still being written - eight months before coming into effect.

As disability benefit claimants will know, they're perfectly happy to continue finessing the rules after implementing changes, meaning none of has a clue what criteria we are supposed to fulfil in any given month.

The computer system to administer UC still doesn't work, by the way. It has been designated unfit for purpose and Mr Duncan Smith was asked to delay the rollout. He decided not to, implementing more beta trials instead. Consequently, you might find that your area has been chosen for trials and you're on UC before October - using a faulty system, with contradictory guidelines in place of rules.

I realise this is hard to believe unless you're a benefit dependent, in which case you've already been through the phase of incredulity and are now resigned to a nightmarish obstacle course of insane bureaucracy, but try and get used to it. And consider organised protest.

People in part-time jobs who claim UC and earn less than MW full time (or fewer hours in certain conditions, e.g. if you have kids) will be classed as "underemployed" and required to prove they are seeking more hours / better pay, and can be required to take new jobs against their will, or lose UC.

That is the principle of the thing, yes. I am really struggling to see the problem with that.

As long as they apply the right exemptions (which they may or may not) then what's so bad about people supporting themselves as much as they possibly can?

You say people can be required to take new jobs against their will, but since when has will had anything to do with it? Should people get to choose to do whatever they want in life and be supported by the state no matter where they choose to live or how many children they choose to have?

Because if that's what we are fighting for, maybe I should change my mind. I won't bother going to work. I'll stay home all day and mumsnet and maybe do a bit of voluntary work if I feel like it. After all, that's 'my will', and the government, and other people, should support it.

garlicblocks that really useful, thanks for the clarification.

CloudsAndTrees you can't see the problem with people who have trained for years to be a nurse for example, being compelled to go mop floors?

I don't know how accurate it is but policy in practice website has a universal credits calculator, put In Your details and it calculates what you will be entitled to, shows you how much better off you are by working as oppose to not etc. looks like we are entitled to more than what we currently get and no sanctions, I would give it a go you might be surprised!

This is not really about the nuts and bolts of who will get what and who won't.
What it is, in fact, about is a massive ideological shift in this country, driven by the current ultra right wing government and filtered down through the media.
This move to UC will not save the country money, it will cost billions, but that is quite clearly not the point.
It is a shift from the idea of universal welfare for those who need it in order to even up the inequalities in society, to the idea that society should, naturally, be unequal.
It is question of making us forget that the welfare state has transformed ordinary people's lives since 1948 (and I had grandparents old enough to remember what things were like before) and that, when people pay national insurance (the clue is in the name) that insures them against hardship and extreme poverty.
What this current government wants us to start believing, with their attacks on council housing and the NHS, is that no-one deserves a stable home, enough to eat, a heated place to live, free healthcare.

Wages have just not gone up. Instead we got tax credits-INSTEAD of wage rises, so they they can tell us "oh, well, you don't actually deserve this money.
Clever.
Even cleverer to use "benefit claimants expecting something for nothing" as the national bogeyman to blame for the country's ills. Hey, it means we forget to blame the long run of banking de-regulation, and the banks for betting on a sure loss and crashing the world economy like a line of dominoes.

This way, those who are not quite on the bottom rung, whose lives are getting tougher and belts are getting tighter, can agree to the removal of any expectations of a welfare state for those on the rung below.
Lets just hope they don't ever need help, eh? Because pretty soon we will be back to the 1930's, and the help won't be there.

And, by the by, regarding "something for nothing" in my 20's pre dc I earned up to 1k a week. I have paid a lot of tax, I will pay a lot of tax again, so any suggestion that my tax credits are "free money" can, quite frankly, fuck off.

I don't auf they might not be million floors forever...

It's not as simple as getting off your lazy arse and getting a job.

If every person currently not working for whatever reason suddenly decided to get a job, they couldn't. There are I think tens of thousands more people unemployed than there are jobs available.

CloudsAndTrees you can't see the problem with people who have trained for years to be a nurse for example

You can't see anything wrong with people who've trained for years to be nurses being under utilised working less than 16 hours ?

Surely the NHS as an arm of the government will have to rearrange its staffing to fit in with the universal credits criteria, it would not be a very good example to private companies otherwise.

*mopping!

Not million where the hell did million come from!

If mopping floors pays more than the nursing job, and the nurses lifestyle needs more money to maintain it, then no, not really.

If a nurse wants to be a nurse and nursing doesn't pay very much, then he or she will either need to get enough hours to do the job they want to do, or make life choices that are sustainable on the wage they have chosen to have. Or, a nurse could get a supplementary job in a care home or similar if they want to maintain their nursing registration. Or, their partner (if they have one) can earn enough so that they don't have to claim UC.

I think it's a bit emotive to apply this to nurses though.

What might happen (and might actually be what the gov is hoping for) is that people on part time work will stop claiming UC so they aren't forced into doing something they do not/can not do.

Solve so much problems doesn't it? Less people claiming benefits, less paperwork. What else can you ask for?

But Clouds the you have the massive problem that you have a country with no nurses! Would you want to go to an understaffed hospital with all the issues coming with it?

I wondered that, Labels.
If it weren't for the sinister ideological shift ifnot so eloquently outlined, it wouldn't be a half bad policy lever. A section of claimants who would, say, lose only a few quid a week if they stopped claiming UC would probably be alright and would save a lot of paperwork etc.

It's not going to pan out like that, though.

Jojane, that website is interesting. UC looks fairly generous to me!

And this is not emotive to talk about nurses. Loads of them are working part time.
Just as there are loads of other type of jobs that requires part time work. We just rarely think about them but they do help a hell of a lot. They help us all having an easier life.

Let's say, what about my window cleaner. He isn't making a lot of money, claim UC and has been told that he has to go this pert time/full time job for the next 3 months. During that time... well my windows won't get cleaned or he will be loosing the customers he had spent years getting...
Now of course the problem is, no one will want to be a window cleaner again (too risky/unstable etc...) so I won't get my windows cleaned (not an issue, I can do it myself) but my PIL won't either (and they can NOT do it themselves).

To add to the mix, most of the employment is NOT in big companies but in small businesses. The same businesses that needs part time workers to survive/thrive. No part time work (because too dangerous for the workers) means that you are stifling the businesses at the very core of our economic growth.
That is, if you don't actually decide that it's OK to just write off a good part of the population and expect them to jump through hoops 'just because'.

It's like we are all being prepared to do without the safety net, while still paying the same amount of tax and NI.
If our tax rate was reduced, so people had more spare money to get insurance for job loss etc, then fair enough,

Anyone see tax cuts for the middle and lower earners soon? Eh?

Not all nurses have part time contracts!

Understaffed hospitals would come about as a result of not enough nurses being employed, not because of UC!

Or if you still get some part time worker, you will get a lot of change, people who are unskilled (it takes time to train someone to a specific job), therefore less productive.
Without talking about the number of hours lost by the company.

How is that going to be a benefit for the country as a whole?

Not sure how accurate the figures are but they must have got some info from somewhere, wouldn't just totally make it up.

I have only read the first few posts. You have just scared the shit out of me, and I will be back later to research properly. Someone please tell me OP is DailyMailPropagandizing so I don't need to have a heart attack right about now.

Back later...

rearrange its staffing to fit in with the universal credits criteria

Aye, so what that means is all minimum-wage jobs being full time or fixed shifts.

I can see an ideological justification for all the reforms - except the Work Programme - in that, on paper, they would force the labour and housing markets to readjust themselves. There are two problems with this: firstly, nearly all the readjustment is being forced onto the 'demand' side - workers and tenants - leaving enterprise and housing owners free to milk it as hard as they can. Secondly, people whose wages have to be subsidised by the state don't actually have the flexibility required to play a market so, being powerless, many will become prey to exploitation. If the changes go ahead as intended there will be more homeless, more crime and an us/them social divide that will be very hard to come back from.

In a buoyant economy, the coalition's principles could have worked. At this time, though, they are only contracting the economy still further so the negative outcomes will be more pronounced.

IfNot, your posts today are great!

Part time work can be done by people who have school age children, people who have more than one part time job, people who have partners who work full time.

There are plenty of people available for part time work, and there will still be plenty of part time work available. Not everyone claims benefits!