I haven't committed any crime like this woman has, so why do I have to do 120 hours of unpaid work?

[DeadWomanWalking]

Woman sentenced to 215 hours of unpaid work for committing benefit fraud. I'm currently having to do 120 hours of unpaid work (30 hours a week for 4 weeks) or I'll lose my benefits. So what's my crime? Being unemployed? Being poor? Completely baffled by this governments policies.

OP, if you are still here...

This is rotten for you.
Your family is obviously going through a tough time.

I hope things improve for you soon.

Imo, this country are punishing people who are unemployed if they are serving up the same treatment to an unemployed person as they are to a criminal. If a job needs doing, then pay a wage and give someone a proper job instead of getting the work done for nothing!!

The reason some people are happy for the unemployed to be treated as second class citizens is because worklessness is seen to be idle, and idleness is seen to be immoral, so unemployed people are seen to be immoral people and therefore apparently deserving of being treated like shit, because of course, they are all lazy feckers who cba to work and are living a life of complete riley on benefits.

How much do you earn Wannabe and how much is your rent?

Thanks pippitysqueakity.

My friend is on JSA and has to pay bedroom tax and part of her council tax.

She gets a total of £193.70 a week in benefits.
If she were to go to work fulltime for NMW, she would take home £200.00 a week, after paying for travel expenses to get to and from work, but including WTC, HB and CTS, so she'd be better off financially by £6.30 a week.

Help in the form of WTCs is not very much at all if you are a healthy single adult.

YANBU, OP. Not all of us think that JSA claimants are feckless layabouts. Workfare is doing nobody (aside from the businesses taking people on MWP) any good. All I can suggest is that you try, however you can, to find some positive in it.

I think perhaps it is a slight exaggeration to say you have been applying for 100 jobs a week, as there aren't that many jobs out there, but I believe that you are busting a gut to find work.

I have been out of work for 12 months after 12 years in employment. I always found it easy to get a job, but not now. This time last year I was working temporarily through an agency in a public sector job. When the job I was doing was advertised as a contracted post, there were over 100 applicants for it. There were 8 posts in total and over a thousand applicants. So those saying that you must be doing something wrong or that your CV must be weak, clearly don't get that there are just so few jobs and so many chasing them.

If, in an ideal world, the government said, 'Ok, you're unemployed, so come and work for us, we'll pay you minimum wage and give you full employment rights and pay your NI'...I would say fair enough.

However...Unlike with employers, there's an uneasy feeling of being 'owned' by the government when you claim benefits.

Sure, when you are employed, your employers have control too - they can reallocate your department or even send you on a business trip, but...there is a certain dignity and respect - an acknowledgement of your choice to be there (even if you'd rather not be) in the form of contracts, holiday entitlement, minimum wage etc.

Although MWA seems reasonable in terms of 'we all work for our money', it lacks the dignity and basic (even primal?) satisfaction of having earned an income and provided for yourself. It's more of a disempowered sense of merely avoiding the loss of a life-line.

It's not actually employment and it's not empowering people to find employment. It's not the workhouse, but it's a slight slip down the spectrum, taking some dignity away from the job seekers. It seems to generate a, 'And so you should!' attitude from people who have never been there and creates (or widens) the 'them and us' gap. When in reality, the only difference is losing a job or not. It's not a different breed.

You would support it if they worked 10 hours a week, every week instead?

Yes if the place they worked actually acted as an employer

Workfare doesn't help the individual at all.

Hope you can get things sorted at the JC tomorrow and the stress is lessened for you all.

Maybe those who think there's plenty of jobs for the OP could offer to find a job in her area and coach her through the process.

Or is it easier to kick someone when they're down?

MurkyMinotaur Fantastic post!! The way you have put into words the uneasy feelings associated with unemployment, how the govt do literally own your waking hours and how that actually feels to live under that cloud constantly is spot on!!

To the people on here posting about how they cannot find jobs; if you are in the Surrey/West Sussex area please PM me. I am trying desperately to find people to come and work as tutors/school shadow for my ds with ASD. I have had people come for interview, as soon as they find out it's not babysitting and requires some actual effort, they run a mile. I pay well above min wage just to train, and then more when you are qualified. You will acquire valuable skills which would be very useful in a career in education, psychology or childcare.
I don't doubt there are people on benefits who genuinely want work - it just gets a bit hard to believe this when you've had the experience I've had over the last few months ....

OP. You mentioned earlier that you would like to do legal secretarial work. When I split with my exh seven years ago I was a SAHM. I needed a job and signed with a temp agency. Got a temping job at a solicitors and they offered me a full time job after a couple of weeks. I had no experience at all when I got the job. My previous employment had been at my local airport in a haulage company. Legal secretaries often have no formal experience and none of the secretaries in my firm have ever done a course. The wages aren't brilliant but the work is interesting.

You have probably applied to solicitors already so I'm sorry if I'm telling you something that you already know.

Good luck.

Last time I advertised a post in my department, we got more than 200 completed applications. Application form + three proposals + examples of previous work. I was hoping having to do all that would weed out anyone who really wasn't qualified/suitable. (It's not unsual in my line of work to have to supply that kind of info with an application, btw.)

Two hundred people spent time putting all that together. Many of them very well - there were probably several dozen that I would have happily interviewed pre-depression/recession/whatever you want to call the current malaise. Except of course back in those halcyon days not all of them would have applied.

Sadly I couldn't interview all of them. Saw 11, gave two people jobs. I know a couple of others are still looking for work, as they've approached me for freelance commissions. They are perfectly good at what they do, in normal times they'd be fully employed. But we aren't in normal times and good people are struggling.

altinkum

If your going to bang on about the riches someone on benefits gets at least get it right.

You only get full HB if you live in rented social housing.
Council tax benefit no longer exists most claimants no longer get all of it covered

And nobody in the history of the benefits system has ever received free water as a state benefit.

MurkyMinotaur you've captured exactly how I feel! I said to DH this morning that it just feels so soul destroying it is knowing that I HAVE to go there, do the work, and get nothing from it. I do feel like I'm being punished for something. There's so much more dignity and respect in getting up and going to work and knowing that you're actually being paid a (legal) wage for it. Even if you hate the job, at least your being paid.

It's the governments way of slowly grinding down the lower classes, so that we know our place. If it feel this soul destroying for me and I'm a fit and able person, how on earth must a disabled person feel when they're forced in MWA?

I think it deepnds what line of work you are looking at. I know a number of parents in different areas looking for people to cover tutor roles and it's no easier now than it was back when I started ds's programme in 2009. Usually the serious applicants who seem to want the work, at the moment, are either Spanish or from Eastern Europe - who if their English is good enough, are great, they have a very strong work ethic and a desire to build a career. But I'm just not seeing any evidence of people desperate for work at all.

And for anybody who is interested you do not have to have CA in payment to be classed as a Carer you only have to have a under laying entitlement.

CA is also not classed as salary but it is deductable and you do have to earn it.

You have to be caring for a minimum of about 35 hours per week you cannot out source that care. And you qualify for it as soon as the dwp( CA dept) tells you your entitled to it.

I think it's funny how some people are up in arms at the thought of the unemployed getting something for nothing and taking taxpayer's money and yet don't seem to have a problem with large, in profit, multinational companies getting taxpayer's to pay for their workers Double standards indeed!

Oh God, the government have done a number on us havent they?
Sure, there are jobs, in certain areas, in certain fields.
But overall, there are not enough. Everytime a supermarket opens 2000 + people apply. I spent 6 months intensively job hunting, and interviewing, and often being 2nd choice (I was told) but no cigar.(Employed now, and happy for "my taxes" to go toward helping deadwoman walking and anyone who needs it).
Itr's just fucking rough out there, for most people.
I am just disgusted by the attitude of posters like Altinkum frankly.
If I was a viscious sort, I would say that I hope people like that DO get made redundant put on workfare. It would serve them right.

No you didn't get a few things wrong, you actually believe crap like people on benefits get free water like many other daily fail readers or people who like to bang on about things they don't know enough about especially when its a good way to make it sound like those on benefits are better off than they actually are because its fits in with your nonsense.