to think that this is economically stupid. Tories to announce full and permanent WORKFARE.

[Darkesteyes]

next week according to the Mail.
So how is anybody going to afford to buy anything while working for benefits then.
Even less incentive for companies to take people in proper employment if the workfare workforce is going to increase.

twitter.com/SkyNews/status/383342225926524928/photo/1

HappyMummyOfOne, the timing was stupid.

They first set it so if the youngest child was 12 the claimant had to move from IS to JSA and be actively seeking work. This was around the time that Woolies and other high street names were closing. Thousands of people were being thrown onto the job market because of these closures. More people competing for fewer jobs.

The next stage they reduced the age of the youngest to 7. Then the next stage was 5.

I think they should have held back introducing the next 2 stages.

The link is a screenshot not a link to their site.

I like the way there's the ad for the blissfully calming music CDs just above the rage inducing headline.

YY Totem A few ppl on twitter commented on that too.

Totem

A lot of the 'older workers' will be the ones who go on contribution-based JSA first, as they have paid NI for a number of years, so this is a way to cook the books, like zero hours contracts counting as being employed, to get the numbers of those on income-based JSA down. It can be very difficult for older workers to locate employment due to age discrimination and the fact that younger workers are paid a lower min. wage, so this penalises those who are made redundant in their 40s and 50s.

In the US, the min wage is the min wage as one is a minor until the age of 18. Some states allow work at 16 or work at younger ages in family business. But in general, there is no lower or graduated min wage to such a high age as there is here, but this part of the programme will surely not be implemented by this government. Apprenticeships and vocational education also has no age limit, as their retirement age is already higher than ours and it is very well accepted and common that people need to and can change careers successfully into their 40s and 50s.

It is far from uncommon for people, even those with former degrees, to train and become plumbers, sparks, air-conditioning and heating repair, mechanics, etc. in their 30s and 40s and even change within professions such as law and medicine.

That doesn't happen here so much, in large part because a lot of this is age-restricted.

If you want people to work longer, that needs to change.

But it won't under the Tories.

The US is also far more proactive at forcing non-resident parents to pay up for their children, with strict penalties, including jail, for those who refuse to or try not to.

DH talks to quite a few Americans on his on-line game and they are also reporting too many graduates and not enough skilled labourers as a problem.

I'm considering hibernating until late spring 2015. My only concern is that I'd wake up to either a desolate wasteland or a full blown fascist state.

Very much a problem indeed, Anais.

I don't think they are more proactive in forcing non-resident parents to pay child maintenance. Yes, there is jail time - but with my ex, it took 11 years before we reached that point - and that was only because I had to push it through myself with a solicitor rather than go through child support enforcement agency which was less than useless. And since child support is through state enforcement (unless it's changed recently), all they have to do is cross a state line (very easy) and you have to start all over again. EH did this repeatedly - as soon as we found him and got an order in place to have it taken from his wages, he quit his job, crossed the state line, and we had to start from square one again. Eleven years is a ridiculous amount of time to wait for child support.

Not one person had the required qualifications or experience. He knew he was making them do a pointless exercise

I remember when I was unemployed last year and the DWP told me I had to apply for a teaching position in a secondary school or I'd be sanctioned. I don't hold a teaching degree. "Never mind that. Just apply, tweak your application and then when you get to the interview let them know you haven't got the degree an you just need the interview in order to keep your JSA". I told them no, they reasoned it was fine as "it's exactly like a dinner lady position"

Then they threatened to sanction me when it snowed badly enough to ensure there were no buses at all running from where I live and I couldn't walk seven miles in the snow with a baby and no pushchair (it was too deep to push it through). The advisor said I could get myself to the Jobcentre quick sharp as he had managed it so I blooming well could too. When I asked him where he lived he named an estate literally next door to the office.

Then they threatened to sanction me because I "didn't turn up for my signing on appointment". I did turn up, the woman at the desk forgot to tick me off her list so even though I was there and I signed, the computer reckoned I hadn't (and as we all know, the computers word is law).

They then suggested I apply for a full time job doing night shifts and only night shifts (again, on pain of sanctions) "because your children are asleep then so you won't need childcare". When I asked when I was supposed to sleep, having two children under four at that time who were awake all day when I would need to be asleep if I got the job, the answer was a blank stare and "weekends? How much sleep do you need?"

They did eventually sanction me. I got a Leyte explaining that it was because I failed to sign on for four weeks in a row. It also said they were investigating me for benefit fraud as they had evidence I was working. Yes I was working (in a job I found myself completely without their help) and the evidence they had was inadvertently supplied by me when I went into the job centre and signed off JSA four weeks prior to getting the letter.

So yes, the system needs an overhaul but work fair is not the answer. Sorting out the very basics of the benefits system and the body/bodies delivering those benefits is where the overhaul needs to take place.

v. FA here, Triggles?

Really?

I lived there 31 years, of course, all my family are still there and I spend time there.

And, as an American and naturalised Brit, I have a big problem with the UK copying US policies with zero understanding of the whole place because they are completely different.

'I'm 33 and want to become an electrician' is a non-starter here. That is warped and stupid.

It's down to a terrifying degree of cluelessness on the part of all these posh boys who have never had actual jobs and gone straight into politics. They are incapable of understanding that the poor are people. There's been some sort of leaked memo from IDS or the DWP along the lines of 'Dear big businesses, once we really get going on workfare you will have a huge pool of desperate available workers whenever you want them', for instance.
But when poverty is artificially created (by holding down wages and using slave labour) who is going to buy All The Things? If the only people who have disposable income are the CEOs and the bankers, they are not going to spend money in Topshop or Boots or Argos, let alone the ordinary little optician/locksmith/cupcake shop; they go shopping in Harrods. And poor people don't just stay in their box till someone wants to employ them; they need to feed their children. So they have to either lie to payday loan companies (not such a bad thing as payday loan companies are dishonest themselves) and take on debt they can't repay... or turn to crime. The best case scenario is that the 'unemployed' set up a load of cash-iin-hand businesses trading with each other, but the more likely scenario is people mugging and burgling each other just to have something to take to We Buy Anything pawnshops so they have a fiver to buy a week's worth of fishfingers and bogroll.

Bearfrills, did you make a complaint about any of those incidents?

I agree with everything in your description Expatinscotland. I know several people who changed horses meidstream. It is a huge problem that adaptation is so hard in the UK, and also that UK graduates are not versatile the way a lot of American grads are, having embarked on an increasingly narrow course of studies once GCSEs are over.

I also agree with SGB that slavery holds wages down and creates poverty, which in turn creates a downward spiral in the economy, with only shareholders benefiting.

The important thing about work is not that people are doing 'something' as opposed to sitting home watching JK, and that is a point the Tories have not grasped (because they are still living in the Victorian age, the days of the 'deserving poor' vs the undeserving, and because they do not credit people with enough intelligence to figure out what works for them financially, work or try to get benefits). The important thing about work is that it produces sufficient income to encourage spending and saving, something Workfare is never going to accomplish.

The Tories seem to believe the same thing about the unemployed or the poor or the underqualified that the ruling class did back in the days of the Corn Laws and the workhouse (the 1840s basically) -- that people need to be cured of laziness by forcing them to work. Busyness is not the same thing at all as productive work. 'Productive work' produces a little surplus income and therein lies its importance.

Workfare done properly for long term claimants could be a good thing, its not just JSA is all the the other benefits that add up that are essentially handed to people for doing nothing. Would be better if linked to charities or work in the local community but it may be that large businesses already have the admin side and insurance in place so easy to slot them in.

I could not disagree more with this statement from Happymummyofone.

Companies 'employing' workfare participants are getting a workforce for less than they would have to pay if they had to go out and hire qualified workers, or experienced workers, or people looking for work who can't afford to live on what WF pays (people with families, mortgages, children to put through university, children who need some sort of private healthcare who can't wait for NHS services, etc). The only beneficiary of WF is the companies whose bottom line is enlarged by not having to pay actual real life wages to employees. Nobody else makes enough money to spend or to save, which is what makes the economic wheels go round.

As word gets out about this, I expect countries in competition with the UK to start complaining, and rightly so, about unfair labour practices (and unfair competition) just as many unions complain about Chinese companies using prisoners for labour. It's virtually the same thing.

expat

Same here. American, moved here age 38, 10 years ago. I could just weep seeing the UK government use the American way on almost anything! I love being here because it's NOT America, despite the fact that I have family and friends still in America.

I don't think EITHER country has a good grasp on getting child support/maintenance. I will say, however, that at least here the mother can get benefits and housing benefit and such. My sister didn't get child support for years and years - she was denied numerous benefits because they added the child support she was SUPPOSED to be receiving to her "income"... even though she wasn't getting it. I was lucky - I had job skills that she didn't, so I was able to work in a surgery during the day, do the medical transcription at night at home for a general surgeon and a urologist, and then I cleaned the surgery for extra money as well. And I was allowed to bring my toddler along and put her in a playpen while I was cleaning the office, as it was after hours, so no extra childcare. I also played church organ for a local Catholic church for 5 masses every Sunday for $25 per mass (was a huge church, I will admit I loved playing that pipe organ ).

Bearfrills, did you make a complaint about any of those incidents?

Yes, and each time all I got was a computer generated, unsigned letter with a generic "we will investigate/we take complaints very seriously" but nothing changed and nothing else came of it.

YY bearfrills, you can complain to the DWP until you are blue in the face but they'll never do anything.
I've filed so many complaints in the past two years because of the sheer number of cock-ups - frequently losing files and claiming we never handed them in, not ticking DP as being "in" for signing when he was, being completely incapable of understanding their own system and sanctioning DP for not using the website properly when they didn't know how to do it either ... I could keep going but you get the picture!

More on-topic, I went on workfare (billed as a "training provision" via a private firm, but it was just workfare with one day a week jobhunting at their centre) while I was pregnant with DS. They put me in a BHF furniture shop. At five months pregnant. That is testimony to how incompetent the companies running this crap are without even going into how immoral and stupid the whole system is.

How are they going to be able to afford the petrol or bus fare to get to work? Buy suitable clothes or lunch for their 'job'?
I get the sentiment 'look all those lazy people on jsa that can't be bothered to work, look at us the Tories getting them back to work'

No, just no it's not like that is it.

So £70 per week, could be earned at minimum wage in 12-ish hours? So maybe workfare should be a longer placement of 12 hours per week. Same as others earn and plenty of time left for job seeking or taking a course.

We just don't know any details so to base it on previous schemes may not be fair.

There MUST be a MN campaign in this, surely? This bunch of craven cowards backed down once, it must be possible to make it happen again.

BTW given idea was comprehensively trashed last time, how has it been resurrected? Apols if I've missed explanation on thread, I am so angry I am shaking.

I may be a thick here so I apologise.

Big companies get workers for free.
These free labourers, have less money to spend because of the costs of getting to work.
Big companies lay off more people because they can get them for free instead of paying a wage.
More people claim JSA
More people working for free
less money for these people
more mortgage repossesions and rent arrears
housing bill goes up further
jsa bill goes up further
price of food goes up to cover the loss of money coming in due to no-one having anything
energy bills increase because no-one can afford their heating.

I can't see how the shareholders will benefit from this in the long term. No one will be able to afford anything. Less money spent in the economy, that gets worse, the benefit bill increases on all sides, the NHS ends up under further strains thanks to depression, stress, illness brought from inadequate diet and lack of heat, crime rate goes up, policing bill goes up, council tax goes up, council tax benefit bill goes up.

I can not see how this will work. Can someone please explain it to me.