Universal Credit won't be paid in months with 5 weeks. (WTF?) AIBU to think no one realises

[raisinsarenottheonlyfruit]

If you get paid weekly, and there are 5 weeks in a month, in those months your pay will likely go over the Universal Credit limit and your UC will be stopped. You will have to go without that month and apply again.

WTF are they thinking?

Have they never heard of averages FFS? (That's how Tax Credits works). This is going to screw over so many people. It's ludricous.

The people claiming UC aren't any richer that month, they get the same amount of money as if it was paid in 12 monthly chunks.

This will happen to thousands of people every time there's a month with 5 weeks. (I guess they mean 5 Mondays?)

This is farcical.

There's 5 weeks in January, so if you get paid weekly that's you fucked for February.

April, July, October and December also have 5 Mondays.

This is utterly farcical and just plain callous.

I can see private landlords being reluctant to take on tenants on UC.

if you're not working/not deemed to be working enough hours you will have to job search for however many hours you are short if that makes sense

You will also be expected to quit the job you have and take another one if it comes up, if it pays more / has more hours.

Even if the first one has better prospects long term, or actually means you have more money in your pocket because of associated costs to do with getting to the "better paid" job, or any one of a zillion reasons you might chose to keep the job you're in. Tough, you do what you say or lose UC.

Don't know if this has been said but under UC the payment will only go to one person in the household - usually the man.

Jesus Christ!! How can it be ethically sound to demand that of people? 35 hours a week on NMW for both of us would not make up for the fact that full time childcare costs for 2 under 3 would be £2k+ I've just done a UC calculator based on those circumstances and we would be significantly poorer :( But as long as the tories can say those nasty unemployeds and part timers are in work now, that's fine I suppose

CherriesInTheSnow you don't have to look for 35 hours when your DC are small though. It changes due to age.

I forget what now but I think it's something like 25 hours from when your kids are at school - does anyone know?

Cherries it doesn't necessarily follow that the big companies are implementing the higher wages in a way that benefits colleagues on the bottom rung.

I work for a massive company, but one which has been struggling to make profit for the last few years, as have the other big companies in the sector in question. They used to pay slightly over NMW but now it has risen they pay the NMW unless you switch over to their (absolutely shite) new contract which is currently an extra £1/hour but will probably fall in line with NMW when it's hiked again. They are struggling to raise the pay because they won't cut the big bosses' wages. Instead they are making redundancies left, right and centre or reducing people's hours while still expecting the same amount of work to be done.

It's why so many people are on here complaining about shit levels of customer service these days. We're expected to run on skeleton crews because the wages are being cut so we can't have as many people working.

Of course, they could do this much more easily if the wages of those at the top were cut but I don't see that happening any time soon. In fact, another wave of redundancies for those at the bottom have just been announced 👍🏻😡

Don't know if this has been said but under UC the payment will only go to one person in the household - usually the man.

Yes, MN is going to have a lot more women posting here about financial abuse.

Looks like this could be the push that finally gets OH out of work and me as his full time carer then.

After hanging on for years through disability, illness, the death of our DD and all the other challenges life brings up.

What if you are in a decent job with prospects for when you can work more (I am thinking of LP/young families) but its part time?
They will make you leave it and take any old job as long as its 36 hours?

Cherries its not even the childcare costs- I worked myself into a nervous breakdown when I worked full time. I was out of the house 12 hours a day, barely spent any time with my child (who was very small at the time). Most evenings I was a jibbering wreck who would collapse on the sofa after eating a meal of toast if I could muster the energy or nothing if I couldn't.

I literally burned out.

So people could be forced to take a job 90 minutes away because it pays a bit more than their job 5 minutes away, despite the extra travel costs/childcare cost/3 fucking hours of their day lost? They really are not even masking their contempt for low income households anymore are they..

We claim universal credit and I get nervous every month when the pay date approaches. Last month they duplicated my oh's wages so it came up nil award. Seeing £0 in the bank that morning made my heart sink as a few days previous they told me everything was OK and we were due to get £x amount.
I bloody wish he was earning double his wage!

Then one month when he was ill for a few days he got told he had to go to an interview at the job centre. He said he's working so can't go to the interview. The idiot on the phone questioned why his wage was lower and he said because he was ill. Then the idiot said well it's not good enough because that means you've lowered your earnings.
Apparently you're not allowed to be off sick for a few days if you're on universal credit 😡

Oh and he didn't work over Christmas because his place if work wasn't open so another idiot said to him he should have found another job for those days he couldn't go in to work over Christmas.
Apparently you're not allowed to enjoy the Christmas period at home because your place of work is CLOSED if you claim universal credit.

The Tories are disgusting and I despise everyone who supports this, the attacks on the vulnerable, poor, disabled people and women, and the drive to have a US style health system.

Poor people pay more of our income in tax than the rich;
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-graph-that-shows-how-the-poor-are-paying-more-than-the-rich-in-tax-10353982.html

Don't want to derail with politics but if anything is political this is. Mountford - Brexit is destroying our economy right now and it's the result of a Tory Cock up. An anti Brexit labour Govt would have the support of big business....even a Corbyn one. Whatever your views on Brexit it is driving us towards recession so the numbers of those who rely on benefits and who are currently being screwed over by this Tory Government will increase. We are the fifth wealthiest country in the world. We do not have to choose between financial ruin and a decent welfare system. That is a dangerous lie which through repetition has become an accepted truth. And it's not all about money. As someone said earlier these cruel policy decisions often cost more in administration than they save. I see how the government work through my job and an error of judgment from a newly promoted minister potentially cost the treasury 5 billion - You won't even have heard about it in the press.

MrsDV :(

And what you've described is exactly my situation - I am quite young (23) and am in a junior/entry level role in a job with great prospects, however as Ladycsparkles says while my DD are so young I cannot cope with full time (tried it for a few months during this pregnancy, has to take mat leave at 26 weeks), however the part time setup is only temporary so I can actually have a life with my children and the prospects of this job are great. To have to leave to do a prospectless NMW 35 week job would destroy my future and home life.

I imagine many people, especially while they have young children, are in relatively temporary circumstances that they have worked for so that they actually feel their life is worth living and they are not just cogs in a machine working to pay bills and be part of the "system" and nothing more. This new system is basically a big "fuck you" to anyone who dares be working class

UC definitely has a work-based focus. My son's interview for UC took place in a Job-Centre and the person to whom he will be assigned will be a Job Coach. He will be allocated into one of four groups, three of which focus on preparing for or actively seeking work.

There is nothing wrong with this in theory at all. However, when we arrived at the Job Centre, most of the people were not your 'typical' job seekers, as one would expect, but appeared to be individuals with disabilities and their carers. The staff at the Job Centre were gentle and polite, but the two people who were inputting my son's claim could not understand the complexities of the situation and seemed a little unprepared for how long it would take to communicate with my DS (who has considerable processing delays).

My son really does want to work. He would love, most of all, to work with cats (he has a passion for them) or in horticulture, but, at the moment, he is not stable (which is why he is in residential care). Hopefully, his Job Coach, who he will meet this week, will understand his needs.

In my opinion, there are major difficulties inherent in replacing benefits awarded for such disparate reasons (disability, income (e.g. housing benefit), unemployment and so on) with a single benefit.

The more I read the more it scares me. Commuting 90 mins each way e.g a 4 hour shift?

That's madness and you will still be paying 7 hours childcare??
Why can't they see what this is doing?

What if you are in a decent job with prospects for when you can work more (I am thinking of LP/young families) but its part time?
They will make you leave it and take any old job as long as its 36 hours

Yup, that's right. (Except it's fewer hours for people with younger children and you're exempt when they're babies IIRC).

They don't give a fuck about prospects.

When they first brought in conditionality and forced work experience, a university graduate was told she had to stop volunteering in a museum, which was relevant to her career, and go work in Poundland for free for 4 weeks instead. She already had retail experience too.

From the article below:

"A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "Working in retail is perfectly good experience for a career in a museum. There are very similar transferable skills involved.""

What - more relevant than working in an actual museum?! Fucking farcical.

They do not give a shit. It's all just words.

www.thirdsector.co.uk/museum-volunteer-told-work-unpaid-poundland/policy-and-politics/article/1111722

35 hours a week is not a lot to ask of people. If they can't afford childcare then perhaps they should have budgeted before making the huge financial commitment that having children brings.

It's not punishing people by expecting them not to work part time or work at all when they are physically able to do so. The welfare system was designed to catch those on bad times not those that have wants or desires but don't want to fund themselves.

Wasn't there a previous benefits disaster like this, that happened or almost happened? It's so familiar sounding. A housing benefit scandal, maybe? Where claimants being direct recipients turned into lots of unpaid rent?

Someone patiently explained to some (Tory) ministers that people on very low incomes & no savings can't just budget their way to stretch into next month. Plus some folk with certain disabilities & a generally low income struggle to budget to hold back the rent money. So lots of landlords were not getting paid & suddenly widespread refusal to rent to people on housing benefits.

Im a single parent on nwm. I'm absolutely dreading this being rolled out in my area. Thankfully my landlord is a pretty decent bloke, so am hoping he'll be OK about waiting for his rent. I fucking hope so.
No option to live anywhere cheaper, because there is nowhere cheaper. My rent has stayed the same for 7 years, and definitely does not reflect current rental prices. I live in a small town with a big student population. Rich landlords are buying up property and renting it out for extortionate amounts to students. Everyone is being priced out. It's mad.

I am considering asking my best friend to move in, so we can share living costs.

*nmw. Whoops.

YellowMakesMeSmile
I loathe your attitude. Anyone can become ill, or lose their job. Children can be unplanned, married ages can break up.
Too many jobs are appallingly paid and have zero hours contracts.

Yellow that is a disgusting attitude and I hope you never find yourself falling on hard times.

Like many, when I had my DS I was with his father who had an OK paid job and good prospects. He left because he couldn't hack being a full time parent. I didn't have a crystal ball before falling pregnant to know that would happen.

Similarly, I doubt people who have accidents that leave them disabled and struggling to work would have planned it.

Neither do people plan on having disabled children forcing them out of work to become carers.

Not to mention the fact that I work part time for two reasons:

1. Pre my degree, it was cheaper to work part time than work full time and fork out for childcare.
2. While doing my degree I do not have the time to work full time and be a mum as well. If you want an educated work force, part time work is pretty essential. Otherwise the only people who will be able to complete degrees will be the rich.

Also, by your reasoning, if only the rich have children, who will do the (very necessary) low paid non-skilled jobs that help this country run in a generation or two's time?! It's not a fact that sits well with me, I know plenty of people from poorer families work themselves up to do fulfilling and well paid jobs before anyone jumps on me for saying this, but I have never come across a rich person working NMW jobs alongside me.

Yellow that is a really naive and insensitive thing to say.

Perhaps people did budget for their children on an old system that did not have these constraints/conditions - we are perfectly comfortable at the moment and planned our future with the knowledge that our reduced hours were a temporary measure which made the most financial sense and would actually allow us to parent our children.

There are many people (luckily I won't be one of them as my part time hours luckily are still enough to not be under the equivalent earnings) who will be ground down by these new requirements, even if their circumstances are temporary due to having young pre school age children. It is a really, really horrible attitude to lower income families, and very transparently so.

What's truly scary is that the government will ramrod this through.