To expect the UK's 1 million unemployed to get a job as a Care Worker?

[SquireOfGreenway]

The number of people unemployed in the UK is just over 1 million - the lowest it's been since the early 1970s. However, we should still surely expect that figure to be even lower.

From next year, it may be much harder for care-providing organisations to recruit European migrants to fill their Care Worker vacancies.

Surely, it is reasonable to expect any UK resident who is unemployed, claiming job-seekers allowance and so far unable to get a job to be required to get a job as a Care Worker? If they don't then they should be sanctioned and lose their state benefits.

I am not just talking about Care Work. I am talking about all minimum-wage and minimum-wage plus jobs that we have been relying on European migrants to fill.

Why not? There will always be maybe a few 100,000s unemployed, as people move from one job to another, etc. But why should there be a million unemployed people if there is a shortage of workers in any industry that does not require any great level of pre-entry qualifications?

There will continue to be a crisis in homecare as there is a huge dissonance between the compliance and delivery standards expected by councils and regulators such as CQC/CIW and the rates that councils enforce on their suppliers.

Even paying minimum was (£8.72) from end of next month with the additional costs of holidays (12%), NI, Pension costs and the apprenticeship levy plus travel time and mileage, the cost to the agency starts from over £11 per hour. Some councils pay from £13 an hour- and expect calls of 15 minute duration. From this slender margin the care company has to fund expensive electronic call monitoring equipment, all staff training and development, DBS costs, assessor costs, out of hours services and the office coordinators.

No wonder so many withdraw or go bust.

This is satire right? Are you some sort of employment fascist? I hope that your nearest and dearest don't get cared for by someone uniquely unsuited to the work who will instead neglect and possibly abuse your relatives.

People losing benefits because they refuse to be forced into ANY profession is the mark of some sort of totalitarian state.

For all the above reasons, no, not care work nor anything like it, but yes, long term unemployed able-bodied people should be made to do some form of work - litter picking, simple gardening in public parks etc, cleaning graffiti etc etc, something which is not too onerous and can be checked on completion.

Also, you don't understand unemployment figures. Most are unemployed for a small number of months before finding employment in their own field. Long term unemployment is very, very rare - nothing like the 1 million you quote.

But then I expect this sort of ignorance from someone who thinks sanctioning benefits is a good idea.

Conscripted labour is criminalisation of unemployment. You are making unemployment, for whatever reason, a crime. Let that sink in before you believe all the C5 bollocks and come up frothing at your own countryfolk with nothing but contempt for them. Conscripted labour, from the people who brought you Imperialism 101, Slavery in America and The Caribbean, The Irish Famine and Dickens: The Lost Characters, I give you: Workhouses by Another Name 2020. Because if it doesn't work the first time, just keep trying it again.

FFS.

People who don't want to/can't work are absolutely useless to a business, they require constant supervision, work slowly and of poor quality.

I once was once involved in group of the long term unemployed to clean up an old graveyard under a govt scheme, it was a disaster.

None of the sectors you listed are really unskilled, warehouse work requires the ability to be able to organise/drive a forklift, picking crops with machinery is dangerous and needs physical fitness and hospitality sector requires excellent customer, numeracy & literacy skills, few jobs are really unskilled now a days.

Punishing people because the government created an environment of zero hours gig economy, job instability and then massaged the books to make it look like proper employment is nothing to be lauded. It's fucking shameful.

But then, if you want to talk about how stupid, feckless, unimaginative and workshy some are, you have no further to look than the British government, who never seem to learn despite centuries of fuck ups.

I think we all agree this is an awful idea.

But that doesn't solve the problem. Hiring well trained motivated British staff who are paid a decent wage would inevitably increase care costs. Which might mean some people can't afford it.

Would going into care become the preserve of those with savings/housing equity?

long term unemployed able-bodied people should be made to do some form of work - litter picking, simple gardening in public parks etc, cleaning graffiti etc etc, something which is not too onerous and can be checked on completion.

No they should not.

Jobseekers/Universale Credit is below minimum wage, people would essentially be carrying out slave labour. Unemployed people are not indentured servants. They're human beings and they deserve to be treated with dignity, not popped into an orange vest for all to see and made to pick up litter in exchange for £70-something a week.

Jobseekers must spend a minimum of 35hrs per week looking for work. They would not be able to do this while carrying out enforced servitude.

If they have children, where do the children go? Childcare costs money and it's often hard enough finding a longterm childcare provider let along a short term one.

If there is a task sufficient enough that a jobseeker can be forced into it for slave wages then it is a proper job role. It should be advertised as such and paid as such.

My mother - an undiagnosed narcissist - was a carer for the elderly and vulnerable. She hated them. Made little bones about abusing her position in "the community" to her own ends.

I am disabled, and yes; I probably could do with a carer popping in and out of my home each week - but the thought of entrusting myself at my most vulnerable to someone like my mother? Ha. No. I'd rather struggle on the way I am.

My daughter, an actual diagnosed narcissist, is thinking about going into caring because (and I quote directly) "it pays a fuck tonne of money". Does she exhibit any care towards her disabled (and only) parent? Ha. No. Does she, towards anyone but her own ends...? No.

And this is why people who do not want to go into the care industry, should not be encouraged to. It's a vocational career known and shown to draw those who want to be in full control and have power over those deemed "less than" or weaker than they, themselves are. It draws narcissists and virtue signallers by the dozens, rather than people who want to help make those in situations (like myself) where they need a little help, or a lot of help, feel valued as part of the wider community.

110% agree with you, Hoik.

However your general idea I agree with, no reason they can't clean toilets, sweep the streets, pick fruit etc. They should 100% have to do unskilled work - just not care

We could bring back workhouses and the Debtor's Gaols as well while we're at it. Properly re-establish the underclass.

i hope that Dominic Cummings doesn't see this thread

Dominic Cummings probably started this thread. Plenty of stuff gets anonymously floated here, to see what goes down well with us plebs and what gets shot down in flames.

Keeps the politicians' hands clean.

Absolutely ridiculous suggestion and clearly shows you have no understanding of care work, OP.

Exactly, ikiboo, because we can really trust people who are utterly contemptuous of people who have the audacity to lose their jobs to run these Workhouses By Another Name well, just as they did back in the good ol' days of Irish Famine (they were apparently all workshy and feckless, too) and Victorian Gloriana. Fucking hell. Never seen such backwards-looking, narrow-minded people in all my life.

YABU ! I think yu have looked at a survey somewhere and seen that we need X amount of care workers and we have X amounts of unemployed and think that we could solve both issues if we put all the unemployed in to care work or other minimum wage jobs .

1st as many PP have said a lot of care and dedication is needed for that kind of work it is not something that you can force someone into doing.

Going into care might become the preserve of those with housing equity....unless the property market crashes
Facebook Amazon Google and apple are the ones hoarding all the money ...they can pay

Apologies if someone had already posted this. This is BBC's Norman Smith.

twitter.com/bbcnormans/status/1230083882931847169?s=21

How easy do you think a care workers job is? Do you think it's just making cups of tea and sitting chatting?

When i worked in a care home we took on a potential new staff member on a days trial. She lasted till lunchtime as thats what she thought the job was all about. She was horrified when she had to help staff take people to the toilet!😂

I understand your principle, but agree that care workers need to want to work with vulnerable groups, and cannot and should not be forced into it.

I'd actually want a better system which doesn't penalise the disabled, the unwell (physical and mental), the elderly, the special needs etc but DOES weed out the work shy and people who think the state should pay for them to stay at home and have as many babies as they like.
For those people, I would like mandatory armed forces enrolment (with childcare onsite), where they have to do a 40 hour week learning a trade/ skill for a minimum of 3 years and are only permitted to leave when they have found a full time job and accommodation/ childcare etc that they can afford.

But maybe that's just me..........:)

The problem with that argument itiswhatitis is that most people who dont like their jobs aren't in roles where being shit could kill someone. Care is different to most jobs in that respect.

Also, people who are currently employed in jobs they dont like and have been able to maintain that employment are by definition people who are capable of holding down a job and not being more trouble than they're worth to an employer. This is not something that can be assumed of the currently unemployed whom OP wishes to force into care work.

Plenty of stuff gets anonymously floated here
I can totally believe that but do you have a source for this info Perking?

So, to summarise the thread, it's fine to run a care system using poor people from other countries to provide care in exchange for poor wages and terrible conditions (the status quo) but not ok for our home grown poor to be expected to do this because it will lower standards.

Obviously OP isn't going to come back, having had her ass handed to her.

But yep, both my Mum and MIL are in care facilities, and no way do I want anyone just picked up off the street with absolutely no interest in caring for the vulnerable, to be forced into caring for them.

Outside those unemployed for reasons that they can't help, I don't imagine there are a whole bunch of people with the skills, empathy and aptitude for caring for others. They'd be out there doing it if they did.

No, its better to run a system involving caring labour and low wages with people who want to do it and are capable of doing so than with people who don't want to and very likely can't.

We could of course potentially choose neither of those options, but that would require significant and structural changes. Which aren't being floated by either Priti Patel or the OP.

Maybe not care work but lots of other jobs. Before the referendum, all news and current affairs shows were full of vox pops with people complaining EU immigrants had stolen their jobs so they were now unemployed. So now's their chance to step up and work in catering, cleaning and many other sectors that have ALWAYS been open to hiring British born people if they had applied for those jobs.

I thought we already do push the unemployed into work with sanctions, is that not the case?

Isn't the 1 million unemployed mostly people who can't work due to disability or people who have recently lost their job and are looking? I was under the impression that people aren't able to be unemployed long-term for no reason now.

The way to end unemployment is to make sure there is enough work for everyone, encourage people with a decent living wage and make benefits for the fit and able very hard to come by.