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?

I've seen no appetite on this thread for increased care costs @MarchDaffs, which is what it all comes down to. Just this frankly bizarre belief that those imported to do the minimum wage, shitty jobs (care work need not intrinsically be shitty but the conditions we expect care workers to operate under currently often are) we dont fancy are somehow motivated by anything other than money.

OP, HRTFT but pretty sure there'll be plenty of these

Add mine to your over-privileged, entitlement-deluded, ultra-Tory cunty fucking biscuit barrel

I didn't vote for Brexit, in fact I campaigned for remain; but I am now expecting lots of new well-paid opportunities to become available so I can leave my underpaid and undervalued job and move on to something better. We were told it was the immigrants that were driving down the pay and making it difficult for English people to get a job. Let's see if that is actually the case. I very much doubt it.

Lots of people are unemployable for a reason !! Low intelligence, mental health issues or just not suitable to hold down a job reliably due to all manner of social problems. Care workers need to have a vocation for the job when working with very vulnerable people. At the moment pretty much anyone can get a job as a care worker as long as they have a clean dbs, it doesn't mean everyone is suitable.

YABVVU. A job in care work has to be something you're passionate about. It can't be "just a job".

Hate to break it to you but there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, of agency staff doing care work because its is difficult to attract long term staff. For the most part they are not "passionate" about it, but they they need the money and treat people respectfully and with kindness.

How ridiculous! I worked in care and the people that worked there voluntarily were still absolutely shit as it. So I absolutely do not want people who don’t want to be there, to be responsible for caring for vulnerable people!

Think it through 🙄🙄🙄

My DM is in a home and is regularly looked after by people who definitely should not be in care work. Many of them are migrants who just see it as an easy job to get but many are also uk born and simply unsuitable. It’s time care was seen as a worthwhile profession to train for and be proud of, not a minimum wage job for anyone who just wants a job.

Can you imagine someone caring for your mum or dad, or, one day, YOU, who is angry and resentful because they're being forced to do it?

Some would bury their feelings and wouldn't.

I'm guessing some would deliberately do a terrible job in order get sacked so they could go back to benefits.

*and some wouldn't

I am aghast at this.

OP, Incase you weren't sure, yabvvvvvvvvvvvvvu.

I think I did come across a source for that at one stage, UYScuti, but sadly can't for the life of me remember the details now. I dimly think it was a poster bragging about it or pointing to the places where the "messaging" had been planned.

Then there was that time years ago Hatie Kopkins very identifiably used MN like this. She was amusingly shite. Pretended to be someone else talking about KH, and asking what policies she should have. I'd guess that was, oooh, 2008-2012, if you wanted to adv search.

But mostly it's just my own qualitative observation (sorry, not very useful). It gets feverish round here before election times, with namechanged or observably political posters floating idea after idea. Then the ones which got a good reception pop up a bit later in manifestos. I'm pretty sure I remember the restriction of child benefit to two children being one such.

Social media is a giant, free, completely deniable focus-group for politicos. Run it up the flagpole, see if anyone salutes it. Slink away from the stink if people heap opprobrium.

The thread agrees that the OP is unreasonable
But what IS the solution to the problem highlighted by the OP?

Here we go. It seems that the OP is, in fact, Priti Patel:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/19/immigration-firms-will-need-to-train-more-uk-workers-says-priti-patel

@PerkingFaintly you're spot on. It's so transparent to those of us who can think for ourselves.

@mindproject
We'll all be waiting a while! Obviously Brexit is going to harm the economy. You don't kick your biggest trading partner in the balls, wrap yourself in red tape and then expect to get richer. Don't know what people were thinking, I honestly don't.

I'm going to give the other side of this. Dh is a care worker. He is also asian. He gets quite a lot of racist abuse from the elderly patients, and sometimes physical. He has been punched in the face, kicked and often had his hair pulled. And many of the other care workers are women, also foreign, who suffer the same kind of abuse. Dh had to stop working with one particular female patient because she kept taking all her clothes off and shaking her booty basically, trying to encourage him to fondle her. Many of the lovely female care workers also get elderly men trying to 'grab' bits of them. I'm sure you can guess which bits.

Dh has also spent many nights sitting holding the hands of people as they pass away because they don't have any family to do it, or because the family can't get there.

He takes time out of his non-working time to visit the elderly patients sometimes if they have to be admitted to a hospital, and he goes to their funerals if the family ask. He genuinely cares about them and I honestly believe that care workers - good ones - should be paid an awful lot more than they are.

The stuff you read in the news is the exception, not the rule, and what some of these workers are putting up with from the residents/patients, and for such low pay, is pretty hard.

Quelle surprise.

At least when the same OP started a thread with a excerpt from a Donald Trump speech, and (effectively) said "discuss", s/he did actually state it was from Trump.

Whilst i don't disagree that people who can contribute should be contributing, it's not as simple as that. Even if we ignore the fact of suitability, what if the jobs aren't in the correct location, should they have to move? What if as well as being unemployed, they are also unofficial carers for family members? What if they are in their 60s and unable to perform a hard labour job but don't have suitable qualifications or experience for anything else but are unable to actually retire? A lot of the unemployed figures will also include people who are inbetween employment or looking for their first job and are therefore not the long term unemployed you are talking about.

If society was different and we all lived as part of self supporting community groups, then I guess the elder could allocate out jobs to anyone not otherwise gainfully employed that would benefit the group overall in exchange for board and lodgings but we've moved a long way from that sort of set up.

Thanks for explaining Perking ☺️I wish I had spotted the Katie Hopkins stuff and I think you're probably quite right in your theories and observations ....
And this:
Social media is a giant, free, completely deniable focus-group for politicos
Means that we all work for the government for free as researchers😯 I think we should be paid for this very important work!!

Sorry, that was re Priti Patel.

How to piss off every care worker on MN by SquireOfGreenway

@GCAcademic, great save

it really makes my blood boil when people assume that care is a low grade job, and anyone can do it. I manage a care service and the combination of skills, personality and good nature that it takes to do this job well is a rare combination. My team will have endless patience with those with dementia, tenderly support those approaching end of life and bring some laughter into the lives of those who don't see anyone else from one week to the next apart from them. These are truly exceptional people.
I understand fro the Guardian today that the adults not in work are the long term unemployed, those caring for family members themselves and students. I'm sure a proportion of them would make excellent care staff, but not a huge number.
This government has loaded the points system to encourage those with high academic qualifications to enter. we have plenty of those home grown, even in the sciences my sons friends struggle to find graduate jobs and end up increasing their qualifications further up to Phd level in the hope of getting on the career path. In contrast there are thousands of vacancies for care staff, yet some of the very best carers are the Europeans who came here to work, many being horrified about the way we treat our older people in this country.
I'm not always the biggest fan of Diane Abbott but this morning she got it spot on, the value of your work to the country is not directly linked to what you get paid.

should be paid an awful lot more than they are
Of course they should and I'm sure everyone agrees with you, the problem is we can't afford to give them any more, no one is willing to pay these workers what they deserve

Some of us are unable to do care work due to our own disabilities, but don't require a carer ourselves. Let's just starve us if we just become unemployed, yeah?

Bloody hell, apply your brain to ideas before you share them!