To SCREAM from the rooftops that furlough needs to be extended at least 6 more months

[Marg33t]

Furlough saves jobs and saves people's health. Why is the extension not announced today?

People are losing their jobs at a rapid rate as it's near to the 30-45 days for consultations for redundancies. It needs to be extended or more people will lose their jobs. Other counties are running it until next year and it makes me feel sick that we aren't protecting and saving jobs!

Which are the artificial jobs now, do you think?

Any job which relied on the employee claiming a Working tax credit is pretty made-up, I would say ?

@Stinkyguineapig

Me too it seems that businesses will have to show they are losing revenue because of covid but have the ability to bounce back, so essentially businesses unable to trade due to govt restrictions. Seems a fair balance as long as checks are in place.

This should really been a condition of the original furlough but I think it has to be set up and implemented so quickly there wasnt time to add checks that a company was eligible and adversely affected.
My cousin works in a high street shop. They only brought 40% staff back and the rest are furloughed. They are nearly trading at pre covid levels but the staff that are there are run off their feet.

Yeah it didnt have time to be thought through properly because it was needed immediately.

I also don't think a lot of businesses/people abusing it means that it should disappear. Same argument about benefits tbh, any system set up will have fraud, you accept some level of fraud in order to make sure those who actually need help get it.

Tweaking it now to weed out some of the pisstakers is a good idea as it does seem a LOT of well off companies are taking the piss like.

I think when all of this is 'over' we need to have a good hard look at the systems we have in place, as a universal basic income would have protected against any of this for many. I at least hope the people who suddenly find UC to be far too low and near impossible to live on, conitnue to think this and fight for it to be sorted, instead of going back to crowing about how UC is far too much and should be cut

@SerendipityJane

Which are the artificial jobs now, do you think?

Any job which relied on the employee claiming a Working tax credit is pretty made-up, I would say ?

That covers just about everyone I know who is working! For too long, companies have paid peanuts because they know the system will top up, its bloody shit. At the same time, just removing it would fuck the people, companies wouldn't just start paying a fair wage. So as usual, I don't know the answer :(

For too long, companies have paid peanuts because they know the system will top up, its bloody shit.

Which is not a million miles from a Universal Benefit Scheme anyway.

@SerendipityJane

Which are the artificial jobs now, do you think?

Any job which relied on the employee claiming a Working tax credit is pretty made-up, I would say ?

Why would you say that? You think low wage jobs aren't real?

Wage levels are not the problem; housing costs are. I wouldn’t need universal credit if my rent wasn’t two thirds of my wage.

Furlough would have been find if it had been paid at the same level as universal credit but without any of the claimant obligations. What isn’t fine is people receiving more on furlough than workers are getting for turning up and keeping essential services going.

@SerendipityJane

Which are the artificial jobs now, do you think?

Any job which relied on the employee claiming a Working tax credit is pretty made-up, I would say ?

This made me laugh. Five or so years ago I was a nursery teacher, working part time, because nursery children attend nursery school part time, earning roughly £16k a year. Once I had my son and looked into working tax credits as a single mother, guess how much I was eligible for?

£600 a month.

Are you telling me that teaching is a made up job?

Looking at the area I moved to in 2011, rents and sale prices have at least doubled. Wages and benefits certainly haven't. I agree, housing costs are a huge problem. I don't understand how local rents on a 2-3 bed terrace can go from £450 to £900 over 8.5 years and people see it as reasonable.

Definitely agree on the housing cost thing. There should be a huge focus on replacing the council homes that have been sold off, and honestly, stop selling them. I could take advantage of that and apparently buy outright for 40k now (havent looked properly, just put in loose details a while back when I heard of the scheme) but..I don't understand why they would sell council stock. Would be different if they replaced each they sold, but they dont seem to, which leads to less and less affordable housing. Hell, even if replacing, I think they should stop selling as so many are in need of affordable properties that the number available should be going up, not staying still or going down.

I am also possibly slightly hypocritical. While I disagree with selling them off, if I had a spare 40k I would absolutely take advantage and buy it . It just seems a bad idea longterm.

Any single parent who has to pay childcare costs is either going to need benefits or a very well paid job.

Or you make childcare free at the point of delivery.

It doesn’t make their jobs made up.

Any single parent who has to pay childcare costs is either going to need benefits or a very well paid job

TBH most parents in a couple who have to pay childcare costs are entitled to and need some support with it (unless as you say they are in well paid jobs). I don't think people understand just how low average incomes are and just how many of us need in work benefits just to get by. And childcare is expensive! My mum used to give me shit all the time about having money troubles, given that we were borth working and in her day they managed fine on just one income- and then I sat her down and showed her how much I spent on rent, how I spent more than double that on childcare, added on council tax, utilities and essential travel and asked her to make the remainder stretch to a month's worth of grocery shopping before even thinking about money for anything else. She was shocked.

I people have seen the new announcement. They have borrowed the German scheme

Do the “we can’t afford it” brigade not even consider that for a Tory government to have implemented these plans it must be cheaper than the alternative?

Who do you think has to pay employees’ notice and redundancy money if a business folds due to insolvency and has no assets?

Agree with the plan to only support jobs which are not completely dormant/dead.

When people say ‘saving jobs’ what do they really mean?

If the industry picks up again in a year can’t the company just re-hire and re-train, at a lower cost per head than a whole year’s salary?

In some ‘dormant’ industries there could be targeted help, to maintain premises or equipment perhaps, but not to keep people hanging about doing nothing.

There is maybe a case for an increase to benefits for all, so that spending keeps things a bit more buoyant, but it should be equalised with other unemployed, furloughed shouldn’t earn more.

the industry picks up again in a year can’t the company just re-hire and re-train, at a lower cost per head than a whole year’s salary?

I think the danger is that the whole infrastructure which kept that industry going will have collapsed in that time. Like... theatre. Yeah, you can hire some out of work actors in theory, but the agents who used to represent them have shut down, Stage magazine where you used to advertise has closed. The theatre buildings have had to be sold off because there was no one to maintain them and now you can't afford to buy a new building and renovate it.

And in all industries there will be a massive loss in terms of expertise and structure and process. Say a small medical charity shuts down because it can't afford to keep its staff. You want to start it up again, but you've now lost all the staff with 20 years experience in dealing with juvenile palliative care, for example, and are having to hire people from scratch. The quality of care is loads lower, you won't have the knowledge of the landscape so won't be able to reach as many people, and you're going to waste time just getting all your certifications soon and in that time a load of really vulnerable people will lose out hugely, and maybe never actually get the quality of care they would have got before.

It's a lot easier and cheaper in the long run to maintain a whole structure for a year rather than let it burn down and try and reinvent it all later.

Also the company can’t just retrain in a year as the ‘company’ no longer exists!!
They will have closed and got one of these magical ‘other’ jobs and so there will be no one left to restart the industry and like PP said the buildings will have gone, the knowledge will be lost. You need the experienced people to train the new people!

the industry picks up again in a year can’t the company just re-hire and re-train, at a lower cost per head than a whole year’s salary

Who will train them when all the experienced staff have been made redundant? My team along with me, were all made redundant from our jobs in July. If the industry we worked in started to pick up, there's no-one to teach anybody quite a skilled job, as most of us were lucky enough to be employed elsewhere.

My team were the "Training and Improvement" team, so highly skilled.