To think this won’t work and will force more into poverty?

[KimberleyClark]

Kwasi Korteng wants to cut benefits to part time workers to force them to work more hours.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/21/kwasi-kwarteng-to-shrink-part-time-work-benefits-to-grow-labour-supply

you gotta love the Tories

Ultimately society needs children to continue to function, and it needs them to be well cared for and to grow up to be productive people. People without children are no different in this regard, they benefit from the outlay and work done by parents.

There isn't a problem in the UK of people having too many children, if anything there aren't enough for the kind of stability desired by most people. (They could of course look at a slow decline, but that would require a whole different attitude to the economy and won't happen, instead they will try to make up with immigration which means citizens benefiting from the work of parents in other countries they don't have to contribute to.)

What to do with children isn't really a question of individuals, it is a matter of larger social structures. Modern globalism wants both parents working as close to FT as possible and most people have little choice but to do that. So - childcare is required that is affordable under that scheme which is almost certainly going to have to be socialized to be affordable on a population level.

The other possibility would be to have an economy where a family could live on one wage and parents could take care of their own children for the most part unless they decided to work at a job well paying enough to provide for childcare.

Part of the problem is if you have the former system in place, it becomes almost impossible for all but the rich to opt out and stay home with kids. So almost everyone has to be on board with that.

Will this put a stop to those medical secretaries who work one day a week for consultants?

Our hospital is riddled with them and it slows things down considerably.

Either they need to up their hours or the NHS to make these people redundant.

I've been a patient of my consultant for years. Long enough to know the secretary was initially full time (good), then maternity, then 3 days (good), then maternity and now 1 day a week (awful, never available and always playing catch up).

Takes the absolute piss.

I work part time so I get it. But I don't think I'd be effective doing less than 3 days a week. I certainly wouldn't want my colleagues or customers to suffer from doing such few hours!

This

And don't tell me to get a better paid job because society needs someone to do my job. When people say minimum wage can't rise, they're basically saying people who do jobs like mine don't deserve to be warm and fed.

You’re situation seems similar to my Sister. Basically trapped, and like you said someone has to do that job so why not just increase the pay? Her DP also works full time and yet they never seem to fully achieve anything- not quite in dire poverty but not exactly able to live exciting lives because the system just won’t let them.

Nurseries struggle to staff the rooms during the week. No way would they be able to staff them at weekends. Take it from someone who knows.
This is in response to the poster who said childcare should be available of a weekend.

Yes, my job is seen as crap but someone has to do it. So many undervalued jobs which are essential to the running of society but paid peanuts for doing it. Some people work 48 hours in a nursery but if you're earning minimum wage then it doesn't amount to much. For the level of stress and work it's shocking.

If they’re going to do that then they need to make PIP more available. A lot of people will be working part time hours because that’s all they can manage but they are considered too well to claim PIP.

It makes me so angry that people don’t understand that not everyone can work full time and they’re not lazy!

@VioletInsolence but we’re not taking full time here, we’re talking working an extra three hours a week. If someone really can’t manage that then they should absolutely get PIP. Most people can manage it though, and could easily fit them in around school hours, so they absolutely should.

The article doesn't give enough details to be able to fully comment on it. People who are not carers, disabled or have children under 13 are expected to work 35 hours a week on UC already.

People with children aged between 3 and 4 are expected to be working or searching for work for 16 hours a week and with kids aged 5-12 for 25 hours.

It's not clear what group they are wanting to work more hours, there are no groups who are expected to work 12 or 15 hours at the moment so the article doesn't make sense.

I checked the details of this today, and it won't apply to people with health issues or disabilities. I suspect their criteria for exemption from this will be people being assessed as having limited capability for work or in receipt of PIP.

The worrying thing is that I suspect this will be another thing that is discretionary and there will be a lack of consistency in decisions and no monitoring to ensure equal treatment of all groups.

I deal with clients from approx 8 different job centres. One JC in particular makes decisions that are much tougher on claimants than most of the others.

Because Tories are always gonna Tory.

There is no logic as the numbers working just 12 hours (the current min) is very small, so even if they all went to FT, it would make little difference.

How about making work more attractive? why not lift the cap on care worker bonuses? that seems to be the answer for the 'city.

As for Carrots? its a threat to cut monies, so all Stick i'm afraid.

All this has come about since Brexit, they are now having to introduce every more desperate policies to make up for their disastrous exit from the EU.

In the same sentence, they lift the bonus cap for bankers.
Which means the poor are forced to work more hours and still be on the breadline, while the rich get richer.
Not at all typical Tory hey!

Transport issues, childcare etc is not a valid excuse in my view - people are already managing these for the twelve hours they currently do so will just need to adapt for a further three.

Where I live there is one bus service running between Town A and Town B. It takes 90 minutes to get from A to B, a distance of around 15 miles. If you want to go elsewhere then you need to get a connecting bus at either Town A or Town B, the availability and timetabling of these connecting buses varies greatly. First bus in the morning is at 6am, it runs every 30 minutes until 6pm at which point it runs every hour until 10pm. After 10pm there are no buses. On Sundays the first bus is at 9am, they run once an hour, and last bus is at 9pm. On some Bank Holidays they run to Sunday timetable and on other Bank Holidays they don't run at all - for example this Christmas there is no bus after 5pm on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve and no bus at all on the 25th, 26th, 27th of December and the 1st and 2nd of January (the Bank Holidays).

They're expensive too. £6.80 return for an adult, £3.40 per child. This only covers you for that operator, the connecting buses at Town A and Town B are both operated by a different company and so need their own tickets.

As for childcare, we have one nursery for ages 0-3 and it's closing this month due to no longer being financially viable. School nursery starts age 3 but is only mornings 9am to 12pm. There is wrap around care at the First School, limited to 40 places and only available up to Year 4 (age 8 to 9). The middle school (age 9+) doesn't have wrap around care. There are eight childminders locally, they all have a waiting list and none of them serves the middle school so, again, only up to Year Four/age 8-9.

Back when I worked full time I had to get the DC up at 430, then preschool aged, and get them fed and dressed and take them to my mum's for 530 so I could get the 6am bus to work (no staff parking available), DH also got this bus. Mum would look after the DC until 8am when the childminder opened and drop them there on her own way to work. Childminder closed at 5pm so mum would collect DC on her way home and feed them at hers. DH and I would get back at 6, collect DC, take them home for bed and then do it all again the next day. It was exhausting and there is nothing more shut than having to drag a sleepy toddler out at 5am on a winter morning when really they should be in bed.

I am neutral on this. I work with a fair few that work part time as UC tops them up. They could work full time but choose not to. Once their kids leave school they’ll loose the UC ( or some of it) and talk about working full time then. They mostly have teens not kids that need childcare.
I get their logic and I don’t blame them but it is irritating when they basically get similar in their pocket as those working full time.

If it's done carefully and applied to those who have no reason not to work more then it's a good thing I think. I know people with 3 kids where only one of the couple works 20 hours a week. No reason they can't do more other than they want 'family time'. Pretty cheeky.

For one or more of the reasons pp have been stating in their replies.

@caringcarer yes, childcare is expensive. When I had two DDs in nursery, that ate up two thirds of my monthly take home pay. These days it would be 98%. This country can't have its cake and eat it. Fund childcare properly - that means subsidising it, yes - and pay childcare workers properly too. Then we can talk about making people return to work or face having their benefits cut.

I agree tbh. But there should be a big overhaul of the childcare system, as working full time, you’re practically working for nothing after you’ve paid the nursery.

Gosh, I assumed someone was being ironic-is that post for real?

Oh sod off.

In a city centre, yes.

I’m semi rural - 25 mins drive to the nearest city.

To get to Uni (post grad), I had ONE bus to rely on, which is every hour. It goes to a small transport place. Where I then had to wait 30 mins for another bus.

Door to door, a 25 min drive was taking me 95 minutes to get there, and 2.5 hours to get back most days, as due to traffic/late bus, I’d just miss the bus back to my town, and have to wait an hour.

Fortunately I had bomb proof childcare (single parent) and a course leader who wasn’t a twat.

We ended up living here due to being made homeless, and I had to take the first house I was offered.

I passed my driving test shortly before I finished my Masters, but don’t be so fucking naive.

It is just absolute bullshit - they want everyone to turn on a benefit claimant to distract attention from the massive tax handout they are about to give to the richest 10%.

Unless you are in the top 10%, you are a dipshit to fall for this yet again.

I have more in common with those on benefits than I do with the bankers getting their soon-to-be-uncapped bonuses.

Ilostmysocks
Will this put a stop to those medical secretaries who work one day a week for consultants?
Our hospital is riddled with them and it slows things down considerably.
Either they need to up their hours or the NHS to make these people redundant.

You're absolutely right. My neighbour's daughter was working as a temp secretary. She recently worked for a consultant in the local hospital. She wasn't terribly busy and noticed a pile of files with audio tapes attached. Upon asking if she should be typing the tapes, was told by the consultant that they were being left for his secretary to return from her three week holiday. That as they were private patients the secretary would be paid extra per letter. It's not difficult to guess they will be given priority over NHS work when she got back.

@GoingThatWay it seems that little gem has largely gone under the radar. Absolute arseholes. The older generation of the family were right, never trust the Tories, they will look after their rich pals and sod everyone else. Hell will freeze over before I'd ever vote for them.

Glad you mentioned this because I couldn’t work it out. Who are this group who originally had to work 9hrs then had it increased to 12 before it was increased to 15 today? Off the top of my head I can’t think of another group who wouldn’t already have to be looking for work under the current rules.

They’d have to be a group with a fairly specific reason for not being able to work 16hrs. People with children under the age of 3 and people with sickness of disabilities that mean they’ve been assessed as not being able to work 16hrs maybe.