To ask what you think about ‘work for dole’ idea?

[WakeUpAndBe]

Is it reasonable or unreasonable?

Pros: on the surface it sounds reasonable. Means the public won’t view it as “free money” if people are working 30 hours a week for a lot less than the national living wage.

Cons: risks of exploitation and returning to Charles Dickens’ style workhouses for the poor.

Chris Philp said UC claimants should be forced to ‘work for dole’

“In his paper, Philp suggested those claiming universal credit should, after a certain time, have to work for their benefits if they were employed for less than 30 hours a week. He suggested those claiming benefits for a disability should be given work that they were physically able to do.
^^
“Philp said they could be asked to complete community work such as cleaning graffiti or clearing parks, charity work, supervised job searching or recognised training to top up their hours to 30 a week. He said a referral to the “work for the dole” scheme would be triggered between three months and two years after first claiming depending on previous national insurance contributions.
^^
“If anyone is not compliant with work for the dole activity requirements, they should automatically have all their universal credit payments suspended as long as the person is not working for the dole,” he wrote at the time. “Although the complete suspension of universal credit benefit payments may seem an extreme sanction, the evidence from the US suggests that this is required to make the scheme fully effective.”

Number crunching

The National Living Wage is currently £9.50 x 30 hours x 4 weeks = £1,140 for 4 weeks

According to the website, monthly UC is £265.31 for single and under 25,
£334.91 for single over 25,
£416.45 for couples under 25
and
£525.72 for couples over 25.

If people are choosing purely not to work possibly it might be an incentive. For others it's going to be difficult. Me and DH get help. He works full time and me part time. We have 3 kids one with a disability that means no holiday club can take him. I would love to know who is going to look after him when I am forced to work full time when nobody can or will do it and the government won't financially support such clubs to run. My other kids wouldn't be an issue but there holiday club costs would outstrip my wages. The reality is people often have barriers to full time work childcare costs being one of the biggest.

That scheme sounds awful. I would suport the creation of community jobs doing that kind of thing, that unemployed people can opt to do. But it would have to be optional and paid at a higher rate the uc. It could possibly pay less then minimum wage but should be paid enough to make it worthwhile, and also have big enthosis on giving transferable skills and been an opportunity to generate a useful reference.

It is a good opportunity for a reference. Especially those in long term unemployment getting a reference.

No one should work for dole. Certainly not for less than minimum wage. However, i think there is a case for signing people up as government employees instead of dole. A set number of hours, less than 30, which would enable single mothers, for example, to work but not need to pay for childcare, doing jobs that help improve the state of our nation. All public spaces were filthy before lockdown. I noticed it every time I used a train or went to a town centre. People could be employed to clean streets, hospitals, stations, public loos. They could be care assistants, ward orderlies and ward admin assistants.

I had a friend who volunteered on a ward, who was rushed off her feet just phoning relatives with updates or handing phones to patients. Having givernment funded people doing that for a few hours a day to ease nurses' duties would help. Doing the busy lunch time shifts and helping dress and bathe people. Or companions to the elderly for a few hours a week. Gardening and reclaiming wasteland as public spaces. There would need to be training but it would give people much more self respect and daily structure than being on benefits. And anyone who wanted to progress or up their hours once children were school age could find employment more easily with recent experience.

Not just salaries. No Employer NI contributions to make or workplace pensions to have to contribute to either.

FFS supporters of this idea. Wake up and smell the coffee!

I can tell you now, there are not enough community service projects for convicted criminals to do their unpaid work hours, let alone people on benefits. Look up unpaid work backlog, it's massive.

Add to that why should people have to do what is a criminal punishment, when their only "crime" is being on benefits?

Instead of stupid schemes like this, it would be far better to invest more in job centre staff. Make them someone who can actually help people get a job or further training etc. So many jobs are out there that people never get to hear about. They either don't know it exists or think they wouldn't be qualified to do it. DS has just started a job that wasn't advertised. It's listed with one recruitment agency who seem to have forgotten it's on their books! DS had to tell them the details (I'd heard of it through a friend) The ad (as so many seem to be nowadays) was full of jargon and made the job sound so much more difficult than it is, which would put many off applying. Even though those hiring are chronically short staffed.

There are decent jobs out there but finding them is like finding a needle in a haystack. People need help with that.

The kickstart scheme was a good middle ground I think. Employers took on someone aged 18-24 receiving UC and had to prove they had created a role for them not filled an existing one. Their pay for 6 months was funded by the government. The employer had to provide training. This incentivised employers to give jobs, experience and training to people they wouldn't have considered before. I thought it was great but there were administrative cockups at the top and little regulation (e.g. nothing to prove what training you'd offered the employee) so I don't think the scheme was considered a success and it closed in March. I think the country needs to work on improving existing schemes, not trying out things like this for a few years then trying something completely new.

NMW isn’t based on what work is worth. It’s based on the agreed upon minimum needed for a person to survive hand to mouth. Therefore ALL work is worth at least NMW, otherwise it’s forced labour until you die of starvation, lack of adequate housing, and so on.

@goldfinchonthelawn
I had a friend who volunteered on a ward, who was rushed off her feet just phoning relatives with updates or handing phones to patients. Having givernment funded people doing that for a few hours a day to ease nurses' duties would help. Doing the busy lunch time shifts and helping dress and bathe people. Or companions to the elderly for a few hours a week.

Really? And who is going to arrange all those DBS checks, who is going to train these people?

Government funded people? WTF do you think the NHS is?

There's nothing controversial or offensive about this.

Why is it "disgusting" to ask people who are being subsidised by the taxpayer to contribute to society via community work and "unpaid" labour (which technically isn't unpaid, because they are receiving money from the government).
EVERYONE should be encouraged to contribute to society INCLUDING the unemployed. Why should the unemployed get a free pass?

There are people working full time, minimum wage jobs that only get paid a few more thousand per annum than unemployed people claiming benefits and child tax credits. How can anyone say thats fair?

I don't agree that the disabled should be targeted or forced to work jobs that "suit them", as disability is much more complicated than that. But I can't see a reason why able-bodied and able-minded people shouldn't be working/contributing to society full time?

It would only work if people were getting a fair rate for the job they did and only did hours that added up to their dole. And then it wouldn;t be dole. Nor should they be exzpected to look for other work. Or to work hours that prevent them from collecting children from school or caring for family.

Exactly! Why not provide the hospital with sufficient funding that they can pay enough staff to cover this work?

Maybe we could set welfare claimants to fracking in Jacob Rees - Mogg’s back garden. That’s something everyone could get behind.

There are plenty of "actual jobs" out there. Many companies are crying out for staff. With minimum wage jobs employees can apply for top ups. The top and bottom is that too many people don't actually want to work . They've all got "mental health isssues" which is the 21st century incarnation of the bad back.
I know this cos my cousin works in a job centre and goes home fuming most nights

A relative of mine works in a job helping people on long term benefits get into work. There are a few who have no intention of ever getting a job but for most there are huge barriers to getting into decent paid employment such as childcare, lack of transport (rural area) and mental health issues.

My FIL used to say that we should be grateful that not everyone wants to work, because if they did there wouldn't be enough jobs for them all! Not sure of the stats on that!

Whoever suggested this idea is either living in another realm or is just attention seeking.

Crazy idea.

Do they not understand why some people can't work?

I agree - but I think that's the exact type of policy the tories generally like to go for

Actually I've cbamged my mind its a great idea. Sack all MPs and get the unemployed into parliament for benefits. It's all most of us are willing to pay at this point.

The jobcentre should go back to being an employment exchange where people are sent to jobs.

This scheme was massively abused.

Large employers (Tesco and the like) got cheap labour, then at the end of the 6 months they found a reason not to give the person a job. And then got a new unemployed person in.

It was a huge bung from the taxpayer to large corporates, with zero benefit to either the unemployed or the economy. No two ways about it.

’there are huge barriers to getting into decent paid employment such as childcare, lack of transport (rural area) and mental health issues.’

Addressing those issues would cost money though and would also mean that the government had to acknowledge that not being in full time employment isn’t a moral failing.

If it is work it should be paid a Living Wage.

Working for dole ergo is not dole.

What next, work for pensions?

At this point I literally don't think the Tories have a brain cell between them.

And any charity that would take part in such a scheme is one that should be boycotted. Charities should not be exploiting people.

Oh, but they do.

The fact that schemes like this are essentially a transfer of public money into private sector hands, to the detriment if ordinary people, is the whole bloody point of it.