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.

@AloysiusBear
The tax gap is theoretical. A much bigger chunk of it is income tax self assessment & vat - that tradey you love who's cheaper than everyone else but only takes cash?

Vast majority of self-employed sole traders don’t meet the threshold for VAT. You have to have £85k in turnover over 12months to have to start collecting VAT.

Average tradesperson turnover in 2021
London £79,599
East Anglia £78,644
South Central England £74,551
South East England £73,456
Northern Ireland £71,169
The Midlands £67,064
Scotland £65,978
North West England £65,762
North East England £63,833
South West England £62,599
Wales £60,123

Absolutely 100% this

They literally won’t be happy until we drop dead our desks well they are lest we are productive little worker bees, earning them more leisure time, we literally have no purpose on this planet according to the Tory party.

Which is another reason the work for dole idea is so terrible. The work capability assessment process is designed to overestimate many people's ability to work. People will have their benefits taken away because they are not capable of doing the work allotted to them. People already have benefits denied of course because their disability doesn't fit nicely into the DWP's idea of what a disabled person should be like.

I don't understand this.

If they're going to tell a job seeker to spend 30 hours a week cleaning up parks in order to "earn" their dole, then why not just give them a job cleaning up parks and pay them normally?

Makes no sense at all. Stupid idea. Totally open to abuse. Is this a new tory thing they're rolling out?

I wish people would get angry at the top rather than those at the bottom.

This is so true.

I save this country thousands of pounds looking after my adult disabled son who cannot work, yet I am constantly made to feel embarrassed or ashamed of it - like we're the problem. I even have family members telling me I do great out of benefits as we have a leased motability car.

Civilised society is meant to be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable people.

Appealing to the prejudices of the core party voters, in this to distract from something, can't imagine what's happened recently...

See the asylum seekers to Rwanda.

See the lazy workers just need to work harder even those the UK is an outlier with a relatively long hours low skill low value added economy, in part because of the removal of adult skills funding post-2010.

See lots of other headline grabbing policies. Whenever the PM is in trouble, carefully laid headlines get unleashed.

See some promise about GP appointment availability while making no changes to add to capacity and confirming the primary care system will have no funding for cost of living pay rises nor energy bills this year.

Care to predict what will get announced the next time more than a housekeeping level of incompetence is uncovered?

Until then, perhaps time for more cosplay Mrs T in a headscarf and tank in Ukraine?

No, how dehumanising to expect the poor and disabled to do the bottom rung of work for literally pennies - there would rightly be a revolt.

I honestly think the job industry is backwards... how is a footballer (job millions of people covert for the love of it) getting paid millions and a public toilet cleaner (a job NO ONE wants but that still needs doing) getting paid bare minimum?

People doing these 'crap' jobs should be paid richly because society would stop functioning without them and people in 'fun' and 'sought after' but 'non nessacery' jobs should clearly be paid less.

Our whole work based society is damaged and wrong.

The tories always look for a scapegoat to blame the country's problems on, to distract from their own failings. Immigrants, teachers, university students, benefit claimants. Yet we've got the lowest unemployment we've had for 50 years.

Great idea for company owners who can sack existing staff, recommend themselves for this scheme, and then go 'well I do believe you have a few people already qualified for this work' then get them back at a fraction of the cost.

And if I can work that out so have they. It's on purpose. It's to scare or torture people off benefits, which it will do, and the aim will be achieved. There are plenty who take benefits over working because why work when you can claim benefits for a similar amount? Why clean toilets when you can do nothing instead for the same money?

Sounds like the Tories have found a way of dealing with the labour shortages because of Brexit. How predictable!
And I bet they still get voted back in!.🤬🤬🤬🤬

I honestly think they want us to be America - which ignore the fact we are not and fact america had made many problem building up.

I think it political advisors fliting between to English speaking countries and ignoring glaring difference as the sell their "ideas".

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.

Let me tell you a little story about DH's cousin. Let's call him Tim.

Tim is 30. He is able-bodied, has some basic qualifications (GCSEs, couple of NVQs), and has never had a job. He is on Universal Credit.

On paper, he sounds like he should be looking for work and that he should be doing some of this unpaid work in exchange for his benefits.

Tim has never met a drug that he didn't like. He's been in multiple rehab programmes, usually as an alternative to jail after he's been lifted for burglary (again) and his solicitor has managed to get him off with an undertaking rather than a conviction. He lasts a little while in rehab then he'll shove something or other up his nose or down his neck and off the cycle starts again. He's had support from mental health services, most recently following a 72hr stand off when he barricaded himself onto a rooftop and spent three days throwing rooftiles at the people below and cradling a chainsaw that he brandished at anyone who came near. Again, he engages for a little while and then it drops off. No service wants him. He's too far gone for community support and not far enough gone for in-patient support. His life is so disordered. His mum drops off food for him otherwise he doesn't eat. Ditto clean clothes. She organises appointments, pleads with services to help him, and so on.

At his last UC review he was once again confirmed as fit for work and therefore would be eligible for this scheme.

He's exactly the kind of person you'd want helping your elderly grandad get dressed, isn't he? And I'm sure your nana would be glad of his company when he comes around for his state mandated chat five days a week?

I’ve got various family members who have never worked a day in their lives over three generations I would love to see this apply to but I also have family and friends who have worked and paid vast amounts into the system to get made redundant in later years and get treated like shite in terms do what they receive in benefits despite paying loads into the system . It’s crap because there are people regardlesss of what anyone says who know exactly what to say to get extra money but genuine people seem to have to jump through hoops to get money that they have more than contributed back .

It is unusual for people never to have worked a day in their life. I think your experience is extremely unusual to know various people this applies to.

He needs to tell them he's a danger to others in the workplace and get signed off permanently. That's how you do it. I've had it done for people myself by going in with them and saying that. It puts liability on the assessor and they sign them off permanently. @FarmerRefuted

THIS!
As I said I was a volunteer for a local charity that supported people long-term unemployed. The vast majority we could not even try to get them a volunteer role either for their own sake or other people's.
I do not think most people understand that most very long-term unemployed people are unemployed for very good reasons.

And helping people dress and bathe needs to be done by people who will pass DBS and be suitable in terms of safeguarding. The idea you could just stick anyone in is a frightening one.

It’s so unusual that a few years back when the Rowntree Foundation looked into it they couldn’t find a single three generation family who’d only ever claimed benefits, despite looking in some of the most deprived areas with high benefit claim rates.

Maybe the poster hangs about with drug addicts and alcoholics so does know various people this applies to? They didn't say the three generations were in one family. But if you mix with drug addicts and alcoholics you may know various people of different ages who have never worked a day in their life. If they got into heavy drug use say at 16 years old, then they would never manage to get or hold down a job.
Luckily this kind of heavy lifelong alcohol and drug use is unusual.

@CrustyFlake it's because jobs aren't given, they're applied for.

I helped someone who was practically unemployable with a criminal record long as your arm, and thick too. I got him many cleaning jobs but he just stole from the companies until he got fired.

No one ever came to give him a job, we had to apply for them and interview for them to get them. It's because there are laws in place around equality that mean you have to open jobs up to the public and you can't just hire someone you like.

So there's no way to give people those jobs. Those jobs would be advertised and the willing would apply for them. The people on UC who aren't really looking for work ( you can easily do the bare minimum on the online applications, you can spend 35 hours a week registering with agencies, attending courses, making up your CV, handing it round, it's totally uncheckable )

Used to be back in the '90s a JobCentre was just that, there were jobs there on the board and the people would help you apply and make calls for you. There were phones where you could take slips with numbers on and ring the jobs and go and attend interviews. This is how I got most of my jobs back then.

Now they are not jobcentres, they are benefit centres. There is zero help to get a job.

Why? Did the people at the top just think 'I know how to get people jobs at the job centre! Remove all the jobs from it!'

As if. This is all orchestrated to bring us back to serfdom. I wish poeople would realise the government are not idiots, they are very clever and they have us on here going 'oh the tories, the tories'

It's not "the tories" who are the problem, it's a system that has been gearing towards this way for decades.

Its an appalling concept, along with all the other bright ideas which have effectively been labour on the cheap and abused left, right and centre.

Every time a Tory minister opens his/her/its mouth the unadulterated crap that's spouted beggars belief.

It’s a stupid idea, nothing more to add!

Been thinking about this over lunch.

You can just imagine how some manager at the places these people are sent to work will revel in their little bit of power, set these people impossible tasks and give rubbish feedback just for the fun of it simply because they can. These people who will have no power or employment rights, no HR person to go to and will have to put up and shut up.

It is interesting that a conservative government wants to (yet again) try out such a communist thing. Minus the fact that it is giving large companies slaves for free.

I am less and less impressed with the so called market run capitalism and the inability of that system to function without extreme human cost.