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.
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“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.
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“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.

You say that but we used to get loads of people coming for a job with us, and the job is really not very hard, and there's no way knowing that a significant number of them would be able to do it, and no way I'm finding out. The jobcentre people we used to get sent were unemployable. They needed help not just jobs

I trained for years to do my job, had years of experience and a high salary, when i was made redundant i claimed jsa, no way in hell would i be cleaning graffiti or picking litter. That is not what i trained to do! I was patronised a lot by job centre staff and told i had to apply for supermarket and care jobs, i applied but did not even get an interview because i was overqualified. Fortunately i stepped into another well paid role using my hard worked for qualifications, skills and experience within a year.
Jobs at basic level should be paid a proper living wage and resources to encourage people into work via skill enhancing, and training should be focused on long term unemployed. Not everyone needs it and as well as being patronising to people who are highly skilled sending them ( or trying to) on courses to look at how to use a computer or learn how to write a cv is a colossal waste of resources.
it feels as if the belief is that every claimant is work shy, many more would be in full time work if paid a proper living wage that allows for childcare or other care out of their salary. It is a nonsense to expect people who genuinely want a real job to take on community service or other created roles, as has been said multiple times if the work needs doing pay people a living wage to do it and save all the resources to support those with real barriers to employment.

So this is fake news.

Trump would be proud of us 🙄

So that is their reason, not excuse for being unemployed.

some people‘s lives are just so chaotic if the government wanted to reduce the amount of service users they have for social services and NHS employing an army of Nanas to go and help these people manage their lives, put in systems in place, teach them how to cook, oh hang on a minute we had that was called sure start.

Well, they’re coming from a position of privilege aren’t they?

They don’t recognise the help they receive through inheritance and help from their already wealthy families.

@Pinkcadillac what's fake about this concept? It wasn't written about? It's not something that's been done? (it has)

@OnlyOpenMouthToChangeFeet I don't need to be told all this. I know many people on benefits, some it IS totally the life of riley, others struggle horrendously, and I've also had both personally. I've gone days without eating on benefits when I hadn't been paid on time. I've also been quite well off as a single mother in a sweet spot having my wages topped up.

PIP is brilliant, it's elevated so many lives and I think that's great.

My point was a bit tongue in cheek; it's a "good" idea in that it will benefit the wealthy. It's not good if you're at the bottom, but that's where they want to keep you. And by they I don't mean the Tories, the packaging of whatever policy is being enacted at the time. The people in charge don't care about you, and they don't make policies with you in mind.

People seem to think they do but are just always somehow off the mark. Absurd people can think this.

As I explained, we also has companies who is d not have vacancies who donated their staff time and skill.

It isn't one sided and can work well. It should not be derided and avoided just because national schemes are bought by the usual suspects and turned into money making machines.

Local solutions can work well.

He is also one of the ones accused of having the idea for the tax cuts for the richest in society that was later u-turned. Whoever thought that tax cut was a good idea during a cost of living crisis is clearly someone to keep an eye on.

Tory U-Turn On Tax Cuts Is Causing Chaos – So Who Is Blaming Who?
Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, Chris Philp and the government's advisers are all being roped into the debate.

Wouldn't work

For one, those jobs should be employee jobs anyway.

Working out a system on what jobs would be suitable for people with disabilities would be very complicated, there would likely need to be PIP style assessments, multiple risk assessments, it would just get contested endlessly.

Also the whole process would be pretty degrading.

I do think however there should be more training courses available, including things like workshops on resilience, communication skills, how to present yourself and more skill based ones.

They could fill gaps in STEM jobs with re-training programs.

Felt enraged at the word 'dole'. We've moved on since the 80's. Unworkable idea.

This.

Currently still used in Australia

Work for the Dole: A Workforce Australia Program

The company I used to work for signed up for the old workfare, the first and last chap who they took on lasted one morning after telling a customer to fuck themselves, he wasn't paid to help, he was only there because he had to be and it was shit.... it may not have been the result they wanted 😂

The company I used to work for signed up for the old workfare, the first and last chap who they took on lasted one morning after telling a customer to fuck themselves, he wasn't paid to help, he was only there because he had to be and it was shit.... it may not have been the result they wanted 😂

i can imagine it..

Thats the thing you can make people turn up to a charity role or sweep leaves if that’s all you think they can do but you may not get the results you want.

How is this fake news?! OP references an article in Guardian published recently.

Live on BBC right now:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63114183

Braverman: Benefits system 'needs more stick'
There's more from Suella Braverman on benefits, the hot topic on Day Three of the Tory party conference.
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The home secretary claimed there is a "stubborn core of our population that sees welfare as the go-to option [and] is not motivated... to get out and work", adding that the system needed to add "a bit more stick" to make sure it paid for people to get themselves into work.
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Speaking at the conference, Braverman told The Telegraph's Christopher Hope there are "far too many people" who are able to work but don't. Instead, she said, "they choose to top up their salaries with tax credits or whatever".
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Referencing the popular Channel 4 TV series - which aired in the mid-2010s - Braverman said she believed that the "Benefits Street kind of culture is a feature of modern Britain".
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As we've reported, there's been some in-government fighting today after PM Liz Truss refused to commit to increasing benefits in line with inflation. Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt swiftly broke ranks to call for the increase - promised under Boris Johnson - to be honoured.

This

This proposal lies somewhere between peonage and indentured servitude. Philp hasn't noticed its not the 1780s any more.

How does it happen that the UK keeps on throwing this sort of scum to the top?

How did it come about that this sort of discredited nonsense is part of the public discourse in the UK?

Most people on benefits are single mums. Who is looking after their children while they do this work?

And let’s not forget that being a single mum on benefits produced a bestselling author called J.K.Rowling.

She has spoken about how that overcoming difficult time in her life helped her to become the success she is now.

He suggested those claiming benefits for a disability should be given work that they were physically able to do

Many places won't take this into consideration and will keep pushing people to do more and more. My disabled cousin volunteered for a charity shop. The new boss wouldn't accept that they couldn't stand for long and wanted to be in the back sorting where they could sit down and take their time. They didn't mind spending a full day to do what a more able bodied person would take half a shift/day to do. They were happy to help.... The new boss kept trying to put them in delivery/pick up rounds for furniture that they couldn't carry and wanted them to stand to do the till/sorting whereas the old boss let them take their time and have a seat where needed.

It ended up making cousin poorlier and affecting her mental health too so they had to quit. We tried to support her to take it further but the boss was awful and she didn't feel strong enough to. Funnily enough boss is no longer there 4 months on. (in charge for 6 months in total).

Imagine the power trips those sorts would have if jobseekers or jsa etc was attached to it. "you have to or you won't get your benefits!". And what if the person had to leave because of something similar to the above?

If the work is there for free it's there for paid employment in most cases! It would result in people being taken advantage of hugely.

Schools are shut for 13 weeks a year !.. not judging teachers , but is what it is.
I think that employers and the government forget this and not everyone has child care on tap either

I remember they tried this before and people were doing 30 hours a week in Tesco for free. Whilst Tesco carries on making whacking great profits whilst a lot of it’s paid work force are being propped up by universal credit top ups.

Its ok to encourage people to work but it should be at things you learn skills at to increase employability. Also you should be paid minimum wage for something longer term. Fair enough to do a short training course unpaid if it increases employability (5 days you get travel and lunch expenses type stuff)

The council does run community service programs where people do gardening, painting. You have to pay someone to supervise them. It feels unnecessarily punitive to stick everyone on UC to do the same.

There is a small section of people who don’t want to work. In my experience often single males, on a minimum wage job you’re not a lot better off than being on UC. I grew up on a council estate and they are who they are. Honestly you’re never going to get a decent days work out of them and they know how to play the system. You won’t force them to work you will cause problems for people who are genuinely job seeking, folk with mental health problems, parents who can’t find childcare etc.

I think employers with vacancies should up their game though the amount of ads that don’t give the hours but would like you to be fully flexible. If you’re on UC and accept a job then you’ll get sanctioned if you can’t hack it due to awful shift times.

God yes, I cannot agree more. I'm an unpaid carer for my mum. I look after her 24/7 as she can't be left alone. If lucky I get 3/4 hours off every couple of weeks whilst another relative sits with her.

They would not find anyone other than us devoted carers who would provide in a lot of cases 24/7 care for 42pence an hour.