People who won't work otherwise they lose benefits

[Alphavilla]

Came across BBC article recently quoting a 20 year old man saying he had cut out Netflix and booze to cut his costs in these difficult times. However apparently he could not work more than his 16 hours otherwise he would lose his benefits. My DH is a manager in large organisation and he finds it difficult to get shifts/jobs covered as the employees claim they can't add more hours to their part time shift because they would lose entitlement to benefits. So there is work to be had, but it seems it is more lucrative not to work. What has gone wrong?

It's a fault of the employers paying too little.

If the hourly rate was decent there would be no need for people to be topped up on benefits, where people are able to work (as in this example)

The 'system' is being played by multi billlion businesses who we as taxpayers are subsidising.

It's a total fecking disgrace.

We've always had a class of people like that, paid for by their privileged inheritance of a massively unequal share of capital and land.

So we end up with the tax payer picking up the bill.

I actually agree with the claims about automation and robots taking over jobs, but if you think about it that is precisely an argument for universal basic income.

Those robots are coming because they reduce operating costs and thus increase profits. As such they don't involve the economy getting any smaller, they just involve a massive transfer of wealth away from blue collar (and in some cases white collar) workers to the shareholders of the companies that produce and use the robots.

Society therefore CAN AFFORD to help people continue to live decent lives without full time jobs to support them. It just means accepting the other side of the equation, reducing the amount of increase in sharehold profits.

It's a question of how the benefits of automation are distributed. We need to start having a sensible conversation about the fact that it's not actually necessary for everyone in society to work 40 hours a week any more, and stop collapsing the issue into outraged rhetoric about laziness based on a defunct economic model.

Realistically, there are a lot of people who are never going to be doctors, financial experts or robot engineers. As their jobs get automated, the alternative is to just let them starve. Quite apart from the inhumane consequences (and for those on this thread who either don't care about or positively relish the inhumane consequences), that would have huge practical consequences for society as a whole.

Blaming people that are on benefits is such a good way of taking the spotlight off the actual problems isn't it.

I was on tax credits and coming off them was unbelievably hard. I was a sahm, to then working full time hours with no extra money, childcare to organise, extra bills to pay (more on council tax and rent) plus travel costs and work suitable clothing. It took 2 years to get to the point that if my kids needed a new pair of shoes I could just buy them and not get either a cheap pair that wouldn't last, or use credit. And being on a low income with a high amount of debt due to years of not having money for things needed (oven that needed replacing, beds for my kids, nothing considered a luxury) my interest rates were ridiculously high, which then added to a lack of spare money problem. The whole thing is a vicious circle of shit. It's always the claimants that are blamed, but it's hardly ever as simple as 'lazy, should just work more'.

I'm looking forward to having one of these as my robot carer
www.paroseal.co.uk/purchase
I remember reading about them years ago
www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/08/paro-robot-seal-dementia-patients-nhs-japan
"Amanda Sharkey, a senior lecturer in Sheffield University's department of computer science, warns: "I think we need to be a bit careful about human interactions with robots, so we don't end up with old people being looked after by robots and nothing else. So I think you could misuse Paro in the sense of: we've given this old lady the seal to look after and now we don't have to go and talk to her."
Initial results of the research are due out next month. Mountain would like to place Paros in more dementia care environments. But as each Paro costs £4,000, including a day's training, funding is vital.
Abbott's daughter, Sarah O'Neill, 43, believes that if tools such as Paro can help people with dementia to find some peace then they should be used.
"Some people may think, 'Oh, he is playing with a doll and that isn't really what an adult should do', but they have lost so much of the core of what makes them a 'grown-up' adult, I don't really think that should be applied," says O'Neill"

Say you are on a 16 hour contract and get universal credit to help with rent etc. Your boss asks you to work an extra shift which takes you to 22 hours. You get paid more that month which triggers your universal credit to be removed.

Then next week you only get your 16 hours. You can't afford to pay rent and your UC has been stopped as the system thinks you now work 22 hours a week and don't need it. Now you have to wait for it to be reviewed which takes 6 weeks, during which you can't pay rent or bills or food.

Unless you can count on those extra shifts every week, they cause more problems than they solve and you are worse off.

This isn’t true, when working on universal credit your monthly amount will just alter to the amount of hours worked, it doesn’t get stopped because you’ve taken on an extra shift, universal credit base your monthly amount on the hours you’ve worked within the assessment period.

They won’t just stop your money due to working an extra shift, if someone worked 16hrs a week then decided to do an extra 16hrs on top for that week it will just make deductions going off the money earned for that month..

however, universal credit in my opinion is a bad system, as they can offer sanctions if things aren’t declared on time and that can leave a lot of families in financial hardship, the only way to communicate properly is through a journal via online account and for some people who don’t know how to use a computer etc, it can be extremely difficult. Also when I do try and speak to someone about my claim sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing! As in because it’s a new system I don’t even think some of the people who work for UC actually know some of the stuff they have to do/information to give to others.

so for that reason I can understand why people may choose to just stick to the same basic hours each week so they know exactly what they get each month as opposed to earning more but not knowing how they will cover there bills due to wages not being high enough.. there’s a lot of flaws in the system tbh.

There you go then. Everyone who has been rendered unemployed by a machine can hire their services out to all of those terribly important people who can’t possibly be expected to hang around at home waiting for the bin robots to turn up 🙄

I love your optimism; I really do. We have IT people who come into work and they’re just like you. Full of ‘this machine will do everything, it will replace everyone, it will eliminate the need for paperwork’ etc, and then it turns out that it’s still full of bugs or the people designing it didn’t realise that there was more to a job than they knew. And then, we’re back to the old way because the new technology just isn’t good enough yet.

And my DH works in a supermarket. I can promise you that the general public has not mastered the use of self check out machines!

@Nagado there will be a chip in your bin that the robot will go and connect to, providing you’ve paid your council tax and that’s up-to-date of course and it will then carry your bin to the already automated left. It’s an absolutely tiny step in the process that will be with us within a matter of years. Not decades.

thank goodness for me and all the other IT people that come in to your workplace with ideas because it would appear others are severely lacking in any.

@Justthisonce12 that’s quite interesting actually. How will that work for communal bins?

Also, I’m not doubting that you have ideas. Your industry is full of them. Brilliant ones too. Unfortunately quite a few of them are a bit ‘fur coat, no knickers’.

How will that work for communal bins?
maybe you'll have to have all your purchases monitored so the bins know whose rubbish it is, or it wont open unless you're wearing a wristband and then it logs what you put in it, it would work like the chinese social credit system?

@Justthisonce12

I'm sure there are lots of ideas that look good on paper or in isolation

But just take your humble self serve check out and the unexpected item in the bagging area, removal of security tags from products, purchase of age restricted products Etc etc- attempting to remove people from processes doesn't necessarily make things work better

And when the connection fails?

Or the house doesn't exist on the royal mail database because it's a new build? Or the bin lid was snapped off in the most recent thunderstorm? Or the equipment fails and drops the rubbish on the ground and the owner is at work or is disabled/ill but not in receipt of benefits? Or there's a fuckup on the benefits and council tax that mean it comes up as not being paid yet? Or the manufacturers of the bins has supply problems so a replacement bin can't be supplied? Or the remote connection fails due to a server issue? Or there's a power cut at the council remote server so the clock is out of sync and the bin company server can't authenticate because the clocks don't match? Or somebody has just moved in and the database hasn't updated overnight after the property has been empty? Or the profiles are corrupted following an update and theres nobody in the overseas helpdesk who is prepared to rollback the entire installation in case that borks the system at the recycling plant?

Thank goodness for all those IT people who never need to to think of such things when they're flogging their one size fits all 'bespoke' solutions.

How is putting more people out of work and onto benefits a good idea?

Also you're making yourself look a right pompous twat.

Where as you Just come across as being a bit of a Luddite. And a bit thick

Nope, a massive health and safety headache, see driverless cars.

@BlueWalnut it’s no good saying nope 🤣These things are happening and all of the problems that you’re imagining will stand in their way will be fixed. It’s a matter of when not, if.

If you're against labour saving technology, how far back in time do you want to go? Should offices go back to pencil and paper? Should we get rid of cars, buses and trains and go back to horse and carriage? Should we ban supermarkets and go back to having separate greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers etc?

Most of us have had long experience of the implementation of new IT and systems being implemented on the cheap. It just doesn't work

The govt didn't create a fancy new bespoke IT system for Universal Credit, it cannibalised the system it had and attached new bits to it to botch up a 'working' system. It's why many UC workers still can't do everything online that's they're supposed to do.

The same will happen with all technology as long as it's designed to cut costs.

Any local authority websites I've used have been clunky and just not user friendly. The NHS system is cobbled together.

It's not just about getting the shiny new automated bin lorries, it's also about the massive investment needed to set up the system and keep it all up to date and functioning properly. It just won't happen. The UK is all about keeping costs down and the bits you can't see are what suffer the most.

@talkingdeadscot the NHS system is most definitely not cobbled together. I’m sorry but you really are showing your ignorance. The digital transformation is world class being headed up a global director who lead HSBC.

@Florenz

Now you are being ridiculous. I'm not against Labour saving technology, no one is talking about banning supermarkets.
Technology must benefit society as a whole.
A fully automated society poses huge societal issues - what will people actually do with their lives. Where is the money coming from to make it happen anyway - who will invest?
Richard Branson could have chosen to invest properly in the railways- but he was more occupied with his vanity projects.
Our govt certainly doesn't have the money to invest.
just for info - people are always banging on about the decline of the high street but don't shop there.
There is nothing wrong or backward in buying from a grocers or butchers, I do both, as do many people where I live. The queue outside my butcher is halfway down the street on a Saturday morning. So we have a thriving high street. I still go to a supermarket but I'd love to see a proper fishmonger again.

But replacing the little shops with supermarkets cost people their jobs, just as replacing care workers with robot carers will do. It's the same thing.

@Florenz

there is room in the world for big shops and little shops - not everything is a case of either or

You didn't answer my question.