Voluntary work or lose benefits

[Marjoriew]

Government intend to cut benefits of claimants on JSA who refuse to do voluntary work of 30 hours a week over a 4-week period.
Benefits could be stopped for up to 3 months if claimants refuse to comply.

its bullshit that it takes you a year to get a job.

it might take a year to geta job at a salary you want in and industry you want

but i can piss on about 4 supermarkets from where i am and i guarentee i could get a job in a matter of weeks = not a year

so why aren't these positions being saught and filled?

i suggest its got something to do with benefits verses minimum wage and working not being seen as worthwhile - which is an attitudinal change

i suggest that processes such as benefit dfepartments take so fucking long to help out and sort out a new claim that its worrying to shift from one to another incase you dont have enough money whilst your tax credits come through or whatever

the function ;of benefits departments needs to be looked at

i suggest that if it takes someone on JSA a year to find a fucking job that this is highly indicative of the type of NON support they care getting which could help them out of unemployment - it is an indicator on its own that the job centres are not helping

Place holder

wobblebobble

"what is the problem with being put to work whilst your looking??"

because it takes up the time you would otherwise be using looking for jobs.

Sure, there are a few people who play the system, but there are an awful lot of things in place to deal with that and have been right from the introduction of Restart interviews onwards (and probably before). I don't see this improving matters, from what I've seen of such schemes before.

I would be most interested to see what the OP thinks of this topic as they dont seem to have posted anything other that the original post??

"but i can piss on about 4 supermarkets from where i am and i guarentee i could get a job in a matter of weeks = not a year"

yeah, but not if you live in Easterhouse/Ferguslie Park/the Bogside or any of the other places where long term unemployment is concentrated

You've really no idea Custardo.

It took my DF 3 years to get a job picking up paper.

He was skilled, but in an industry that no longer existed. He was under no illusions that he would have to take an unskilled job and applied for all sorts. It still took a quiet word from a friend of a friend to eventually find a job..

theres loads of big supermarkets where I live ..no fucking vacancies though because I've tried

My dp has 20 years professional driving experience ..he was turned down by tesco for a driver delivery job ..too old?

Workfare is an excellent principle, but needs to be carefully implemented. It has been very successful in Australia - and the Labor government there did not repeal the Liberal welfare reforms. Iain Duncan Smith has thought about welfare very seriously, so I expect him to fully appreciate the difficulties and pitfalls.

Out of work benefits for the non-disabled need to be more time-limited, with far more stringent conditionality. Too many on JSA moonlight, cash-in-hand.

The best thing we can do for those who claim benefits as a lifestyle choice is to give them tough love.

Saying "where are the jobs" is a non-sequitur. Even in the boom years, almost all of the new jobs created went to immigrants. The problem is a culture of worklessness, with the benefit system giving perverse incentives.

The private sector is growing fast at the moment, and lots of jobs are being created. Once again, they seem to be largely going to immigrants though, with the unemployment number staying roughly constant.

wubblybubbly - did you consider moving house to find work?

We have four admin jobs going in our firm which we can't fill.

DP works FT for a (very little) bit above minimum wage. He earns £16K before tax. We are about £50 a week better of with him in work than we would be with him on JSA. We get some housing benefit,we get Child tax credits and working tax credits. If someone who is long term unemployed thinks they are financially better of on benefits than being in work, then they have much greater problems than being unemployed, like being crap at maths for one. I have been a single parent in the past, and even then, I was much better off working than I was on IS. ANd that was with 3 dc, two in after school care that had to be paid for, and one that was in Nursery.

I cannot see how a scheme like this would help anyone to get off benefits, if they are still on benefits rather than in work where they would be financially better off, then there is almost always a very good reason for them to still be on benefits. Like being unable to find a job that fits in around the available childcare, not being able to afford the TRAVEL to where the jobs are on a min wage job (min wage is about £30 a week better than dole transport more than this would mean being worse off in work), not having the skills the local job market is looking for, etc.

As for the person that automatically assumes that if you have additional caring responsibilities that you will get Carers allowance...all I can say to that is hahahahahaha. I have a DD that is almost 13yo, with a variety of SN's (hypermobilty syndrome, leaky heart valves, partially deaf, learning difficulties, (mild) asd, (mild) epilepsy) and because no ONE problem is severe enough to qualify for DLA, desite the fact that the combo of SN'S mean she can't be left home alone, I do not qualify for carers allowance. PLUS you lose WTC if you claim carers allowance. I also care for DP's elderly parents...but because they are not MY relatives...I can't get CA.

A lot of people on JSA/IS have additional caring responsibilities that ARE NOT recognised by the DWP,but it does not mean that those caring responsibilities do not exist.

And I can tell you now, if I was on JSA (I'm not, DP works FT) there is no WAY on god's earth that I would do 'voluntary' (compulsory) work for less than minimum wage. If they upped the rate of JSA from £65 a week to £175 a week for those doing this 'workfare' then fair enough, but buggered if I would work 30 hrs a week for less than minimum wage. It's bloody slave labour that will put low paid workers like my DP out of a job.WHy would they pay DP £16K for doing a job they could get a JSA claimant in to do for nothing? ANd if DP lost his job through ths scheme no fucking WAY would I let him do the same job for £65 a week that he does now! I'd get food parcels from social services and LET the DWP stop the JSA first!

Takver

"because it takes up the time you would otherwise be using looking for jobs."

I think we all know that statement is a cop out and utter bollocks you expect people to believe that job seekers spend 30 hours a week looking for work??

Custardo it does depend on the area you live in some areas are hit worse by job cuts than others and supermarkets can sometimes have hundreds of applicants for 1 job.

I dont care how long it takes to get back to work, working voluntary just shows people that your intention is there and your not sat watching Jermy Kyle every day waiting for the pub to open.

Perhaps it is easy to get work when you are in work or when you do not have to have a regular wage to make it worth while if givingup benefits.

I often have a second or third job on the go in the school holidays as does my DH. We can take on anything though.

jobcentre plus supermarket seach 6 pages

so the jobs are there. again i suggest attitunal change and the time it takes benefits to process change and job centre support/correct info arre factos why people aren't going for these jobs

that should say supermarket jobs in easterhouse

I'm not looking for work, I'm a SAHM. But if I were, moving for work would be something I'd be loathed to consider.

To start with, DH has a job, a good one.

Furthermore, I'd be reluctant to leave my DM, because we support each other. She's on her own since my DF died.

Finally, I'm 9 months on from a breast cancer diagnosis. I'd be very reluctant to leave the area where all of my emotional support and healthcare professionals are.

I was talking about when your DH was unemployed for 3 years. Your scenario is not unusual and this is not intended to be a personal attack in any way, but there are plenty of people in those circumstances and worse who do move across the country for work. We moved the length and breadth of the country for my father's work.

If everyone took the same attitude then, well it's not hard to see why people say there are "no jobs".

In my local supermarket, there has not been ONE job advertised in the last 10 months. Before that there were 3 jobs advertised in 6 months. For 12 hrs, 14 hrs and 15 hrs respectively. They wouldn't let you take two of them to make up FT hrs, and when you sign your contract of employment with them, there is a clause in it that states that you are not allowed to take a second job with any other retail outlet. 15 hrs is not enough to get you off of JSA/IS and onto WTC. SO no-one could take the jobs unless they were a SAHM looking for a few hours to top up their partners earnings. No-one on JSA/IS was able to apply.

When a brand new supermarket opened in our town last year (already said ths, but will reiterate) there were 1200 applicants for 120 jobs.

I'm guessing I'd need about £1500-2k to move house ie removal costs, deposit and rent. I haven't got money like that and I can't save for it either. Social Fund wouldn't lend me that amount and I can't afford the rate of repayments anway (roughly half my Income Support payment). So who is going to pay all these people to move to all these areas with lots of jobs? And what's going to happen to the areas that have no jobs when all those capable of work have fucked off out of the area?

I have to agree that it's almost always going to pay more to work than exist on benefits so if someone is choosing benefits over work there must be reasons for that that need to be looked at.

That was my DF, not my DH. As I recall, Norman Tebbit gave him similar advice.

Considering we could barely afford to eat most weeks, then I'm fairly sure the costs of moving would have been an issue. I suppose we could have sent my Dad off with a sandwich in a hanky...

I've just looked at the link for my area ..there were 3 real jobs in supermarkets that were for more than 16 hours ...the rest were for agencies and ,in store flogging utilities companies

I think Glasgows a long way to move for a supermarket job

Furthermore Georgimama, my Dad's trade was in shipbuilding. There really wasn't any call for his skills anywhere in the country.

My Dad wasn't work shy, or a scrounger, just a family man who wanted to work and had always worked.

The job he eventually took is precisely the sort of job that the current government are planning to force the unemployed to do for free. If there's work to be done and someone available to do, then just bloody pay them a wage and call it a job.

Arf at moving to Glasgow for a supermarket job from my part of Essex, the relocation costs would probably e a years wages!

' If there's work to be done and someone available to do, then just bloody pay them a wage and call it a job.'

Abso-bloody-lutely.

No-one here has come up with a valid reason why the millions of boomtime jobs were taken by immigrants instead of by people who were on the dole.