So, how many Mumsnetters "Aren't working enough"?

[KeemaNaanAndCurryOn]

Guardian article here

First the weak, the sick and the disabled. Now people who work.

The next plan for Universal credit is to look at people who get Working Tax credit and assess whether they are working enough. If they're classed as such, they will need to find extra hours or they'll have their benefits cut.

Considering that a lot of low paid work is done by women, is it becoming a feminist issue?

"Perhaps employers could only claim them to pay their employees during start up or critical phases, rather than relying on them all the time?"

Good idea.

And while a company is claiming state aid to underpay its employees, there should be strict caps on dividends, executive pay, and profit margins.

Corporations shouldn't be making the lifestyle choice to live high on the hog with massive pay at the top, generous dividends to shareholder and the ability to hoard massive amounts of cash (which many of our top companies are currently doing) while public money is subsidising their wage bill.

They should have to answer regular questions about why they are not able to pay a living wage and show that they are taking steps to achieve that. And without clear evidence of a genuine intention and effort to be self-supporting, they should have their benefits cut.

YY, and perhaps social enterprises and environmentally and family friendly companies ethos could have better rates!

Just caught up with this thread.

I posted about working part time as a choice, being a lp with a 2 yr old ds.

My 3 choices are this

1- work full time and earn approx 1k per month after tax, and then pay 700 childcare, 100 travel costs and have 200 left for clothing, groceries, rent, amenities.

2- don't work at all. Claim income support and child tax credits- net monthly income- 576. No travel costs or cc costs leaving 576 for all of above.

3- work 24 hrs per week. Receive approx 60% of childcare costs via ctc. continue to earn and stay in workplace. Be able to afford to get to work and to feed and clothe me and ds as well as keep a roof over our heads. And continue to do this until ds is in school and childcare costs much lower.

Believe me I've done all of the sums many many times, since the day I found out I was pregnant. Do I feel bad fr choosing option 3? No, not really.

I've spent valuable time with ds but continue to pay taxes, as I've done since the very day I left school.

In utilising the help available to me. If childcare costs weren't subsidised via ctc I'd imagined there would be a few hundred thousand people unable to work and a few thousand childcare providers out of business.

Good for you, Wereonourway

I wonder what your options would look like under the proposed changes.

preposed

no, right the first time, am going to bed now.

The article mentions lone parents as being "too committed to work" I assume that means more hours.

I work with whatever the circumstances are at the time. I took 6 months maternity pay because I couldn't afford to survive on smp, I'm sure many have been in the same(or worse) situation.

I'm not work shy at all, I studied for over four years part time for a degree whilst working 50 hour weeks, I've had 3 days off sick in the last ten years(chicken pox as it happens).

I don't receive regular maintenance from ds's father and although I have family around me childcare from them isn't an option.

I come from an area which is in the top ten most deprived areas in the country. I'd say 50% of the people I went to school with have never paid a single penny in income tax.

People who have never had any intention of working or of bettering themselves and it doesn't feel great to be considered morally wrong for working part time until ds goes to school and until childcare is affordable

I work as support staff in a school several hours a week,I have 2 children school age between myself and my husband we scrape enough to live I also suffer from MS which is something I have not disclosed but I refuse to make myself a victim. I have always worked and I want to instill that work ethic in my kids.

I'd love to work more but my husband fears for my health..we claim child tax credits and a tiny amount of working tax credits.

Wereonourway. Are you saying that you took home £1k working full time? That means you were only on 14k pa? (That's the monthly net income on 14k for 2013/14 taxation).

If you're working part time on that salary you are unlikely to be paying income tax at all.

You may therefore want to adjust your statement that you put money into the system.

I am raising this because I get frustrated when people claim 'I pay my taxes, I deserve something back' and discover they've put in nothing or £500 per year.

williamina my salary when full time ranged from 12k to 20k(from 3 different job, pre ds) I'd worked full time for 11 years before I had him.

And I do pay tax, and NI currently. I don't actually say anywhere that cos I'd "put in I deserve stuff back". But I do contribute. I work and always plan to, and will increase my hours when it is a financial possibility to do so.

If I worked full time in my current role the amount of help I'd get for ccare would give me the amounts left in example 1 I gave above.

Without childcare costs or any form of tax credits I simply could not work, part or full time, or if I could I'd be crippled with debt within a very short space of time.

As an aside I recently moved back in with my dad to save for a deposit towards a house. I cut back wherever I can and will still be able to save very very little.

Tax credits don't give me a life of luxury, I don't think "sod working more, I'm laughing here", they enable me to continue working and to pay for childcare for ds whilst I do.

Actually looking at the sums again I'd be better off NOT working at all yet this will never ever be an option for me

Think the problems of: zero-hour contracts (especially those that don't allow you to take on other work), temp/agency outsourcing (a lot of my friends in banking, not low-paid or unskilled, have been made redundant and rehired as agency workers), extremely high cost of living (basics like power, housing and transport) and the very, very real issue of non-resident parents who do not pay to support their children need to be addressed before we start punishing people for not working enough.

You know, I'm a lone parent with two part time jobs, by working full time, I only get about £20 more a week than what I would get in tax credits if I worked only 3 days a week. But it is a matter of principle, there is no justification for me to stay at home when my child is at school. Yes, it would probably make my life easier but it would still be wrong for me to turn a job down, at the end of the day there are a lot of working parents who do not receive tax credits and they don't have this choice.

I don't buy that idea that is better for children of loneparents to have a parent at home. Going to breakfast club abd afterschool club, only means that my child is playing with other children for 2 hours after school ends in a supervised environment instead of being perched in front of the TV or the computer at home or playing in the street while I am at home. The tax credits pay for 70% of the cost so it is not that all my salary is going in paying for childcare.

I still think that tax credits and benefits is a subsidy that you get in order to help you to the place where you can survive independently, not money to rely on as a steady salary for years to come.

I obviously understand there are exceptions where is better for a lone parent to stay at home or work part time, but if the children are healthy and relatively happy there is no excuse.

The system is at fault, not the people using it.

No one pays any national insurance contributions until they earn about £7748 a year = £149 a week. So those earning less than that a week are not paying direct taxes (although they are likely to be paying some VAT on some goods they buy so contribute in that way).
No one pays income tax until their pay is over £9440 a year - £181.54 week.

Labour deliberately made everyone with children earning up to about £60k a benefits claimant (tax credits) as socialists want everyone depending on the state. The Coalition has not really been able to change this except tinker at the edges for the highest earners in that bracket.

A system that incentivises parents (mostly women) to stay at work part time while their children are small, as Wereon has chosen to do, seems a very good thing to me.

I don't think our society is is any position to cope without any of the unpaid work traditionally done by women - housework, caring for elderly, caring for children, volunteering at various social institutions.

But it is not good for women (or any parent, but it is still mostly women) to drop out of the jobs market for years when their children are small.

There are lots of things about tax credits that are problematic, but offering flexibility to working parents of children seems something entirely worth paying for.

To respond to a previous poster... The notion that zero hours contracts are only offered to unskilled workers, this is really not true at all.

Universities use zero hours contracts for visiting lecturers, research assistants, etc.

I do wish the coalition would focus on the (IMO) immoral use of zero hours contracts, rather than constantly blaming the unemployed/ill/disabled/low earners for this country's economic woes.

wereonourway childcare element is part of working tax credit not child tax credit. you also don't seem to have included Housing benefit in your total figure of option 2 yet have said you have rent to pay from your figure in option 1.

yourebeingadick I've not included housing benefit as I pay rent(or board) to my dad as that's who we live with.

Does this make a difference to my circumstances?

My dp doesn't.

He works 7 days a week, when he isn't in work he's helping me care for our two kids who have sn........so we get shedloads of tax credits to get by.

ah yes- that makes it clearer. I assumed rent = private rent to a LL.

Sorry, my circumstances have recently changed. I was renting privately(not claiming HB) but chose to live with my dad to attempt to save a deposit so I can eventually own my own house as well as it meaning me and ds are in a safe secure home without threat of us settling and being sold from under us

very understandable- I am in private rented and live in constant fear of a phonecall saying he's selling up or wanted to move in himself.

It's crap isn't it.

I am on the council list, in the hope that a decent home becomes available which I could eventually own but its not likely and I'd like to get somewhere of my own doing if that makes sense.

I'm very lucky that my dad has room for us and his circumstances mean he is happy to have us here too.

good luck with it.