Confused re attitude to benefits and work experience

[catontheroof]

Your thoughts please - why has it become so politically incorrect to suggest that fit adults in this country should be expected to work for a living?

I believe that we need a safety net but cannot understand why people should not have to take jobs that they are qualified for if those jobs exist. I also cannot understand why people "deserve" tax credits etc.

If large chunks of our population do not work then our GDP is low. The only way that we can afford to have so many on benefits with a relatively high standard of living is by importing goods from other countries where the workers live and work in atrocious conditions.

Why do we think that it is right and proper that people in this country sit around being paid not to work whilst tens of thousands all over the world work in sweat shops to provide them with a lifestyle?

If our fit population all worked then we'd increase GDP and have money to help people in other countries where there is real poverty.

I happen to be rather good at Maths. I still can't get a job.

I don't think having a dream is necessarily bad as long as you are realistic. For example I'd love to work in a forensics lab but know it won't happen so apply for every job I can. Doesn't mean I can't continue to think about what my dream job would be.

poor maths reduces someones chance of getting a job & yet it is socially acceptable.

"The number of adults with poor numeracy skills has reached 17 million in England alone ? very nearly half the working-age population"
www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/news/9/index.htmlindex.html

"If you've got poor numeracy, you're twice as likely to be unemployed, twice as likely to become a teenage parent, twice as likely to suffer depression."
www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/mar/07/world-maths-day-adult-innumeracy?newsfeed=true

It's not new to undervalue maths though. I was laughed at for liking maths at school.

so yes we have completely lost the plot about education, excellence & hard work & employabilty.

& we have spent all the money & more that we didnt have during the good times.

This is an interesting link though Tilly because those who are long term unemployed (and I mean here those who have never worked) have a higher than average number among them who cannot read, let alone do basic maths. I have met them in the area I worked in (deprived part of the SE) and I always used to make appointments by phone because I could not guarantee always that my clients could read an appointment letter. Having worked in an affulent area previously it came as a shock to find such a number of people who were not literate.

I will never forget a mother coming to see me in despair with her 13 year old son because he had been out of school for 6 months (shockingly nobody appeared to have noticed this). Not surprisingly her 13 year old son did not really want to talk to me but eventually said he wanted to "leave school and work with cars". Some gentle but insistant questioning elicited the information that he could scarcely read (for whatever reason) and could not follow the curriculum. I did explain to him that getting any job would be much easier for him if he could read confidently and made a swift call to the local Education Welfare service asking them to support the boy and his Mum to get him back into school and his educational needs addressed.

The people will low aspirations now are often the people who in the past were perfectly willing to work hard at what they did. The fools asked for a wage that would enable them to support their families, though, so the work was taken away from them and given to people willing to work and still starve in other countries. Some people need convincing that even if they do work hard at maths, they will find employment at the end of it, because to them, hard work has been proven not to be enough to get by in life, albeit it makes you more exploitable by those who only have their own interests at heart. You also need flexibility, resourcefulness, resilience, good mental health generally, intelligence, and a certain degree of ruthlessness, things which are very difficult to teach if they don't come naturally. There's no point pretending to people that hard work is enough, because it isn't. Some people will work really hard to end up in exactly the same place they would have ended up if they hadn't worked so hard. Unless they can trust that they will be properly looked after and given a bit of respect for the hard work that they do and that the work that they do is indeed useful to society, they won't be super keen to bust a gut, because they will perceive it as working very hard for someone else's unfair benefit.

I hear people in India and China are getting a bit up themselves and are beginning to ask for a greater share in their countries' wealth creation. How greedy and obnoxious of them.

can you tell me more about this please: "There's no point pretending to people that hard work is enough, because it isn't. Some people will work really hard to end up in exactly the same place they would have ended up if they hadn't worked so hard. "

i dont get it.

Which bit don't you get?

The bit where someone unemployed worked really hard to get there?

can you tell me more about this please: "There's no point pretending to people that hard work is enough, because it isn't. Some people will work really hard to end up in exactly the same place they would have ended up if they hadn't worked so hard. "

i dont get it.

Lots of people work hard in dead end jobs and never progress, never get more than an inflation-linked payrise (if that). You say you employ people, Tilly. What sort of staff development do you offer? Is everyone in your business on an upward projectory? Can they all look forward to meaningful career development with comensurate pay rises? Does 'hard work' always, without exception, mean that they end up in better circumstances?

I think there are some who don't believe in hard work. The main problem is that there is a culture of tarring every unemployed person with the same brush. i.e the employer reads no current job and automatically assume they won't work hard.. A poster on another thread who worked in HR said that anyone who was unemployes were automatically rejected at the first sift. What chance do people have? It's prejudice that's the biggest barrier.

What sort of staff development do you offer? newest technology which is what staff/clients want
Is everyone in your business on an upward projectory? yes, except the receptionsit who is nr retirement.
Can they all look forward to meaningful career development with comensurate pay rises? yes, i would be stupid to underpay good staff. they would just leave sooner.
this is the bit i dont understand: Lots of people work hard in dead end jobs and never progress. please can you give an example.

Hecuba - the HR person was probably from a large company. i always look for the great person who can easily be overlooked because they are a good opprtunity for me & i for them.

I know quite a few successful people who don't believe in hard work for the sake of hard work.

Putting money into a pension and hoping to get more at the end of the day than you put in is trying to avoid hard work, isn't it? You don't want to work until you die, so you try to beat the system. You don't invest your money on the stock market to help companies' finances, you do it to help your own. It's called capitalism. Capitalists expect their money to work for them, they don't necessarily expect to have to work for their money and they see others benefiting at the same time as an occasional by-product of their own activities, but not an essential one.

People can work hard and still become unemployed. You are right about one thing tilly you really don't get it. These people didn't aim to become unemployed, they worked hard with the aim of staying in work.

My Dh worked hard; he went in early, worked late (without asking for more pay), worked through lunch, he walked miles to still get to work when we had the bad weather yet he was still made redundant.

TheRealityTillyMinto - do you take on people with no experience in your sector? Or do you expect other employers to have started them off for you?

Can I give an example? Yes. I work in Education for an institution that employes over four thousand people. For every 'senior' post there are literally hundreds of 'junior' posts. Every time a senior role is advertised (infrequently) there is a huge number of applications - usually more than a hundred. There simply are not enough better paid roles for people to move into, so people stagnate in roles for years, or even decades, despite having Masters levels or Doctoral qualifications. If they could find work outside the organisation they would, and no doubt a few manage to do so each year, but our local paper had seven jobs advertised this week. Yes, seven.

I don't know why you're being so obtuse about this, Tilly. Do you really believe that if people 'word hard' they will be rewarded? Do you believe there is a proper career path for bus conductors, shelf stackers, canteen staff, admin workers, call centre staff, that means EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO WANTED TO and was prepared to work hard to achieve it could have career progression? If you really do believe that, then I would respectfully suggest that you're talking out of your arse.

Well said wooly.

You work hard, do a very low-paid job, for no recognition towards your contribution to society, then end up being made redundant (without redundancy pay) when the NMW goes up, and your employer decides he has to let one member of staff 'go' in order to continue to pay the others the new, higher NMW. Which not only leaves you BACK on benefits - it can leave you without any help with your rent for 6+ weeks while the Housing Benefit department reassess your income - which can mean that you get evicted for non-payment of rent.

You take a succession of short-term jobs because that is all that is available for you locally - you then meet the same situation wrt housing benefit, there is a case local to me where the dad in the household took a job for 4 weeks, to get off benefits, and this meant that his Housing Benefit was put in a pile to be reassessed when he came OFF JSA, and then put in another pile to be reassessed when he went back ONTO JSA when the job finished - but the first reassessment hadn't been completed. In the end, he was evicted from his house, he and his pregnant girlfriend are sleeping in his car, he is unable to find any employment because he is of 'no fixed abode', the council will not even temporarily house him because he made himself 'intentionally homeless' by being unable to pay his rent, and his 7yo DD (from his first marriage, the mother died) is having to stay with his old neighbours.

You tae a job, you work hard, you expect to be able to afford to cover the essential costs of living IN THE UK and some of what the OP calls 'luxuries', that other, higher paid workers get to enjoy, like a washing machine and the internet.

OK, people in other contries have it worse than us. But that ISN'T going to change the fact that successive UK Governments have seen the lowest paid as 'tools' to utilise to forward economic success of 'UK plc'. We are expected to work hard for LESS than it costs to SURVIVE in this country, in order to increase wealth for a select few. We low-paid tend not to give two shiny shits about increasing wealth for a select few if we aren't allowed a standard of living that allows for covering the costs of housing in this country (Rent and Council Tax), the costs of staying alive in this country (Gas, electric, water and food), the costs of GETTING to that job WITHOUT having to walk the horrific distances that those in the third world are expected to do (Petrol for a car, and the associated costs of running a car, OR the cost of public transport), and to cover childcare (Employers in the UK would take a MUCH dimmer view of people turning up to work with their baby strapped to their back, or a 4yo running around), and a few labour-saving devices like a washing machine, the internet and a vacuum cleaner. We also expect a small amount of money to spend on leisure pursuits - such as a TV and a TV license, money to take our family on a day-trip two/three times a year.

We expect for our families just a tiny proportion of what the wealthy get - we don't expect our wages to cover a week's holiday, even in the UK, much less abroad. We don't expect our wages to cover a sports car. We don't expect our wages to cover a house big enough for two children to have a room each, much less to have spare rooms. But WHY should the people who DO the work that enable to wealthy to have these things, and much more besides, when we can't even have a fraction of that?

People on MN talk about how a SAHM 'enables' their DH to go out to work, and they should be afforded the respect that goes along with doing that - well the low-paid 'enable' the wealthy to become wealthier, and we expect to be afforded the respect that goes along with THAT. NOT to be treated like we should shut up, stop answering back, and accept that the wealthy get to pay us peanuts (give us no money to spend and have to go cap in hand to them, on bended knee, no different from the men that those on MN say are wrong) and yell at us for not working hard enough (equivalent to not doing the housework that some men moan at SAHM's about while they are HARD AT WORK, as if the SAHM isn't). Well - using that analogy, the Wealthy are behaving like a controlling partner who most on MN would yell 'Leave the bastard' at.

CAn you see YET why the low-paid are getting fractious? It's no different from the SAHM who has to go cap in hand to her DH when she wants a haircut, and is made to justify herself, or who gets shouted at for not doing the housework, i.e. not working hard enough, while he is at work. If a SAHM shouldn't put up with being treated like that, and should 'call' her DH on that behaviour, then why should the low-paid put up with being treated like that, why shouldn't they 'call' the wealthy on that behaviour??

That poor man he could have sat back on benefits but he tried so hard to do the right thing and is punished for it. Never mind though eh, at least it will keep people like tilly and the OP a poor person getting proper punishment. His MP won't need to bother about him, after all he can't vote now. Winners all round. .

rabbit - do you take on people with no experience in your sector? depends on the role.

hecuba - of course hard work doesnt stop redundancy. but hasnt your DH 'shard work benefited him/you in the past & will do in the future?

And YY to Wooly's post about the lack of real, meaningful career progression in low-paid jobs. It's practically IMPOSSIBLE now for a basic shel-stacker to progress to even lower management positions - these all go to University graduates, even if the applicant has worked in the company for 15 years, and therefore has plenty of RL experience. If you haven't been to Uni, you can kiss goodbye to ANY chance of becoming even an Assistant manager, let alone anything higher.

If you start a job as a shelf-stacker today, you will still, in 99% of cases, be working as a shelf-stacker when you retire. Your wages aren't enough to enable you to support a family AND get more qualifications, so you cannot hope to educate yourself out of your position in the company, your career progression route has been closed off as the position MUST be advertised extrnally, which means that Uni graduates apply, and who is going to take on a shelf-stacker as lower management, when they will NEED to be trained to do the job, when they can hire a Uni graduate who has done a degree in business management (because their PARENTS can afford to support them through Uni), who won't need anywhere like as much training.

So there is just no way out of the position of being low-paid. Yes, your wage will rise when you turn 21 - but it then stays the same until you retire. A shelf-stacker who has 20 years of experience is paid no more than a 21yo who started the job yesterday. And THAT is real life for most of those in NMW jobs now.