Tories to force unemployed into community service

[Dr Mindbender]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11706545

Ministers defend plan to force jobless to do work

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Danny Alexander: "People with the right help can go out and get a job"

Continue reading the main story Related stories

• Compulsory labour for jobless: Your comments
• Archbishop's warning over welfare changes
• Should benefit claimants do community work?

Ministers have defended their plans to force the long-term unemployed to do manual work or lose benefits.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander told the BBC the idea was not to "punish or humiliate" but to get people back into the habit of working.
But the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the changes could drive people "into a downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair".
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is to unveil the plans this week.
Under the plan, claimants thought to need "experience of the habits and routines of working life" could be put on 30-hour-a-week placements.
Anyone refusing to take part or failing to turn up on time could have their £65 Jobseekers' Allowance stopped for at least three months.
The Work Activity scheme is said to be designed to flush out claimants who have opted for a life on benefits or are doing undeclared jobs on the side.
'Bit more of a push'
Job advisers would be given powers to require tens of thousands of claimants to take part in community work for charities or local councils.
Mr Duncan Smith said his plans were designed to reduce welfare dependency and make work pay.
He said: "One thing we can do is pull people in to do one or two weeks' manual work - turn up at 9am and leave at 5pm, to give people a sense of work, but also when we think they're doing other work.
"The message will go across; play ball or it's going to be difficult."
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, expressed his concern, telling the BBC: "People who are struggling to find work and struggling to find a secure future are - I think - driven further into a downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair, when the pressure is on in that way.



"People often are in this starting place, not because they're wicked, stupid or lazy, but because their circumstances are against them, they've failed to break through into something and to drive that spiral deeper - as I say - does feel a great problem."
Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman told the Andrew Marr Show she would wait to see the full details of the proposals on Thursday before giving her verdict.
But she said the government needed to understand that to get people back into work, there had to be jobs for them to go to - and at the moment there were five people chasing each vacancy.
'Encourage'
Mr Alexander denied the plans were treating the long-term unemployed in the same way as criminals doing community service, telling the BBC's Politics Show the "purpose is emphatically not to punish and it's not to humiliate".
Continue reading the main story Analysis

James Landale Deputy Political Editor, BBC News
When the government unveils its welfare reforms this week, there will be lots of new support for unemployed people - more help to find work, a new universal benefit to claim.
But amid the carrots, there will also be some sharp sticks. One will be the threat that anyone who has been unemployed for a long time who refuses work could be forced to do community work placements.
The Welfare Secretary Iain Duncan Smith likes to talk of a new contract between the state and the unemployed.
Compulsory community work is clearly part of the bargain.

It was intended to "support and encourage" and to get people back into the habit of getting up and going out to work. It also meant those who did it could demonstrate their employability to prospective employers.
This meant that "more people can do what they want to do which is get a job and go out to work because that is the best thing for the country, but it is also the best thing for those individuals and it is by far the best route for anybody out of poverty".
Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show tackling the welfare budget was "one of the big political challenges".
"What we are talking about here is people who have not been used to working having both the opportunity and perhaps a bit more of a push as well, to experience the workplace from time to time and again the vast majority of people in Britain will think that's the right thing to do."
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Douglas Alexander accused the government of "focusing on the workshy but offering nothing to the workless".
There are five unemployed people chasing every job vacancy, he said, adding: "The tragic flaw in the Tory approach is that, without work, it won't work. A longer dole queue will mean a bigger benefits bill."
Richard Exell, a senior policy officer at the Trade Union Congress, said there was high unemployment, not because of a problem with the work ethic, but because there were not enough jobs.
"Unemployed people are the victims in this story, not the villains," he said.
The UK has five million people on out-of-work benefits and one of the highest rates of workless households in Europe, with 1.9m children living in homes where no-one has a job.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

It's been tried before - anyone remember the workhouses?

[RebelDog]

The Tories are finally living out all their ideological fantasies. They are waging the class war like never before and loving it.

[Quail]

Under the plan, claimants thought to need "experience of the habits and routines of working life" could be put on 30-hour-a-week placements.
Anyone refusing to take part or failing to turn up on time could have their £65 Jobseekers' Allowance stopped for at least three months.

£65/30 = £2.17 per hour.
Or did I read that in the wrong context?

[Amphictyonis]

"The unemployed to force Tories out of office".

[Jazzratt]

£65/30 = £2.17 per hour.
Or did I read that in the wrong context?

Nah, that's actually what you get on this scheme. It's less than half the minimum wage isn't it (or have I misremembered minimum wage?)

Anyway, I'm fairly sure I heard rumours of New Labour cooking up a similar scheme in their reign. Obviously the tories are a shower of wankers but this kind of thing (and the cuts) indicates a more general swing in the social memes amongst those in power. This kind of anti-working class thinking permeates the politics of Britain across party lines.

[Ocean Seal]

If they're having trouble making ends meet in Britain, they should cut life-support off the CEO's. What most politicians don't understand is that they and the people whose payroll they are on are the waste. Forcing the people to work for less than minimum wage is not only immoral beyond belief, but also illegal by laws created by aristocratic capitalists. Things just seem to get worse everyday.

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/789/letters.php

Bubbling

The Tories have been inspired by Australia’s workfare programme (‘Work longer for less’, October 8).

I know that this scheme is low-wage conscripted labour shit, but recently I’ve read material on Hyman Minsky and his lesser known economic ideas. Like Marx, he’s known to the politically correct mainstream mainly as a crisis economist, but the labour analysis is played down, if not ignored.

For some reason, Minsky’s ideas on the employment front sound similar to the more mainstream workfare schemes. However, he argued for a ‘bubble-up’ approach, sending money to the poor and unskilled first. The government - or what he liked to call ‘big government’ - should become the ‘employer of last resort’, offering a job to anyone who wanted one at a set minimum wage. It would be paid to workers who would supply childcare, clean streets and provide services that give taxpayers a visible return on their dollars.

In being available to everyone, it would be even more ambitious than the New Deal, sharply reducing the welfare rolls by guaranteeing a job for anyone who was able to work. Such a programme would not only help the poor and unskilled, he believed, but would put a floor beneath everyone else’s wages too, preventing salaries of more skilled workers from falling too precipitously and sending benefits up the socioeconomic ladder.

On the other hand, the job wouldn’t be compulsory and the wage compensation Minsky had in mind was more along the lines of a ‘living wage’ than today’s minimum wage levels.

Could the economic ideas of Minsky and the so-called ‘post-Keynesians’ be used in a class struggle action programme or a minimum programme for workers’ power as some sort of demand on the threshold?

[Quail]

Nah, that's actually what you get on this scheme. It's less than half the minimum wage isn't it (or have I misremembered minimum wage?)

There are different levels of NMW, depending on your age and whether you are an apprentice. The current rates are:

• £5.93 - the main rate for workers aged 21 and over
• £4.92 - the 18-20 rate
• £3.64 - the 16-17 rate for workers above school leaving age but under 18
• £2.50 - the apprentice rate, for apprentices under 19 or 19 or over and in the first year of their apprenticeship

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employme...ay/dg_10027201

Yeah, it's less than half of the minimum wage.

[Dr Mindbender]

what angers me the most, unless you are going to pay this compulsory work with the equivalent of the mimimum wage this is going to exacerbate and sustain poverty, when you remove the available time of the unemployed you remove their ability to seek self embetterment through education and vocational training in areas other than the menial sense (which is precisely what this compulsory work will be, degrading chores with zero potential for growth). I know from personal experience not all benefit recipients are idle sloths, and there is a significant majority who are painfully aware of their woeful situation and the importance of doing something about it like attending college. I think what the tories are trying to do is ingrain class roles by keeping skilled work as the preserve of the petit bourgeoisie under the smokescreen of 'doing whats right' for the national economy.

[RebelDog]

Perhaps its cynical social planning. They are throwing half a million council workers on the dole and they are going to force others to undertake the tasks of the sacked workers.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/789/letters.php

Bubbling

The Tories have been inspired by Australia’s workfare programme (‘Work longer for less’, October 8).

I know that this scheme is low-wage conscripted labour shit, but recently I’ve read material on Hyman Minsky and his lesser known economic ideas. Like Marx, he’s known to the politically correct mainstream mainly as a crisis economist, but the labour analysis is played down, if not ignored.

For some reason, Minsky’s ideas on the employment front sound similar to the more mainstream workfare schemes. However, he argued for a ‘bubble-up’ approach, sending money to the poor and unskilled first. The government - or what he liked to call ‘big government’ - should become the ‘employer of last resort’, offering a job to anyone who wanted one at a set minimum wage. It would be paid to workers who would supply childcare, clean streets and provide services that give taxpayers a visible return on their dollars.

In being available to everyone, it would be even more ambitious than the New Deal, sharply reducing the welfare rolls by guaranteeing a job for anyone who was able to work. Such a programme would not only help the poor and unskilled, he believed, but would put a floor beneath everyone else’s wages too, preventing salaries of more skilled workers from falling too precipitously and sending benefits up the socioeconomic ladder.

On the other hand, the job wouldn’t be compulsory and the wage compensation Minsky had in mind was more along the lines of a ‘living wage’ than today’s minimum wage levels.

Could the economic ideas of Minsky and the so-called ‘post-Keynesians’ be used in a class struggle action programme or a minimum programme for workers’ power as some sort of demand on the threshold?

I'm not really convinced by taht idea, as you've explained it. It doesn't really sound like it goes beyond Roosevelt-style Keynesian thinking. It's a very capitalistic scheme in that it still pays a low wage and expands government, and bears no relation to actually changing, or contributing to changing, the way the means of production are owned and run.

Granted, it'd be better than what the Tories are seemingly going to implement, a return to out-workhouse payments, essentially, but not by much, and not towards Socialism.

[Amphictyonis]

I'm kinda drunk but I'll echo an old post I made on unemployment in a different thread. As most of us know capitalism cannot be profitable under abject full employment (this is why the Federal Reserve manipulates interest rates in order to keep unemployment at 4 to 7% at all times- they lie and say it is done to control inflation)- also, as most of us know, capitalism is crisis prone. This means at any given time, even when capitalism is "healthy", there will be millions of people without a job.

The only people who need to do community service are the millionaires/billionaires who are creating STRUCTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour

This shit in the OP is like me taking a prisoner... making him/her slave for me in the fields growing vegetables then placing all the blame on them when it doesn't [email protected]%&#@! If we were living in an advanced communist/anarchist society then yes, people who refuse to contribute should be given some sort of constructive task (perhaps brewing beer?).

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm not really convinced by that idea, as you've explained it. It doesn't really sound like it goes beyond Roosevelt-style Keynesian thinking.

Roosevelt and the post-war consensus (all of which I call "Bastard Keynesianism") had a more typical approach to unemployment: unemployment insurance, pumping money, and using the money multiplier. That approach is an indirect and ineffective approach.

Minsky's approach, on the other hand, was quite direct. It was developed when he saw the inadequacies of LBJ's War on Poverty campaign.

It's a very capitalistic scheme in that it still pays a low wage

I think you forgot the part where it says "the wage compensation Minsky had in mind was more along the lines of a ‘living wage’ than today’s minimum wage levels."

and expands government

The bogeyman of Big Government is the only way to properly tackle unemployment, anyway. The cost of such a program today in the US has been estimated to be anywhere between $500 and $800 billion.

Granted, it'd be better than what the Tories are seemingly going to implement, a return to out-workhouse payments, essentially, but not by much, and not towards Socialism.

One of the structural features of modern society is structural and cyclical unemployment. Unlike Bastard Keynesianism, Minsky's program tackled these head on, and has been advocated by the likes of L. Randall Wray:

http://www.cfeps.org/people/wraylr/

[My first link has a reference link to his paper, unlike his bio.]

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Firstly, just to address your point about Big Government. Technically, I agree with you. Under the auspices of Capitalistic economic relations, 'big' government and its associated policies are the only way to achieve full employment. However, it's a pretty lame aim, really, and bears little relation to Socialism.

I appreciate the subtleties of Minsky's approach, but again, I feel it is New Deal-related and, even with a living, rather than a national minimum, wage, it is still only an improvement on the New Deal, rather than a change in economic relations, in terms of the means of production.

What I would like to see, in terms of employment, is the government establishing certain barriers to discrimination, low pay and forced overworking, in the form of legislation - a higher national minimum wage, properly enforced anti-discrimination laws and workers' control of the workplace etc. This would of course elicit a reaction from business leaders who would see their economic control and profits decline, at which point the workers would, you hope, increase in their class consciousness and react independently, as a class, to whatever backlash there would be, from the bourgeoisie, to what would effectively be government-mandated Social Democracy.

In other words, a still-bourgeois left-Social Demcratic government could create the materialistic conditions whereby the class conflict is intensified (i'm talking particularly about the UK here) and the working class for once, actually gains a significant amount of class consciousness.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What I would like to see, in terms of employment, is the government establishing certain barriers to discrimination, low pay and forced overworking, in the form of legislation - a higher national minimum wage, properly enforced anti-discrimination laws and workers' control of the workplace etc.

Except for the part on "workers control of the workplace," how exactly are those in-the-box proposals more radical than the relatively untried ELR program? [It was tried only on a limited scale in Argentina, then pulled back.]

[IndependentCitizen]

Big society! Big slavery program!

This is full-on declaration of war on the working class, and yet! The TUC is quiet. Everyone's quiet, and no organisation that says they represent the working people is doing nothing.

[scarletghoul]

This is slavery. If the government can now magically find things for everyone to do, why not pay them for it ??

The unemployed are the worst-off section of the working class, they don't have unions and there's no Party for them, plus they face severe discrimination at the hands of the media. This makes them a prime target for the tories. What we need is a strong organisation that will stand up for the unemployed and mobilise them along a revolutionary line

[Leonid Brozhnev]

Capitalism demands you live a life beyond your means... this slavery project will not satisfy that, many of the poor may simply turn to crime. Reading the guardian today, I think the Tories see a coming crime increase as they're trying to push the poor out of Southern England...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20...h-south-divide

[ed miliband]

I know it's awfully shallow, and this probably isn't the place to mention it, but isn't Danny Alexander painfully unattracive? His face, chin and neck all seem to form one boring blob.