…and quite right say I. But I would probably go further than the Government has and make it a standard part of being unemployed rather than it only applying to long-term unemployed.
What surprises me in the Government’s latest plans is the way they talk about people taking ‘personal responsibility’ for finding work when you are unemployed. That is exactly what I have tried to do when I have been unemployed, but instead I have ended up spending a considerable amount of time explaining to someone in Job Centre Plus why a job they are suggesting isn’t really suitable and why they completely misunderstand my previous experience. Not the best use of their time or mine, when I can take personal responsibility for finding a job myself.
To me there seem to be three categories of people who are unemployed:
- Those people who have a long record of employment who should be allowed more time and flexibility just to get on and find themselves a job. That would mean that Job Centre Plus wouldn’t need to spend their time with those people who probably don’t need their help. If my experience is anything to go by, they are probably the same people who will end up finding a job by going through newspapers and magazines elsewhere, rather than in the Job Centre. This is exactly what personal responsibility should mean, and it should be fairly easy to tell from someone’s employment record whether they are going to be conscientious enough to find their own job.
- People who are genuinely not well enough to work, and these people need financial help to support them.
- People who cannot find a job or are unwilling to find a job. This will cover a multitude of circumstances, ranging from those who want to work but either don’t have the right skills or qualifications to those who have a disability that makes it harder to find work to those who are simply lazy. All of these will need to be dealt with in different ways, but that is where the Government should be directing its resources and everyone in this group will need their own tailor made way to get them in to work, which will range from extra training to employer incentives to a bigger stick. No one solution will suit everyone, but if Job Centre’s stopped wasting their time on those people who can find a job on their own, then that they could do this.
But regardless of your circumstances, I think everyone can do some form of voluntary community service whilst being unemployed. It keeps you in the habit of getting up and going to work (even if it is only once or twice a week that you do it) and it helps put something back in whilst you receive your benefit. This shouldn’t be seen as a punishment as the Government seem to be making it. It should simply be a way of contributing.
I am pleased though that Jenny Willott has highlighted that far from it just being the unemployed who are the worst off financially, it is many of those who are in employment. Although the minimum wage has increased quite a bit over the last few years, it is still a small sum of money on which to live, and yet you are also taxed on it.
7 responses so far ↓
Lee Griffin // 22 July 2008 at 11:17 am |
I have to say I couldn’t disagree with you more on this. I maybe too shared an idea of the principle of this being a neat idea, but even the slightest thought about it’s consequences isn’t good. We’re either condemning people to extreme poverty, or we’re advocating illiberal governance. Is either liberal enough for you?
More from me
Anders Hanson // 22 July 2008 at 12:01 pm |
I think it’s a bit unfair to accuse me of wanting to make people homeless and remove their benefits, when I didn’t even get on to the suject of how you deal with people who refuse to take part. This is a separate issue which applies to the whole subject of what you do about people who are unemployed but don’t make any effort to find a job. I agree with you actually that the Labour government’s retoric on this subject has been far too heavy handed.
I reckon that in most cases, (except for the stubborn minority), it would over time become accepted that you do a form of community service whilst you are unemployed and no one will think twice about it. I fail to see how this is demeaning as taking part in voluntary work or environmental projects is exactly the sort of thing that many people choose to do in their spare time anyway.
Lee Griffin // 22 July 2008 at 12:25 pm |
Just in case you’re not heading back my way..
I think there’s a huge distinction to be made between volunteer work in a *carrot* sense of actually increasing benefits for people and forcing people through the stick to do community service.
The former allows people to find job prospects and to get used to real work, while also having the positives of being rewarded and reminding themselves what it feels like to be rewarded for doing work. The latter just makes people do shitty jobs if they want to keep any of their benefits at all. If we were working on the former I would be much more full of praise, but we’re not, we’re pandering to the Tories now with their illiberal policies, and they don’t deserve any measure of support.
Steph // 23 July 2008 at 11:08 pm |
No, Anders, no no no. I cannot stress enough how workfare is NOT the answer. This articlemay be ten years old, but it’s a good roundup of the perils of introducing this kind of system, based on the example of New York’s “work experience programme”.
In terms of your three categories:
The first will no doubt have a plan for getting themselves back into work, as you did and as I did when unemployed – retraining for what was available in the area I live in and making contacts, that sort of thing. Making them do menial work for the pittance they are afforded to live on in the meantime until they find their way back into work would hinder them no end. Could your pride have handled litter picking any better than having jobcentre employees pick out prospective jobs for you? I don’t know if mine could.
The second are a political minefield – who is to say who is too ill? With the shift away from physically intensive jobs and into office based entry level labour, it is easy to argue that anyone who is capable of sitting at home all day is also capable of sitting in an office all day – I know I have gone into work at times when I really ought to have been in hospital and could easily have been “on the sick” instead. Are addicts part of this category? Would this category, even when we sidestep the issue of how to identify them, be made to work for their benefits as the others do? If not, how do you stop the laziest members of the third category from developing dodgy backs in order to continue to claim benefits (I know quite a few people who have really quite shaky reasons for being on incapacity benefit and sit at home smoking pot in their vast amounts of leisure time…)
The third category are already under New Deal after a set amount of time on jobseekers’ allowance. Ostensibly this does exactly what you want the government to do: you get an advisor and a tailor-made programme of training and/or work placements at slightly above basic benefits but still under minimum wage, precisely because one size does not fit all. Why change that? Except to close the loopholes for unscrupulous business owners who like to take on New Deal employees for their six month trial and then terminate their employment at the precise moment where they would have to start paying them minimum wage to throw them back into the benefit trap, but then workfare would only increase that kind of problem!
Anders Hanson // 24 July 2008 at 11:40 pm |
This post has ended up opening up a multitude of different issues which it wasn’t intended to do. In reality I was seeking to simply support the idea of people doing voluntary work whilst unemployed and pointing out how the current system does not allow those who want to take personal responsibility from doing it. Getting in to categories of the unemployed was an unnecessary distraction and I shouldn’t have mentioned it. All the issues you raise are valid and are problems no matter however you reform the unemployment system.
It isn’t a question of ‘pride’ that I commented on JobCentrePlus helping you pick out jobs. It is just that my experience is that they aren’t very good at understanding what is or is not an appropriate job, particularly if you have had a career that isn’t conventional. For people in those circumstances they should let them get on with it, unless they have been unemployed for some time.
Finally, I am not advocating that people spend all their time doing voluntary work. Instead they maybe do a day or to of it, and yes I would have no problem doing litterpicking.
bob Innes // 27 July 2008 at 9:59 am |
I tell you what your way off the mark… the people who work in jobcentreplus are among the weakest qualified individuals you’ll get out there.
Here in west wales, the jobcentre pressures people in rural areas to get work, while doing nothing itself to engage with employers or any communication. Don’t bother trying to contradict me cus i talk with lots of rural unemployed in West wales.
Being unemployed in the city is a piece of cake, everythings at hand theres work to be done as well. In the rural areas with no transport links its a different story.
I know of a aldy who s going to get her benefit stopped because she is deemed not to be able to get to work… there is no buses , she cannot drive… I won’t be messing about with jobcentreplus officials thats for sure
Anders Hanson // 29 July 2008 at 3:36 pm |
Having been unemployed whilst living in West Wales I have some sympathy.