Making sure unemployed workers are no 'push over' or 'sanctions fodder'

Spreading the word

Guest blog by Alan Wheatley of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group

One of our statements/slogans is 'Benefiting Brent & Camden & Beyond'. The major focus in our weekly business meetings is casework. It's a great 'crowd gatherer' to the point that our meetings attract as many as 12 on a regular basis, with some coming from as far away as Hackney, Wandsworth and Bromley though our core is predominantly from the boroughs of Brent and Camden. We are also very ethnically diverse, with African-Caribbean, Indian/White British mixed race, Serbian and Greek representation. We are also well-balanced by gender, and while most are disabled we also have people not applying for disability benefits. In more of an andragogy  LINK of the oppressed than a pedagogy LINK, our casework sessions reflect the fact that we've 'all been there' and can pool our knowledge and expertise in response to what is thrown at us by increasingly oppressive jobcentre workers and privatised contractors.

ARE THEY TAKING THE PISS OR TRYING TO DRAW BLOOD?

 The armoury of tactics and strategies that jobcentre and privatised contractor staff throw at JSA, Work Programme and ex-Work Programme clients to make them sanctions fodder include the entrapment of getting them to fill in their personal details and signature on forms before whatever they are supposed to be agreeing to has been written yet, or the staff member obscuring everything but the signature space. Yet another ploy that is becoming more and more the norm for people who have been parked on the Work Programme for a year is to be told to apply for as many as 14 jobs per week and to sign on at the jobcentre not just fortnightly but five days a week!

How many hours per week would a quality processing of one job application per week take? Multiply that by even 7 and add the practicalities of signing on five days per week and would you not be working more than a 48 hour EU Working Time Directive week? And people re-registering at the jobcentre after being 'parked' on the Work Programme for a year are also told to show their last six months bank statements.(1)

Yet this is abuse that follows on from a year of neglect. Consider the bargaining power issues in the fact that the claimant has no real bargaining power and their 'client adviser' at the Work Programme company can have as many as 250 people on their caseload.(2) But a counter-response that the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is finding increasingly effective is to make sure that a person going for, say, a re-registration interview at the jobcentre does not go alone. We reckon that that kind of 'first aid' makes whatever follow-up tribunal action less taxing or even unnecessary. The oppressor — who has probably been threatened with being sanctioned themselves if they do not meet targets — realises that the person in front of them is not 'a push over'.(3)

Notes:
(1) See reference to 'payment-by-results' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_Programme_%28United_Kingdom
 (2) http://indusdelta.co.uk/discussion/work_programme_case_loads/6453
(3) Some abusers arguably do not need to be threatened with sanctions to collude in the sanctioning of benefit claimants. Perhaps what Transline are more concerned about in the case of their worker Kelly Stone is that she broke 'commercial confidentiality' rather than that she delighted in a sense of the negative influence she could have on others' lives? http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/recruitment-worker-kelly-stone-suspended-2162766

Kilburn Unemployed Workers oppose 'Council tax on free speech'

Alan Wheatley of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group arrived at Brent Council's Scrutiny Committee meeting last night, with just approved press statement on the leaflet licensing fiasco. He came straight from the KUWG meeting that ended at 5pm the same day on the Camden side of Kilburn. He writes of his experience of the meeting:

"The seating arrangement in the scrutiny committee room was such that we observers were effectively excluded from hearing properly, as the scrutiny committee all sat round a table and we were clearly outsiders, with extremely limited capacity to input into the meeting.

"That image seemed to be an artistic installation representing what Brent Council's Council Tax on free speech will do to our public witnessing of the impact of despotic central and local government policies on local people."

This is KUWG's press statement:

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group has joined Brent Fightback and Brent Trades Council in opposition to what it calls “Brent Council's Council Tax on free speech.”

Brent Council plans to institute licensing of organisations other than charities and political parties that deliver leaflets in the Borough of Brent. “This is not only an attack on free speech,” said Alan Wheatley, a spokesperson for the group. “It is also a way for despotic local and central government to bury disclosure of how widespread oppressive measures such as the sanctioning of benefit claimants actually are.”

“The Council say that they do not want the reputation of the Borough of Brent tarnished by littering over the time of the Olympics. As usual, the Council has its priorities wrong while at the same time it is throwing people in South Kilburn onto the street and central government's attacks on poor people exacerbate the desolation and isolation that come with poverty.

“The Olympics serve as a branding platform for global corporations such as McDonalds that are notorious for shoddy employment practices and for product that leaves loads of street litter. Our leaflets, by contrast, help counteract the desolation and isolation that vulnerable benefit claimants experience via Kilburn Jobcentre and the JobCentre Plus network. Our leafleters are not paid, and to make our resources stretch further, we display our leaflets rather than thrust them under people's noses. People ask us for the leaflets that tell of our weekly meetings at Kingsgate Community Centre on the Camden side of Kilburn, and more. Further, people who attend our meetings who have had bad treatment at the jobcentre and/or through the testing procedures of Atos Healthcare that reduce the number of disability benefit claimants without curing them of their ailments, feel less inclined to throw themselves under a bus.

“We know of people who have won their tribunals for entitlement to Employment & Support Allowance and had but a month in which to enjoy their back money before dying in this the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. The wait for a tribunal is about a year these days. Serial re-testing of claimants adds to their stress. The Royal Family, who cost the taxpayer much more per head, are comparatively in glowing heath.

“Through the invitation to our meetings that our leaflets represent, people who have been subjected to bullying that goes through the Chancellor of the Exchequer and ministers at the Department for Work & Pensions begin to feel better about themselves.

“Brent Council's proposed daily leaflet licensing fee of £75 is greater than the sum total of £67.50 weekly Jobseekers Allowance plus £5 per week earnings disregard for a single person aged over 25. That fee would hit us and our members hard,” s/he said. “Non-claimants generally remain blithely ignorant of the facts of how low state benefits are, and the fact that the £5 per week 'earnings disregard' has remained unchanged since 1988, but our leaflets help to set the record straight about that and the sanctions against claimants that are now routine.”

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group meets every Thursday at Kingsgate Community Centre, 107 Kingsgate Road, NW6 2JH from 3pm to 5pm. With a dearth of such groups around London, KUWG helps benefit claimants in Brent and Camden and beyond to the help they need, when they need it.