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| 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
