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Tories plan 'work for benefits'
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Link: Tories plan 'work for benefits'
Just seen this on the BBC news site. It appears -on the surface at least - to make a lot of sense to me. Long-term job seekers will essentially be working in return for their benefits.
What do people think?
BBC wrote:The long term unemployed would be forced to work for their benefits under plans outlined by the Conservatives.
People claiming Jobseekers' Allowance for more than two years would have to do 12 months community work.
Tory leader David Cameron said he wanted to help people get back into work and end the "something for nothing culture" of benefit "dependency".
Just seen this on the BBC news site. It appears -on the surface at least - to make a lot of sense to me. Long-term job seekers will essentially be working in return for their benefits.
What do people think?
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also that it didnt lead to jobs at the end of it.
others were saying it was better than being stuck in the house.
i'm a bit divided but looks pretty decent from the outset.
I think if it was implemented properly you could incorporate training, and perhaps even qualifications.
Nice! :rolleyes:
Only if you think McDonalds counts as community service...
But yes, why not... If he doesn't want to and think's he can live on his savings he can stop claiming JSA. If he wants to continue to claim JSA he has to do a community service
Can we impose community service on those who pay less than their due tax on their income/profits through devious loophole-exploiting tax avoidance schemes as well? I know which one of the two is a far heavier burden on the country.
Typical Tory right wing bollocks. Good that Call Me Dave is starting to show his true colours though, lest some people be tempted to think the new Tories are different from the old ones.
Your hyperbole does make me laugh.
"Why should he be forced to clean old men's diseased scrotums for his JSA?"
Single parents in some parts of the US get all of two years before they have to go back to full time work.
What the fuck? I thought you could only claim JSA if you couldn't or hadn't yet got ANY job, not because you don't want to take a pay cut anyway!
because we're paying, so he can bloody well do something after two years.
Good - we're not talking about forcing disabled into work, or even forcing people within minutes of being unemployed to do it, but after two years I think they ought to be doing something. If only because if they don't it makes it harder and harder for them to return to work at all...
my understanding was it hadn't had any major improvement on getting people back into work in the USA...
or did you just mean that if they are ''working for their benefits'' then they are no longer unemployed?- which is just twisting the figures.
it would target everyone who has been unemployed claiming JSA long term. those who ''realistically cannot work'' wouldn't be claiming JSA they'd be claiming incapacity benefit so thats not applicable.
but a note of caution - its naive to assume that the long term unemployed claiming JSA are either fraudsters or literally incapable of work. in some areas the work just doesn't exist.
Sounds like cheap labour to me... pay benefits at national minimum wage whilst you are forcing someone to work and it might be a goer...
Wouldn't that idea fall down when a family with 6 kids, claiming hundreds of pounds in benefits, were expected to work 72 hour weeks?
A motivated person can find a job after a few weeks, if they want something better they can look whilst they're actually working. It's what I did, and everyone else I know who isn't a work shy lazy person has done as well.
tax evasion is bigger problem than benefit fraud imo
and would this system be run properly, of course bloody not
Ah fuck off. It's not always possible to get a job in a 'few weeks' even if you're hunting hard and willing to do anything.
If you were determined to work and weren't fussy about what you did, a "few weeks" is loads of time to get a job.
Says the Southerner. My mate from Brighton came up here and was shocked at the lack of jobs, and the wages on offer to him. It took him about a month to find a job. This is a bloke with over 10 years experience in the restaurant industry as a manager, head chef, waiter, barman, and he got a job for £6.50 an hour. He'd left a job worth £25k a year to move up here with his girlfriend. It took him about 5 minutes to get put in a job by a temping agency when he went back down to Brighton. If it's that hard for him to get a job, imagine how hard it is for someone with few skills and little experience.
So reassessing everyone claiming incapacity benefit. Suspicious eyes, interrogations about how bad that back injury really is and perhaps gently implying that depression is just something you should 'get over'. Awful. It stinks on so many basic levels. And this thing resembling Three Strikes on the JSA front - what is a "reasonable job offer"? Who decides?
Bollocks is it. If you're willing to work, 5 minutes on the job centre website and you've found a job. A bit longer if you pop into a temp agency.
As if to prove my point i've just gone to the website, stated i'm looking for work near my house, over 30 hours a week, days only and it's brought back about 400 jobs, including some decent ones such as assistant managers and security officers that are paying £16,000 a year.
It took me less than 5 minutes.
Can they?
Exactly.
Also, if the government are thinking of doing this, won't they have to pay the minimum wage?
I've got friends in Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Blackpool. The only friend who's struggled to find work, and by struggled i mean it took him a couple of months to find it, was the friend in Blackpool. I've also not lived in Brighton all my life - I've spent a large part of my life in Halifax.
The assumption that I've somehow lived in a Brightonian bubble all my life is, frankly, a bit silly.
Makes you sound like a bit like of a plank.
Thanks for the direct comparison then. Because I just did exactly the same for my area (within 10 miles, which includes all of the major surrounding towns) and I got 46 jobs. Just having a quick flick through, and it's obvious that 26 of those jobs would require experience or qualifications in a particular field (things like legal advisor or pipe fitter). Of the rest, some might prefer experience, I didn't look at them all, and very few have any career prospects (only one was a trainee position). I know for a fact that even when we advertise a position as a kitchen porter at our company, we get plenty of applicants, so it's not as if people aren't going for these minimum wage jobs either. We can fill any low level position at our company within a matter of days. My step-uncle runs the apprenticeship scheme at BAE Systems, and selects the best candidates. They get about 10 applications for every (full-time work, less than minimum wage, less than benefits) position, and he gets loads of pressure of parents with kids trying to get onto it, because it's so competitive.
I'm not saying that 2 years isn't bullshit, though you do have to question the sort of support someone is getting to find work if they can't get a job after 2 years. I think genuinely bone idle people are few and far between, and tbh, they'd probably wangle their way onto disability benefits somehow anyway. But this idea that anyone can get a job within 2 weeks of looking is just utter crap. Especially someone who's been out of work for a while, has a criminal record, has no qualifications, and the rest. I think enforced training courses would be far more beneficial than punishing people for not being able to find a job, and I reckon it's just more of the usual Conservatives trying to sound tough on something, without offering any real practical solutions to solve it.