Up to six months unpaid work?
brados:
Up to six months unpaid work?
Im not sure its a bad idea, there are a lot of people on the dole who just dont want to work ( i did say a lot, not everyone on the dole is there cuase there lazy), it might make a few think twice before thinking they can just sign on and get a free ride.
I just hope it doesnt have a negative effect on the people who really can’t work for whatever reason.
Madguy 
Its all very well making people who have been unemployed long term do some form of work but if they are to be offered to the likes of the big supermarkets as free labour, then how will the genuine jobseekers find work 
When will this government stop messing with the populous? Very Low minimum wage and open door immigration,and now free labour to keep big business happy!
I really really hope this one bites them hard on the ■■■!! 
Oh!! A U-turn by the weekend for the ConDem muppets is again on the cards!!
i thought i was working for nothing now
its an idea though
Your not working for free, your working for a wage off the gov - YOUR BENEFITS!
I was thinking more like, helping OAP’s with decorating, cutting hedges on the side of the road !! painting over graffiti that sort of thing.
Madguy
stagedriver:
Your not working for free, your working for a wage off the gov - YOUR BENEFITS!
It is also taking the place of a full time - full paid employee, that’s a lot less than min wage, the likes of the big supermarkets will soon take them on, how long before unemployed truck drivers are being taken on by stobbies and the like for NO MONEY or as you call it - Your benefits!
brados:
Up to six months unpaid work?
I thought there was no work, turns out there is?
Mike-C:
brados:
Up to six months unpaid work?I thought there was no work, turns out there is?
Yeah Mike there is - if you do it for nowt though!
stagedriver:
Your not working for free, your working for a wage off the gov - YOUR BENEFITS!
I’ll happily buy YOU a plane ticket to China or wherever if you want. 
It’s people like this that have got the country in the state it’s in, not everyone is on benefits by choice and for the ‘tax payer’ to susidise business in any way is morally wrong. If a business can’t pay it’s own way then it should close. Or is it a fact that more is now taken out instead of being re-invested in the business anyway.
Don’t tell me that if people who are long term unemployed were not paid properly they would prefer to work rather than not?
stagedriver:
Your not working for free, your working for a wage off the gov - YOUR BENEFITS!
Totally agree mate.
fredthered:
stagedriver:
Your not working for free, your working for a wage off the gov - YOUR BENEFITS!I’ll happily buy YOU a plane ticket to China or wherever if you want.
Don’t tell me that if people who are long term unemployed were not paid properly they would prefer to work rather than not?
do you not think the people that choose not to work are the problem?
and before you someone starts
choose
madguy:
I was thinking more like, helping OAP’s with decorating, cutting hedges on the side of the road !! painting over graffiti that sort of thing.Madguy
they tried all that with the community service for criminals
all that happened was that the old ladies got burgled later that night and all their possesions dissapeared
they injured themselves cutting hedges and put claims in
they spilt more paint on the floor than the graffiti artists had put on the walls
so if your unemployed by no fault of your own you are treated as a criminal
stagedriver:
Your not working for free, your working for a wage off the gov - YOUR BENEFITS!
oh I thought my TAX and NATIONAL INSURANCE paid for benifits… 
zeddman:
stagedriver:
Your not working for free, your working for a wage off the gov - YOUR BENEFITS!oh I thought my TAX and NATIONAL INSURANCE paid for benifits…
as you know it does, are you over the moon that long term unemployed and career doleys that don’t pay either, collect the cash, which isn’t just the jsa for many, for nowt?
I should start by declaring an interest. I am long-term sick. IÂ am doing my best to overcome substantial medical difficulties that my doctors believe would give me every excuse to be permanently disabled. Whilst IÂ see even the faintest hope of getting back to work, marrying my girlfriend Laurel, offering her what care and support I can, and settling down with her, I’m going to push as hard as I can. This involves an ongoing attempt to recover some physical fitness under physiotherapist supervision despite major muscle problems, bringing my brain back into working order by studying for a law degree, working on pain management with a top team in London and dealing with the consequences when I push too hard and land up with serious infections.
If the DVLA agree with my consultants that I do meet the Group 2 medical standards despite my health problems, I hope to learn to drive C, CE and D over the next two or three years, in the hope that I can do some part-time driving work as a run-up to more full-time employment. Learning to drive CE has been a lifelong dream of mine. I’m under no illusion - much of the more readily available driving work would be impossible for me with my health challenges - handball and multi-drop are beyond my abilities, yet I know that everyone has to start at the bottom. If I’m not well enough to take on paid employment, a category D licence may help persuade the local community bus group that I’m fit to drive for them.
As IÂ hope you would agree, motivation isn’t the issue - if anything I’m told that IÂ push myself way too hard. I have every incentive, in truth - Laurel being most important, but also my self-esteem, desire to give back to society and hope to escape the boredom of sometimes endless days shut in ill.
I’ve come a long way over the past three years of intensive effort, and I will keep on going in the hope of further improvement. I will continue to look for the ways I can give back to society from where I am, including being a member of an NHS commissioning board - and posting about legal matters on TruckNet.
The basic idea of helping the long-term unemployed back to work is a good one. People do get stuck in a rut and don’t know where to turn or what to do. Basic employment skills can go rusty or may never have been acquired in the first place - you do have to turn up on time, suitably dressed, ready and fit to work.
Too often, though, the help on these ‘back to work’ schemes is nominal and the work trials involve putting people into minimally-skilled jobs in place of people who would earn minimum wage. There’s often no real training element. The companies that run these schemes on behalf of the government are paid by results - if they don’t get the person back into work, they don’t get paid, so inevitably they go for the easiest targets whilst leaving the more intractable unemployed and those who need more extensive help alone. The more obstructive you are, the more likely the company will realise you aren’t worth bothering with, creating a perverse incentive for the genuinely feckless not to co-operate.
The companies running the ‘back to work’ scheme could potentially maximise their profits by becoming a source of legal cheap labour. It is possible that they could be on (presumably illegal, or at least contrary to their government contracts) kick-backs from employers to provide below minimum wage labour. If evidence emerged that this was happening, it would be the ultimate betrayal of those they are supposedly there to help. If any of these companies was in the position of being able to make more money by providing cheap labour than by getting the government’s payments for getting people into long-term employment, a fresh batch of people on benefits will be brought in to replace those whose benefits entitlement was ending.
Of course, there is also the underlying false assumption that there is a job available for everyone able to work.
Those most likely to get a new job are those who are only just lost the job they had - these people are not affected by the ‘back to work’ schemes, which only kick in after six months of unemployment.
The next easiest tranche of people to deal with are those like me, who have plenty of motivation and know what they need to do to get back into the workplace.
Often these people are frustrated by the rules, which make the leap from benefits to work very difficult. In particular, as soon as you work 16 hours a week, most benefits cease, but 16 hours a week at minimum wage isn’t going to pay as well as benefits by the time you allow for NI, tax (that admittedly you’ll later get back in full if you’re only working 16 hours a week), and those things you have to pay for when you’re no longer on benefits, such as Council Tax.
Those of us who are ill are limited in how much voluntary work we can do - 16 hours a week is usually the ceiling for all forms of work before losing benefit, which can prevent people taking on voluntary work and doing unpaid work experience to try to establish some sort of work history in an environment where there are no sanctions if you can’t turn up on the day. Indeed, attempting voluntary work can lead to a finding that you are fit to work even if you’re struggling to manage a couple of days a week and are spending most of the rest of the time recovering. Whilst I recognise there have to be limits, it seems perverse to penalise those who are trying to find their limits and build themselves up towards genuine employability. Allowing someone to continue to receive sickness benefits whilst undertaking extensive voluntary work for a period is potentially a very cheap stepping-stone to paid employment, also there is the gain to society from the voluntary work the person does.
Meanwhile, many requests for training and support for this group are now refused - free tuition for jobseekers at local colleges is much more restricted than it once was. I’m regarded as too ill to qualify for any college tuition as of right - I would have to apply to the college for discretionary funding towards any courses I wanted to do.
Those remaining tranche of people are more difficult to deal with - the demotivated, those who have never worked and those who are too ill to work but too well to be classed as sick for benefits purposes. For these people, a ‘big stick’ approach is likely to be ineffective at best and actively resisted at worst. What can an employer do with someone who has no work ethic, cannot reliably turn up on time, sometimes turns up drunk (because they have something of an alcohol problem, possibly as an escape from their difficult circumstances) and has few skills?
It is hard to motivate the long-term jobless in areas of high unemployment and deprivation. Even the most open-minded and positive people get worn down by countless ultimately futile job applications and the pervasive sense that no employer will want them.
Meanwhile, the majority of those classed as too sick to work now fall into a group that has to undertake some ‘work related activity’. Amongst other things, this involves periodic interviews with someone from the Department of Work and Pensions about possible steps back to work. One lady I know, a former newspaper journalist, is now so weak that she had to split the interview into three sessions over a six week period, and was left really ill after the whole experience. The DWP refused the evidence of her doctors that she was too weak to go through all this. She’d love to hand in her company pension (she’s classed as permanently disabled by her occupational pension scheme) and go back to work, but knows it is unlikely to happen. She’s had to move to a quiet Cornish cottage, where she lives with her cats as a semi-recluse - she can’t manage any more contact with the outside world.
I’m a great believer in the idea that everyone should do what they can. However, it is important to recognise that not everyone can manage employment, though they may nevertheless manage something that assists the economy (such as caring for a relative’s children a couple of days a week so that the relative can take on work that would be uneconomic if childcare had to be paid for, or caring for an even sicker relative). It is also important to recognise that people’s worth is not a function of their economic output - against that metric, I should be put up against a wall and shot as a burden to society. Is this where we are going to end up - that those with no hope of working are offered a state package consisting of a bullet, the use of a machine that fires it into their head, and a cheap burial in an unmarked grave?
Of course that is a very extreme way of putting things, but it reflects how trapped some people are feeling. If you have minimal qualifications, you live in an area of 25% plus youth unemployment, nobody has worked in your family for three generations and you have nobody offering you any form of personal support, what are you supposed to do?
Fortunately I can keep a sense of perspective, but there are some already feeling so threatened by the government’s reforms and their inability to get into work that they are struggling with severe depression or even are taking their lives.
I know a former long-serving NHS nurse and midwife who is now too ill to work. She does what she can to support her disabled adult daughter. This lady has worked out that if the welfare changes leave her much worse off, she may have to put her cat up for adoption and, if no new home can be found, put her to sleep. Is this really what we want as a society?
I am no believer in free rides. Anyone who is in receipt of state support has obligations towards the state and towards society. I am very thankful for what I get and recognise I am better off than many, even though the system denies me help that I really need and forces me to live apart from Laurel (because the system offers us no hope of the housing or support we’d need to cope together in our current state of health).
Illness took away my academic career at a top university (Imperial College London) and has substantially affected the past 17.5 years of my life. I could easily have died several times - I’ve beaten pneumonia twice in the past few years. I have breathing problems that really need a form of ventilator that the NHS refuses to fund, so I could easily get pneumonia again. I live with constant pain, relieved only partly by morphine which I have been on for the past 13.5 years. I get to see Laurel once a year at best, not least as she is also seriously ill - thank goodness for cheap phone calls! Most of the time I’m far too numb to feel a hug.
Illness has brought me into contact with the most incredible people, who have shared their stories of courage with me with tremendous grace. I wouldn’t swap these experiences for anything and I am not grumbling about my lot in life at all. Compared to many, what I have to put up with is nothing and I was fortunate to fit an awful lot into the 18.5 years of health I enjoyed. It’s just that I would seriously question the sanity of anyone who would willingly swap their life, their health and the relationships they enjoy with family and friends for the measly amount I get in benefits.
I’m not posting about my situation to complain about it and I’m certainly not asking for anyone’s sympathy. It’s just that I am able to give up my own privacy whilst I must respect the privacy of others. Many are worse off than me and I am so fortunate to be in the position that I am.
My fear is that the system we are moving towards is based on increased penalties, not increased help to get people back to work. In our current economic circumstances, I cannot see how piling penalties onto those who may be powerless to get employment will solve the problems of long-term unemployment and of eliminating situations where people are better off on benefits than in work.
Thank you for an extremely well-written and humbling post.
Well who ever dreamed up this idea must of spent far too long sat in waiting rooms in RDC’s perhaps ? ,lol What a load of sweaty bollox It won’t work it’s another publicity stunt
1, where are these jobs going to materialize from exactly ?
2, Does that lunatic Ca-MORON think england has become the united states of America,
Just another pick on those who are poor and vulnerable, after they helped make a lot of them unemployed in the first place, and they seriously expect us to vote for them ?
Until they are pre pared to take a realistic pay cut and all their expenses are stopped or there are normal limits on how much that they can squander, no luxury hotels, 2nd homes, ect I won’t support 99.9% of what they would like to inflict on us mere peasants as that’s how they really see us all, it’s them and us, this bollox is designed to create a greater division
And in fighting
Oh & then there is the BANKS and BONUSES and their Unpaid debts to the tax payer, the country is skint, yeah we know the real reason as to why don’t we
djw:
My fear is that the system we are moving towards is based on increased penalties, not increased help to get people back to work. In our current economic circumstances, I cannot see how piling penalties onto those who may be powerless to get employment will solve the problems of long-term unemployment and of eliminating situations where people are better off on benefits than in work.
I make you right, even if that was a bit long !!!