(UK) More jobseekers told to do unpaid work or face possible loss of benefits

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

The government will tell up to 70,000 jobseekers that they must work unpaid for four weeks or lose their benefits for three months under an expansion of the mandatory work activity programme.

Employment minister Chris Grayling said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) would also tighten up rules to stop jobseekers from "gaming the system" –evading mandatory placements by temporarily signing off the dole –after it found up to half of those assigned mandatory work had done just that.

Introduced in May last year, mandatory work activity requires claimants to carry out up to 30 hours unpaid work a week for up to four weeks for community benefit in an attempt to get jobseekers back into the habit of work.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/12/jobseekers-work-unpaid-lose-benefits

[cstanleytech]

1. 30 hours seems extreme imo.

Now a minimum of 16 makes sense especially if they use them for things like cleaning roads, providing assistance for the elderly and disabled.

[jpbollma]

2. Wouldn't this just take jobs that would normally have to be paid positions?

Are the unemployed just being used as unpaid labor by some companies or the state?

[cstanleytech]

3. Could someone be paid for it? Sure. Is it likely? Nope, not in this economy.

Plus looked at from another angle by providing the help they meet people and perhaps they can make connections that could lead to a job so that they can get back to full time work.

[bongbong]

4. Brave New World

"I love the smell of slavery in the morning!"

[tru]

5. working for the money they receive

what a strange concept.

[Ken Burch]

7. Unpaid labour is not "working for the money they receive"

And it's disgusting that you'd defend a policy that isn't based on lowering unemployment but simply on punishing the unemployed.

Why do you post here if you're a Thatcherite, btw?

[magical thyme]

10. they already worked for the money they are receiving

You don't receive "unemployment insurance" unless you were employed to begin with. Your over-the-counter, employed income means that money is going into the unemployment insurance bucket to protect you if you lose your job. The whole right-wing fight against unemployment insurance is that supposedly people would be paid *more* if the companies that employed them weren't forced to pay into the unemployment insurance bucket, and that then individual people could choose to do what they wanted with that extra bit of money. So right-wingers claim that money would otherwise have been wages. In that case, you did the work and the money went into the insurance bucket instead of your pocket, for a rainy day.

Well the rainy day is here, and that income was your prior withheld wage.

It has been set aside for you and is intended to keep you afloat while you re-group and look for new *paid* work. Now you may, during your unemployed time, *choose* to do volunteer work as one means of networking. But since it is *volunteer* work and *uncompensated* it is, by definition, *not mandatory.*

This is way down the slippery slope to slavery, period. Even by right-wing thinking, you earned that money when you were employed. And yes, unless the unemployment compensation meets or exceeds the wages that would be paid to a normally employed person, it is taking paying work away.

[dmallind]

11. This is the UK. Basic UE benefits are direct benefits not insurance payouts there. nt

[magical thyme]

12. they are direct benefits here, too. just referred to as "insurance"

In the same way that social security here is referred to as an insurance program.

Companies and employees pay social security and fica taxes into the social security pool.
Companies also pay into the unemployment pool, and when they lay off employees, the government pays benefits out of the unemployment pool to the unemployed employees.

[Ken Burch]

6. The headline should be "UK re-legalizes slavery"

William Wilberforce is rolling in his grave.

[undeterred]

8. Yeah, because the "habit of work" is something you forget when you only

do the full time work of looking for a job in a shitty economy.

[Javaman]

9. being a serf with benefits.

welcome to the new reality.