Another one from the desk of Bob E:
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So, thank to the sterling efforts of the ERSA crew and their sub-contractors, there you are, the proud holder of a "zero hours contract" under which you signed away your life and agreed to drop everything the minute the 'phone rang and speedily respond to that "get yer arse in 'ere pronto, yer needed for a couple of hours" order regardless of what day of the week it is and whether it is morning, noon or night, and obviously there is no way under that contract you can "increase your hours" so what His Sainted Holiness [Iain Duncan Smith] wants you to you to do is find a second job which won't clash with your "zero hours contract" job or get sanctioned.
Still, I expect every ERSA member organisation will be only too happy to provide every one of the 1.2 million affected "personalised, tailored support" in their quest to find second jobs whilst they continue to do the same for the double that number who haven't even got "a job" and the million or so people working part time who are already searching for a job offering "longer hours" or, holy or holies "full time on minimum wage".
A million working adults face benefits cuts next year
Nearly 1.2 million working adults will for the first time next year face losing some of their benefits if they do not comply with new state requirements to work longer hours, find an additional job or seek higher wages, it has emerged.
Until now benefit sanctions have only applied largely to those out of work. The new sanctions regime is an unprecedented byproduct of the government decision to introduce universal credit, merging most existing means-tested benefits and tax credits together into a single system.
The aim is to increase the incentives to work but it means that people will lose money if they don't find extra work, even if there is none available where they live...
Universal credit removes the requirement to work at least 16 hours to be entitled to benefit, so allows claimants to receive state help if they are working as little as five hours a week.
To counter the clear financial incentives for low-hours work in the new system universal credit introduces, for the first time, a bolstered system of personalised conditionality, including directed mandatory activity to help people obtain and prepare for work.
Claimants will be expected to meet a new, higher conditionality earnings threshold, equivalent to 35 hour week at national minimum rates through a combination of measures. These can include: increasing their hours or their hourly wage with their current employer, finding one or more additional jobs alongside their existing employment or finding a new job with a higher income.
And Another One Gone
6 hours ago
11 comments:
IDS appears to have successfully added a new entry to the politician's Alternative Reality Dictionary.
universal (adj): For everyone, except everyone.
F, yup, I wish I'd said that.
There was a time when I thought IDS was one of the few left in the Conservative political ranks with any common sense and a genuine desire to improve the lot of what's become a permanent underclass.
But that was a while ago now. They're all the bloody same, and Dolmio Man's lot are no better.
UC is going to be, well, I don't have the words. With regards to sanctions/this aspect - they're going to set CASH thresholds at X hours x NMW, depending on family set up. So a singleton will need to earn 35 x NMW, a childless couple 70 x NMW, a couple with children over 5 and under 12 will be approx 55 x NMW, etc etc. Those households earning under the cash threshold will be subject to conditionality.
They haven't yet explained the conditionality regime, but it will fall somewhere between fortnightly signing as per JSA and monthly Work Provider interviews or somesuch.
But this benefit is trumpeted as online only. Who is going to supervise this conditionality? How will it be managed? And how many people will be assessed and supervised in this way? UC includes everyone entitled to tax credits for heavens sakes.
And of course, the setting of the threshold in cash not hours simply penalises one set of people more than another and has nothing to do with "laziness" of claimant.
Why can't we just go back to tax allowances for children/children in HE/childcare being completely separate to low income welfare support?
Mind you Mark, UC also takes in the capital limits from welfare that don't exist in tax credits. So it won't be encouraging home ownership!
FT, the depresssing thing is that during his wilderness years, IDS was warming to the idea of Citizen's Income, but his DWP overseers realised the true horror of this (they'd all lose their jobs) and set about making it as spiteful and complicated as possible.
Jill, agreed to all that, but I don't agree with the last bit. I qute from DWP guidelines:
For the purpose of this rule, “capital” will include savings, stocks and shares, property and trusts. It will not include: the property occupied by the claimant as his or her main home; personal injury payments placed in trust funds; certain other compensation payments; personal pension schemes; and retirement annuity contracts; or business assets. We will also disregard 50% of pension contribution in assessing net earnings.
So the usual subsidies to the usual suspects will continue unabated. If I did means testing, your main residence would be the ONLY thing taken into account.
XX finding a new job with a higher income.XX
Well, the nacker THAT one with minimum wage didn't they.
What boss is going to be idiot enough to pay more than a few pence more, than he is a) legally required to do, and b) what all the other bosses are paying for the same work?
Or, are they suggesting window cleaners apply to be airline pilots, and that kind of thing?
FT: "are they suggesting window cleaners apply to be airline pilots"
Yes. While limiting our airport capacity, of course.
The whole thing makes me sick, for sure, the welfare state has created a certain number of scroungers, piss artists etc, but there are enough recently redundant people with skills, motivation and a f-ing big mortgage who are desperate for work and can't find it (Bayard's point).
Blaming the recession on the unemployed is like blaming WW1 on the people who died in the trenches.
Mark - sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant UC won't encourage home ownership in quite a narrow sense - the capital rules (yes, savings not main home, pension etc) will mean that the low paid won't be able to save for a deposit on a house as a first-time buyer, else they'll lose their UC or most of it, anyway, with the draconian reduction in entitlement.
It seems to me, assuming - as I concede your general thrust of CI and LVT doesn't - maintaining the status quo - this move to UC is quite a devastating one in the sense that it finalises the muddying of tax allowances and low income/child contingent welfare in such a way that it penalises the low paid far more than anyone has actually made clear.
If we're sticking with income tax, I think we should have clear allowances (even the US keeps child tax allowances through college, for heavens sakes) that aren't anything to do with welfare.
Jill: "I meant UC won't encourage home ownership in quite a narrow sense - the capital rules (yes, savings not main home, pension etc) will mean that the low paid won't be able to save for a deposit"
Yes that's a good point. But the key to Home-Owner-Ism is to give money to the haves and to take it away from the have-nots. So if you've taken out a mortgage, 'bought' a house and then lose your job, you get super lovely support for mortgage interest and full welfare payments; if you had just saved up a deposit and then lose your job, well you can f- right off, you're not in with the in crowd.
"But the key to Home-Owner-Ism is to give money to the haves and to take it away from the have-nots."
Apart from minor exceptions, like soon-ousted socialist governments round the world and the Attlee administration here, this has been the aim of all governments everywhere throughout history. After all, what's the point of being in power if you don't get the dosh?
I think it's just the civil servants at the DWP deliberately setting out to destroy the principles of the universal credit.
The days when they cared one iota what the people or their elected representatives wanted are long gone.
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