Writing at Labour List
yesterday Gus Baker – in his own words a “lawyer in training” who is also a
BECTU official covering Disciplinaries and Grievances and co-founder and
co-director of Intern Aware – posed the question Why won’t Labour
talk about the job guarantee scheme?
“Imagine” writes Gus “if
the Labour Party came up with a policy that proposed ending long term
unemployment, whilst simultaneously rebutting charges that the party was ‘soft
on welfare’” and later, referring again to Labour’s apparent reticence to be
much more vocal about an obvious “win – win” policy, “It makes no sense that
Labour is ignoring the best idea that the party has had in decades. It’s time
to speak up”.
So what exactly is the Job
Guarantee Scheme? Well, the most often quoted explanation is that
it will ‘offer’ the long-term unemployed a guarantee of a six-month job
by dint of giving businesses a subsidy to hire people on a temporary basis, at
the national minimum wage for six months, with those unemployed refusing a job
under the scheme having their benefits docked.
Initially the guarantee
would apply to adults – in this context those aged over 24 - who had been out
of work for 24 months or more, with Labour seeking to reduce the “unemployed
for” qualifying period to 18 or 12 months during the course of a
Parliament. The costs of the subsidy, which Labour originally calculated
as £1 billion per annum, would "be met by reversing the government’s
decision to stop tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over
£150,000 being limited to 20 per cent”.
In his article Gus admits
that “The Jobs Guarantee scheme is not a panacea for all of the UK’s problems, but capping the amount of time
that people could be unemployed in Britain would do no end of good.
The hopelessness that people often feel when out of work could be ended by
setting a date at which they would be guaranteed good quality, decent work. The
political potential of the scheme is enormous”.
And on the face of it, £1
billion for the JGF seems like a much better deal than the £5 billion Work
Programme. Today, perhaps seeing an opportunity to "speak up"
Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne commenting
on today’s (un)employment figures says “bring in Labour’s Compulsory Jobs
Guarantee to get anyone out of work for more than two years back into a job; a
job people must take or lose their benefits”.
So, to go one step further
than Gus, why won’t the present administration ditch the Work Programme and
replace it with their own “Jobs Guarantee” scheme? They don’t have
to call it that, and they claim to be in favour of “what works”?
2 comments:
Hmm "guaranteed good quality, decent work", eh? With "quality" and "decency" defined and monitored how? Come to think of it there's some of it right there, jobs in the Job Quality And Decency Monitoring Service. Genius.
MW: "Come to think of it there's some of it right there, jobs in the Job Quality And Decency Monitoring Service. Genius."
Spot on. But we don't want the JQ&DMS to be a burden on the taxpayer, so we'll outsource it to some people who happen to be mates of the politicians. Because the private sector is much more efficient, or something.
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