Tories Adopt 'Rana' Strategy!

by Les May

THE ballot amongst Tory members about who should become the next leader of the party descended into farce today when it came to light that many members had been sent two ballot papers.  This mode of running elections is known as ‘The Rana Strategy’ after Rochdale councillor Faisal Rana (a.k.a. ‘Two Votes’) who in the 2018 local government fraudulently applied for and used two votes.

There is however one noticeable difference between how the Tories and Rochdale’s Labour leadership have handled this matter.  For the Tories a shamefaced Iain Duncan Smith admitted what had happened and party members have been warned that anyone who votes twice will be summarily ejected from the party. In Rochdale the leader just about managed to express his ‘disappointment’ in Rana and did not ask for his immediate resignation.

Oh the shame of it! Labour gets a lesson in decency from the Tories.

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Universal Credit - the bureaucratic nightmare!

A mind at the end of its tether - claiming Univeral Credit

By Steve (Starlord) Fisher



Iain Duncan Smith promised that Universal Credit would 'make work pay' and make the transition into and out of paid work seamless. This has not been my experience here or elsewhere. The whole system is not fit for purpose - it is a bureaucratic nightmare! Weber's 'iron cage' of bureaucracy! The unemployed now needs the skills of a Philadelphia lawyer in order to negotiate the system.

As a self-employed consultant, I've been helping a client (who turned to me in desperation), to move from paid work back onto Universal Credit. He'd been working as a manual worker for six months and his contract came to an end. However, it has proved a bit of farce despite our doing everything correctly.

The same day his employment ended we contacted the DWP and I was happily surprised that his claim was still open. This made matters easier, or so we thought. It was my understanding that a UC claim is kept open for 6 months to facilitate movement in and out of paid work and unemployment. Any longer, and UC is automatically closed necessitating the making of a fresh claim. Apparently it can be longer, anything from 6 months up to a maximum of 8 months. It all depends on exactly when work begins and ends and where it falls within a UC monthly commencement or start-up period and end period. We thought this 'good fortune' would make it easier to make a claim. That, after all, is one of the avowed claims of UC, to make the transition in and out of paid work fluid and seamless. So we thought that was that, but the reality it couldn't have been further from the truth.

He signed-on for a couple of weeks and received a letter telling him that his UC claim had ended! We phoned the UC help-line only to be told, eventually, that they had indeed cancelled his claim, in error. His claim had 10 days before expiry, and so I speculated the most likely scenario was that his claim had been terminated, automatically, because the paperwork from Ashton Jobcentre did not reach the relevant department in time, ie within 10 days. The help-line agreed this was the most likely scenario. We were told they may be able to 'rebuild his claim'. They said he could make a complaint. As it turned-out there was nothing they could do and he would now have to make a fresh claim. But any such claim commences only from the moment it is made. What about the last few weeks then? That's why it is imperative that one make a fresh claim as soon as possible because it won't be backdated.

When he signed-on he was told he was due a payment, but what did this mean now it had been cancelled? He received an award payment of zero. I already knew he would not receive a payment until mid-January despite what he thought because the first 7 days don't count and it is paid 1 month in arrears making for a 5 week wait at best. But does this fresh claim include the last few weeks of a claim that never was, even while signing-on at Ashton Jobcentre?

We resigned ourselves to making a fresh UC claim and would have to wait and see how this farce worked-out.

So, on Tuesday 21st December 2016 we tried without success to make an online UC application. That's how it's done these days. I'd already heard about the online completion time limit. We had 20-40 minutes to complete it. Exceed this and everything's lost. One must start again playing the UC version of 'snakes and ladders'. There is no option to save and return later as with other online systems.

The online form is a poor-mans version of a HMRC Tax Return. Very poorly designed, with poor 'error-handling'. It's almost as if it's been designed to fail, to put people off making an application in the first place, and even when one does try it often fails for other reasons. The software is very fragile. But how typical was our experience?

We had no trouble finishing within the time limit. However, we ran into a different but related problem. We were well prepared and had almost finished. We were just entering banking details when the bloody system crashed, telling us to try again later or continue with the current application. However, there is no way to continue. One is forced to abandon the current attempt and start again, but even that's not easy. We tried again only to be told a claim was already in process, that we would have wait 20 minutes for the current application to expire or continue with it, but as said this was not possible. So we had to twiddle our thumbs for 20 minutes and begin again just like poor old Michael Finnegan. This time we were moving at speed knowing exactly what to do only to find it failed within minutes returning us to the beginning yet again. Yet another 20 minutes of thumb twiddling. I tried again but we were getting nowhere fast. I suggested we try again tomorrow when we could phone the UC help-line if this happened again.

So on Wednesday 22nd December 2016 we tried again. Immediately we started we were told a claim was already in process and we would have to wait 20 minutes before we could continue, but I'd not done anything yet. I telephoned the DWP UC help-line and was told they'd been having problems yesterday. That explained that. Now the excuse, was that they were updating the system starting this afternoon at 16:00, with only minutes to go! The DWP officer thought we may have difficulty and it would be best to leave it to another day. However, I thought lets give it one more try and finally, success! I told my client to include all of these difficulties as part of his efforts to find work. However, one cannot save a copy. One does not get a receipt number or get an email confirmation. My client is told that he can expect a phonecall within 2 days to make an appointment at the Jobcentre. Of course, he's already done all of this!

My client has now been told that he's got a Jobcentre appointment for his UC claim and can expect his first payment at the beginning of February 2017, having started his claim on 30 November 2015, over two months ago. He is now in rent arrears and has been given his first a food-bank voucher  from his landlord. He now faces a gloomy Christmas, with no money, and wonders what was the point of taking temporary paid work, when all it does screws up your benefit claim and leaves you facing hardhip.  God help us, if this is what the government calls simplyfying things.

'Always Look On The Sour Side of Life'

How Ken Loach Renders Reality on Film

Reviewing  'I, Daniel Blake' & the impact of 'Social Realism'

by Brian Bamford

Reverend David Grey, a former friar, at Ashton Jobcentre

THE film Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake' had the biggest domestic opening of its director's career with receipts of more than £2 million after its first three weeks.  Audiences predictably have been massive in Newcastle where the film is staged.  But also on social media, where the hashtag #iamdanielblake took off.   It is to be released in the USA on December 23^rd.

The Euro-septic MP, Iain Duncan Smith at one point complained that the film was unkind to the staff at the job-centres and benefit offices, who were enforcing the sanctions which is central to the film's message.

As things turned out audiences in this country have been flocking to see the film, which portrays the difficulties experienced by a Newcastle joiner with an heart condition trying to make sense of the British benefit's system. 

Working class culture has a rich tradition in many post-war British films.  In 1996 I interviewed Jim Allen, one of Ken Loach's screen-writers and a former building site worker, who had just collaborated with Loach on the film 'Land & Freedom' about the Spanish Civil War, and had previously worked with him on 'Raining Stones' (1993). 

At that time in an essay entitled 'Rendering Reality on Film: art and the emotion racket' (The Raven, Spring 1996), I wrote:   

'... in Raining Stones in 1993 (based on a council estate in Middleton, Greater Manchester), they are  concerned with the problems of survival on the dole in Britain today.  How to get by on a council estate amid the loan sharks and drug pushers.  Making out and leading a decent family life, in the aftermath of an era of social blight and desperation for the poor that shows  no sign of ending in the near future.'

Loach himself is uneasy about being identified with 'social realism' because he thinks it pigeon-holes his films puts off the public, he has said:  'It's a way for critics to isolate someone's work... As a film-maker you just want people to come with an open mind.'

Some doubt the accuracy and truth of the events in the film, although Mr Iain Duncan Smith has given a radio interview in which he said:that the film showed 'the very worst of anything that could happen'.

The benefit agencies and jobcentres have long been held responsible for inflicting suffering upon people at the bottom of society's pile.  Only last week the National Audit Office which found that  the Government spent £147 million more on administering the system than was saved through sanctions.  In my capacity as a Trade Union Council Secretary in Tameside, Manchester, I recently wrote to Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the PCS union that represents jobcentre workers:

'...  the protests at Ashton Jobcentre are now in their second year...  During the last two-years, staff working at Ashton Jobcentre, have made numerous complaints that they have felt threatened by protests taking place outside Ashton Jobcentre.  While this has often led to police intervention, no protestor has ever been arrested, cautioned, or rebuked in anyway.  The police have often considered these complaints, as time-wasting or baseless...  You may be interested to know that on one occasion, the Reverend David Grey, a former friar from Gorton Monastery, entered Ashton Jobcentre dressed in clerical vestments (see picture) to offer staff spiritual guidance and counselling..  We were later told that the Jobcentre had summoned the police on the pretext that staff felt threatened and intimidated by this man of God.'

This kind of corny confrontation between the British benefit bureaucracy and the claimants has been going on for as long as I can remember.  It's an authentic long-running farce played out daily up and down the country.  Towards the end of the film, Daniel Blake asks to sign-off as a claimant saying that applying for work with a heart condition like his was just wasting everyone's time and only served to humiliate him as a claimant.   The film critic Antonia Quirke has written:  'Very few people can hit you in the thoracic cavity like Loach.  Of course I cried, as I always do...'.

This is what my mother would have called a 'tear jerker' or Bertold Brecht the 'emotion racket', but while social realism may scare some off the cinema Danny Leigh in the Financial Times suggests:

'That is the essence of modern social realism – a place on the screen for people often seen as statistics'.

The film has already won the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and has scored as  a hit at the British box office. 

'Beware the IDS of March !'

by Andrew Wastling

The fact that Tory Chancellor Osborne is now being portrayed as to the right of Iain Duncan Smith Smith should give no one any comfort. It's somewhat akin to saying that Burke was slightly nicer than fellow body snatcher Hare.
 As the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) ,one of the largest trade unions in the UK, with about 200,000 members throughout the civil service and government agencies, making us the UK’s largest civil service trade union rightly points out :
'Hand-wringing can not erase from our memories the policies he has relentlessly pursued, including the benefits cap, the bedroom tax and
cuts to support for sick and disabled people.Duncan Smith's resignation will be almost universally welcomed, particularly by DWP staff and the millions of people who have borne the brunt of his cruel policies.'He presided over years of suffering and surely ranks as the most hated work and pensions secretary in living memory, epitomising Tory arrogance and indifference to the effect of brutal cuts.'
What does appear to be somewhat unusually lacking from the ongoing narrative seems to be the near meltdown of Iain Duncan Smiths flagship Universal Credit Project just before his hasty nightime scuttle overboard from his role as ships captain .
 As commentator Bernadette Meaden pointed out at the end of last week online at independent Christian political think tank Ekklesia :
'On the day he resigned, the DWP lost  a four year legal battle to keep the problems with Universal Credit secret. Mr. Duncan Smith's
flagship project is in deep trouble, but until now we haven't been allowed to know quite how deep. Universal Credit may prove to have
been a colossal waste of public money, and if it is abandoned, it would be a humiliation for Iain Duncan Smith. As one commentator
pointed out two days ago, "the more IDS fights publication, the more it looks as if he has something to hide".'He may prefer not to be at the helm if his flagship crashes on to the rocks.'
In addition  the day before Mr Duncan Smith's resignation, Disability News Service  revealed evidence that the DWP had dismissed concerns raised by a coroner under Rule 43, the “prevention of future deaths” process.
 The letter concerned the death of Stephen Carre, who had taken his own life after losing an appeal against being declared fit for work by the DWP without reference to information from his GP, his psychiatric nurse, or his psychiatrist.
 When we add to this toxic mix the independent  research last year by  public health experts from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford which found that the Work Capability Assessments  may have been associated with an additional 590 suicides.
 We know that other aspects of Welfare reform, like sanctions and the bedroom tax, have been associated with other people taking their own lives – it is obvious IDS has jumped ship well in advance of the rats !
'The public health experts research from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford  found that every  additional 10 000 people reassessed in
each area was associated with an additional 6 suicides (95% CI 2 to 9), 2700 cases of reported mental health problems (95% CI 548 to 4840), and the prescribing of an additional 7020 antidepressant items (95% CI 3930 to 10100).'
 The reassessment process was associated with the greatest increases in these adverse mental health outcomes in the most deprived areas of the country, widening health inequalities – we all know to our cost exactly where Rochdale stands both in terms of  'deprivation' and  'widening health inequalities' from a series of independent reports and research documents over the past two years.
 This research concluded conclusively that :
'The programme of reassessing people on disability benefits using the Work Capability Assessment was independently associated with an
increase in suicides, self-reported mental health problems and antidepressant prescribing. This policy may have had serious adverse consequences for mental health in England, which could outweigh any benefits that arise from moving people off disability benefits.'The massive anger and growing  public opposition to cuts to disability benefits has been reflected in the fact that  more than 145,000 people
have signed an emergency 38 Degrees petition in the last 24 hours calling for PIP cuts to be cancelled.
 Media campaigns manager Adam McNicholas, at 38 Degrees, said prolonging uncertainty over cuts was “cruel and unjust”, concluding
that :
'The political circus surrounding the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith should not overshadow the reality facing people who rely on this critical safety net.
'This policy hasn’t yet been killed off - so the ongoing uncertainty for people who need Personal Independence Payment goes on.'

Concluding that : 
 'The British people have called for compassion - they’ve said it’s not good enough for the government to make excuses and kick this issue into the long grass. Prolonging the uncertainty is cruel and unjust. It’s time to bin this policy and this should be the first decision of the incoming secretary of  state.' Further people should not fall for the tory spin that new  Work And Pensions Secretary secretary Stephen Crabb is some kind of proto-proletarian 'horny handed son of toil' from the estates riding over the hill from the Valleys to rescue IDS's victims from the

  'nasty party'.
Even with a possible U-turn on ESA and Welfare - it will still be more of the same , more pain and no gain for ordinary working people and the most vulnerable in our communities who are paying directly for the failure of the banking class & the political elites who act as their apologists & facilitators as the tory austerity budget is being balanced on the backs of people in wheelchairs and those who are unable to walk unaided without sticks or callipers.
 A weekend of Tory infighting saw Mr Duncan Smith condemn George Osborne's 'arbitrary' cap on welfare spending and obsession with 'short-term savings'.
 IDS said  the chancellor had targeted cuts at the poor because they 'don’t vote' Conservative anyway.
 This is  - it should be remembered - the very same Iain Duncan Smith who once infamously said he could live off  £53 pounds a week : then resolutley ignored the three hundred thousand plus online petition from the British people demanding that he prove he could do just that.
 They will continue not to  'vote Conservative anyway'  and the tory party will continue to view them as 'un-people' not deserving of consideration.
 So it will be interesting indeed to see how Stephen Crabb reacts when he realises that he's been set up as a convenient political 'patsy' to take the rap for Duncan Smiths abject failure on the fast collapsing Universal Credit.
 Though his own track record on cuts to disability benefits is by no means an unblemished one.
 Indeed as  Disabled People Against the Cuts : DPAC helpfully point out today:
'Besides Mencap, Stephen Crabb appears to be associated with a Christian advocacy group named CARE (Christian Action Research & Education) http://www.care.org.uk, who claim that their vision is “to see a society that has a greater regard for human dignity and increasingly reflects God’s grace and truth through public policy, media and local practical involvement with vulnerable people.
'Crabb’s voting history flies in the face of what they are claiming to stand for, and they want to think carefully about associating themselves with a man who is willing to sacrifice the most vulnerable in society. I dare say Christ would not be very impressed .'
Incidentally DPAC list those other MP's who voted for cuts to ESA from all political parties and their campaign page :  “Force disability
charities to sever links with MP's who voted for #ESA Cut “ appears to already have claimed the scalps of Tory MPs Zac Goldsmith who voted
for the ESA cut while being a Patron of disability charity Richmond  Aid , the charity released a statement condemning him for voting for
the cut .
 Likewise  Peter Bottomley MP, Nick Gibb MP and Tim Loughton MP, all voted repeatedly for the cut to ESA. All three of them are also Vice Presidents of the Coastal West Sussex branch of Mind (CWSM). DPAC point out that :
'Mind was contacted, and a petition was started  and within a day –CWSM had issued a statement to say that they were going to “discuss
the position of the three MPs at the next board meeting".'The hypocrisy of some members of parliament standing on boards & charities with  all the kudos such roles entail whilst voting in favour of cuts to benefits for disabled & vulnerable people is truly staggering to cite just a few shocking examples of double standards we have :
Stephen Crabb MP Patron, Pembrokeshire MENCAP.
Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP Patron, Prostate Cancer Charity,&  Patron,
MS Action.
Esther McVey , Patron, Wirral Holistic Cancer Care, &  ,Patron, Full of Life.
Rt Hon Dr Vince Cable MP Patron, Richmond MENCAP.
Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP Patron, Herts Action on Disability.
Rt Hon David Cameron MP Patron, Cancer Research UK Relay for Life,
Witney ,Patron, Versus Cancer ,  Patron, Lawrence Home Nursing Team,
 Patron, Motability & Patron, Trips, Outings and Activities for the
Learning Disabled.
Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP Patron, Resolve Alcohol and Drugs Charity .
Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP Patron, Isabel Hospice & Patron, Herts Action
on Disability.
Rt Hon William Hague MP President, Northallerton & the Dales Mencap Society.
Rt Hon William Hague MP Vice President, Yorkshire and the Humber Muscle Group.
Rt Hon Theresa May MP Patron, National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society.
So to conclude this Budget fiasco is  a “tory smoke & mirrors “  black op .
 The Tory party are clearly more moved by the plight of a few hundred of their own MP's on Europe than the plight of Britain’s  millions of poor & vulnerable .Their personal priorities are self evident ,
 Meanwhile the verdict is out on our new Work And Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb , everyone deserves a chance – even a tory ! - however
as  TheyWorkForYou point out his voting record in the House on Welfare and Benefits can be found at :

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11768/stephen_crabb/preseli_pembrokeshire/votes

is as follows:
Consistently voted for reducing housing benefit for social tenants
deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the "bedroom
tax").
 Consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line
with prices.
 Consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods
for those unable to work due to illness or disability.
 Consistently voted for making local councils responsible for helping
those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the
amount spent on such support.
 Consistently voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits.
 Almost always voted against spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed.
 In Act 1 , Scene 2 ,of Shakespeare’s , 'The Tragedy of Julius Caesar' the Soothsayer tells Caesar  before his political comeuppance to
'Beware the ides of March' .
If you'll allow me for a second an authors conceit of altering the Great Bards words  slightly we all need to,

 'Beware the IDS of March' for it's not just the Bullingdon Club hooray Henry’s & Henrietta of Cameron, Osborne & May  who need to watch their backs  from IDS – his
cancerous Universal Credit is so embedded &  enshrined in Britain’s Welfare State & Benefits System that any possible future  removal of this toxic tumour could now kill the patient without the right checks and balances being put in place.
He may well have jumped ship cowardly refusing to go down with his ship as is the Captains usual duty but he's left the ships tiller entangled with such a intractable ,mangled  & proverbial Gordian Knott of such rabid right wing ideologically driven policies that  it might well prove impossible to untangle the helm and set a new saner course before the whole Welfare System crashes on to the rocks – and for anyone totally dependent on state benefits as so  very many are in Rochdale that's a major problem for us all should that system collapse into administrative chaos on the non too distant horizon.

Duncan-Smith to police foodbanks. Will charities stand for this?

At a recent meeting of the Tameside Food Bank Forum (T.F.F.), which met last week at the Ashton-under-Lyne volunteer centre, a food bank representative reported that it was his experience that increasingly more people in-work were visiting food banks to obtain free food. People who fall into this category, in Britain, have been dubbed the 'working-poor'.

More than one million people visited the food banks run by the charity 'Trussell Trust', in 2014-2015 to obtain free food. Government benefit sanctions are blamed, in part, for the rise in the numbers of people relying on food banks to feed themselves and their families. 

In some local supermarkets in Tameside, such as 'Morrisons', in Dukinfield, customers have been asked if they would like to make food donations to the food banks to help those in need. Tameside Hospital, is also planning to open an on-site permanent food bank after doctors and nurses became concerned about the significant rise in patients showing signs of malnourishment. The hospital food bank aims to boost nutrition for patients and residents in the area.

Why  some many people should be unable to feed themselves in the UK, now ranked the fourth richest country in the world, is an appalling indictment on British society. Yet since the 1980's, the countries with the most marked increase in income inequality have been the UK and the U.S. which led the world in pro-rich policies. The Cambridge economist, Ha-Joon Chang, in his book 'Economics: the user's guide', writes:

"Markets are routinely rigged in favour of the rich as we have seen in the scandals about misselling of financial products and lies told to regulators. Money gives the super-rich the power to legally or illegally buy up politicians and political offices... We are persuaded to accept what I call the L' Oreal principle - if some people are paid tens of millions of pounds per year, it must be because they are worth it."  

The stigmatization of benefit claimants, has led to state benefits remaining unclaimed. HMRC estimates that £16 billion of benefits have gone unclaimed. Tax Justice and the trade union the P.C.S, claim that £120 billion of tax is avoided, evaded and uncollected. At a time when the government is cutting tax credits for some people in work, there is a £30 billion surplus in the national insurance fund which has arisen due to benefit cuts.

Chris Mould, Chairman of the Trussell Trust, said recently that cuts in Working Tax Credits were likely to lead to more people being forced to rely on food banks for support. Perhaps this is why Ian Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, recently announced that the DWP want to put their staff into food banks. This measure which should be resisted by charities, is probably designed to allow the DWP to police who is claiming from the food banks, but might also be designed, to discourage people from claiming. How long will be, before the DWP Gestapo is in the parlour, monitoring how much food is on our plates?

"Okey cokey pig in a pokey" - Ashton Jobcentre gets uppity over protesters placard!

The weekly protests outside Ashton-under-Lyne Jobcentre, have attracted the attention of various media organisations, but not the local press in Tameside. The only local newspaper now in business in Tameside, the Reporter and Chronicle, is owned by the housing company, New Charter Housing Trust Ltd under the guise of 'Piccolo Communications'. The housing company, which has close links to Tameside Council, also owns Tameside Radio and are involved in delivering the 'Troubled Families' agenda with the council. Under this initiative, the Conservative Government have identified 120,000 'persistently anti-social families'. However, it later emerged that this figure was actually a measure of social deprivation and not behaviour. Unemployed single-parents, have been designated 'troubled families' by Ashton Jobcentre and referred to the scheme because they were not considered to be doing enough to look for work.

On Thursday, researchers from NINELIVES.media.co.uk, called at Ashton Jobcentre and spoke to protesters. They are making a television documentary for Channel 4's 'Dispatches', about welfare and benefit reforms and want to speak to people in receipt of in-work state benefits about how reforms are affecting them. Anyone who is receiving JSA, Universal Credit or Working Tax Credits, and wishes to speak to 'Dispatches' on a 'confidential basis', should contact - Jessica Bell or Jane Drinkwater directly on 0161 832 2007 or jessica.bell@ninelivesmedia.co.uk and jane.drinkwater@ninelivesmedia.co.uk

Many people are often unaware of the extent to which state welfare is being used to subsidise poverty pay in Britain. Today, only one-in-eight people who are receiving housing benefit, are not in work. In other words, people who are in work, are often unable to pay their rent because they are not paid enough. State benefits have become the prop for the failure of capitalism to deliver decent jobs and wages. Since 1980, unemployment has averaged more than three-times the post-war rate, while the proportion of those in low-paid jobs, has doubled to over 20%. Britain is the only country in the G7 group of leading economies where inequality has increased this century. (Credit Suisse - annual global wealth report - October 2014, P.33). Yet, while many of us have got poorer, this has coincided with a boom in the number of rich and super-rich in Britain. Those people who can least afford it, have paid the price for the man-made financial crisis caused by the bankers and politicians.

Even people who work in the Jobcentre are not immune from poverty pay. According to Mark Serwotka, the General Secretary of the PCS trade union, some 40% of his members who work in the Jobcentre, do qualify for the state handout Universal Credit, because they are "fantastically low-paid." Yet these very same people who are in receipt of state benefits, are often the ones, who vilify claimants and stop their benefits in order to meet government sanction targets.

With the introduction of the Tories 'Universal Credit' (UC), things are likely to get a lot worse in terms of personal scrutiny, regulation, and control.  One aspect of Universal Credit, is what is termed 'conditionality', and this will have implications for anyone who is in work and is claiming Universal Credit, JSA, or Working Tax Credits. As with the unemployed, people in receipt of in-work benefits, will be required to attend regular Jobcentre interviews and could face sanctions (loss of benefits), if they fail to carry out directions given to them by the Jobcentre, such as being required to look for better paid work or to increase the hours that they already work.

Some Jobcentre staff in other areas of the country, have been disciplined for not sanctioning enough people on benefits and opposition to the Government's harsh sanctioning regime is growing. At the last PCS conference, it was agreed that PCS members would be encouraged to support local groups campaigning against sanctions and would support initiatives that sought to undermine and expose, the draconian sanction regime that exists in Jobcentres. However, this is unlikely to make much of an impression on staff working at Ashton Jobcentre, who have been heard boasting in the local Caledonian pub in Ashton, about the number of 'dole-ites', they have sanctioned that week.  On Thursday, one diminutive and stroppy female member of staff, came out of Ashton Jobcentre accompanied by a G4S security guard and admonished a demonstrator, for carrying a PCS placard, which she objected to. "I know who your are" she told the burly protester. With hardening attitudes like this, it seems likely that these protesters are in it for the long haul. 

Welfare Action Gathering - 30 May.

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

Saturday 30th May, 10.30am-5.30pm (arrive from 10.15am for a cup of tea), London Welsh Centre (10 minutes’ walk from King’s Cross station)

"We’ve just added a couple more workshops – and now there’s a timetable as well!

We're really looking forward to seeing you at the Welfare Action Gathering this Saturday.  Here's a little more information about what's happening when on the day.  

And if you're free on Saturday but not sure whether you're coming or not, have a look at the programme, and maybe our website too, for longer descriptions of the workshops. 

p.s. If you're coming, it would be great if you could make sure you're at the Welsh Centre before 10.30!

Here's the programme:

10.00	Tea / coffee / welcome
10.30	Opening session
	What will cuts and reforms to welfare and housing mean? How can we fight against them? We’ll hear from everyone about what the biggest challenges facing us at the moment are.  We’ll find out what all the different groups and individuals want to get out of the day. To get a snapshot of who’s come along, each group will have 2 minutes to say who they are and what they do.  Hopefully this way, everyone will be able to make links with the people they especially want to speak to throughout the day. We’ll hear about successes that we might like to explore in more depth later. Everyone will be able to share the priorities and interests that bring them to the gathering, and say what they’d like to work together on and what issues they’d like to discuss.   We’ll start using the materials around the room to record what people would like to discuss in the open space, to signpost others to useful resources, and to advertise upcoming dates for actions/events/workshops.  We want this to be a day for making concrete links between groups and between people. We want there to be more effective collaboration by the end of it – not just another committee or a manifesto. And we hope these discussions can get going from the start.
11.40	Tea / coffee / snacks
12.00	Workshop session 1
	Organising against workfare in your town or city	Challenging sanctions and mandation	Staying strong: Supporting each other through the emotional impact of punitive welfare reforms	Knowing your right to Access to Work support, before going on Work Placements (DPAC)
1.20	Lunch (provided, vegetarian and vegan friendly)
2.20	Workshop session 2
	Universal Credit: time for welfare and housing campaigners to come together	Taking on workfare	Tactics to resist and navigate the Work Programme	Keeping Volunteering Voluntary: workfare stops when there’s nowhere to send people (KVV)	Title TBC (WinVisible)
3.40	Tea / coffee / snacks
4.00	Open space session to make stuff happen!				Workshop
	This session is for organising and information sharing.  People can plan how the ideas for action from the workshops will happen; or spend time exploring important questions we’ve all brought to the day. People can move between discussions, and between discussion and the workshop.  We’d like each discussion group to be able to feed back with information about: who to contact; what is going to happen; how can people get involved.				Dealing with energy companies and energy debt (FPA)
5.00	After today?
	We’ll hear about the plans from the open space, who is taking them forward and how we can stay in touch beyond the day. We’ll maybe arrange dates or targets for UK-wide action and ways we can build capacity and share resources to support each other.
5.30	Finish and pub!

Join the Facebook event and invite others to come too!

Organised by Boycott Workfare with Haringey Solidarity Group, with workshops and contributions from other groups. 

Please let us know if you’d like to come, if you haven't already: info@boycottworkfare.org

We can help with travel costs. If you are in a local group where people support each other and take action on welfare or housing (or plan to start one), we should be able to help with your travel costs. Please help by booking travel early and accessing other sources of funding if you can. Get in touchas soon as you can to sort travel costs out.

If you’d like access info please get in touch and let us know if there are ways we can help make the event accessible. We’ll make sure the venue is wheelchair accessible on the day, but unfortunately one workshop room is not.  If you’re a wheelchair user and would like to contact us in advance to let us know what workshops you’d like to attend, we’ll make sure they’re scheduled on the ground floor.  But either way, room allocations are flexible and will be decided on the day."

Boycott Workfare Action Weeks. Keep volunteering, VOLUNTARY!

We are publishing below recent briefings from 'Boycott Workfare':

"Saturday 2nd May, 12noon – 1.30pm, Salvation Army International HQ by Millennium Bridge, London

Praised by the government for “holding the line” on workfare, the Salvation Army is one of the few national charities still to use compulsory unpaid work placements.

Being involved in workfare means being responsible for sanctions – benefit stoppages which leave people with nothing to live on. Sanctions are driving food poverty in the UK. So it’s a mystery how Salvation Army – which also runs foodbanks – can justify its involvement in the sanctions regime.

On Saturday 2nd May, come and shame Salvation Army into joining the tens of charities to pull out of workfare. Take part in a visual action outside their international headquarters by millennium bridge near St Paul’s between 12 noon and 1.30pm.

Bring a placard or poster with a sanctions story, fact or example. Show just what a grotesque system the Salvation Army is supporting!

Please help spread the word and invite people to the Facebook event!

This week’s the Week of Action vs Sanctions and Workfare with daily online actions. If you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, please take a minute to:

• Lobby Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice shops to withdraw from workfare
• Sanction B&M Stores who we’ve been told are replacing paid workers with workfare
• Ask the British Psychological Society to challenge psychological coercion in the benefits regime
• Tweet the leaders of the main political parties to challenge their unanimous support for workfare

Today we’re supporting the Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign’s call for people to contact the charities and voluntary organisations you support to invite them to pledge to shun workfare too. Read on for more info, and follow Keep Volunteering Voluntary on twitter and facebook.

There are a lot of organisations who have said they won’t take workfare, but still a lot who do. We want all voluntary work to be freely chosen, not a means for private companies to make profits or Jobcentres to force people off benefits. Keep Volunteering Voluntary (KVV) have set up a pledge and already over 450 organisations have signed!

You can help to encourage organisations to sign up to Keep Volunteering Voluntary in several ways. Firstly check whether they are already on the list of sign-ups.

• If you use or support a charity, try to find out whether they use workfare, and in any case ask them to sign up to KVV.
• If there is a local charity shop, go in and talk to the people there: find out whether there is anyone there on workfare, and ask the organisation to sign up to KVV.
• If you work or volunteer at a voluntary organisation, try to get them to sign up.
• If a place you work or volunteer at has any links with a voluntary organisation, try to contact them too.

Download or order leaflets from Keep Volunteering Voluntary to take into charity shops, or adapt this template letter as an email to send to a voluntary organisation.

Some responses you may get and some tips on how to reply:

“We’ve already signed up.” – great, well done!
“We don’t have anyone on workfare.” – so you won’t mind signing up to KVV then.
“We’re helping the unemployed gain experience.” – that’s not of much value if they don’t want to be there.
“What’s wrong with (unpaid) volunteers.” – there’s no objection to genuine volunteers, but to compulsory schemes and coercion.
“The people on placement want to be here.” – that’s fine, but they shouldn’t be threatened with sanctions.

If you can get any kind of statement from an organisation, that’s always useful – a way in to further dialogue, or good publicity for the campaign. Let Boycott Workfare know and we’ll pass it on to KVV as well.

Some charities – such as Age UK – have a national office but each local area branch is ‘independent’ and may sign up separately. So if you see a local branch signed up but not your area, that’s an added incentive for your local to sign up too.

Without charities’ support, workfare schemes will collapse. That’s why every extra new organisation to sign up is so important – helping build consensus in the voluntary sector that workfare is completely at odds with its aims and values.

Perhaps you’d like to take the opportunity to contact some persistent workfare-using charities with your concerns too?

• See if there are any charities local to you on our list of workfare exploiters
• Ask hospices how they can reconcile caring for the community with sanctions. Contact North London Hospice shops or other charity hospice shops too
• Contact Groundwork UK – which hosts hundreds of placements and a DWP sub-contractor for the schemes
• Contact YMCA – which releases reports condemning sanctions, but then helps sanction people on Mandatory Work Activity

And don’t forget to check out the list of actions taking place across the UK today and tomorrow as part of the Week of Action vs Workfare and Sanctions.

Election Special: How the Political Parties stand on 'workfare' a.k.a. State Sponsored Slavery!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

"It is a disgrace that the three main political parties (and UKIP) support workfare and sanctions.  This consensus has allowed the introduction of policies that are causing ill health, hunger, homelessness and deaths.  All three parties have some responsibility for this and they all have questions to answer.

So today we’re asking you to take action online and help us break the election silence on workfare and sanctions.  It is unlikely that these issues will even get a mention during tonight’s Election Leaders Special edition of Question Time.

Help us to make sure these issues do get talked about, and tweet up a storm about workfare and sanctions using the #bbcqt hashtag.  And tweet your unanswered questions to @Ed_Miliband @nick_clegg and @David_Cameron…

Here’s the low-down on the political parties that support workfare and sanctions:

Vote Labour: Get Workfare

Shamefully it was the last Labour government who introduced workfare with the Welfare Reform Act of 2009.  Under Labour’s Flexible New Deal thousands of hours of unpaid work was handed out to businesses like Primark and claimants were forced to work without pay in hospitals and local councils.  The last Labour government also introduced the hated Work Capability Assessment and extended benefit sanctions to include disabled people and lone parents.  Over the last five years there has been a complete absence of any opposition from Labour to any of the workfare and sanctions policies introduced by the coalition.  Labour’s support for the retrospective Workfare Bill was particularly disgraceful.

Labour’s manifesto promises to introduce a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee for young people and the long-term unemployed. Previous statements indicate that the compulsory jobs would be paid at 25 hours of minimum wage and involve an additional 10 hours unpaid “training” each week. Those unable or unwilling to accept the compulsory jobs will be sanctioned “in line with the existing sanctions regime”.  Labour have also pledged to withdraw unemployment benefits completely from young people and replace them with a Youth Allowance paid at the same rate.  This allowance would be means tested and conditional on young people being in “training”.

Vote Liberal Democrats: Get Workfare

The Liberal Democrats have supported every workfare and sanctions policy introduced by the Conservatives over the last five years (including the retrospective Workfare Bill) and must share responsibility for the ill health, hunger, homelessness and deaths caused by coalition policies.  Nick Clegg’s Youth Contract created thousands of unpaid workfare placements resulting in millions of hours of unpaid work. In their manifesto the Lib Dems say they will expand the availability of unpaid work placements into new sectors.

Vote Conservative: Get Workfare

The last five years of Conservative-led government have seen a proliferation of workfare schemes and a huge increase in the number of benefit sanctions.  Claimants can now be forced to work for 6 months without pay.  Benefits can now be stopped for up to 3 years.  Predictably these policies are having disastrous consequences.  With the introduction of Universal Credit the Conservatives are seeking to extend workfare and sanctions to low paid part-time and self-employed workers.

Their manifesto promises more of the same, with an unspecified £12 billion of cuts to the welfare budget.  There are pledges to send Jobcentre advisors into schools to provide routes into unpaid work; tougher “Day One Work Requirements” for young claimants; the ending of housing benefit for young people; and sanctions for claimants who refuse “recommended treatment”. Like Labour, they say they will replace JSA for young people with a Youth Allowance.  This would be limited to 6 months – after which young people will be forced onto apprenticeships, unpaid traineeships or community work.

And finally…

Vote UKIP: Get Workfare

At the last election UKIP’s policy document on social security was entitled “From Welfare to Workfare”.  This was an incredibly offensive tract which cited the Daily Mail as evidence and described claimants as “a parasitic underclass of scroungers”. Tellingly, one of the workfare proposals suggested was that claimants should be forced to work without pay to build prisons (presumably for themselves).  This time around it seems that UKIP have decided that workfare is no longer a vote winner and have disappeared the policy from their manifesto.  It should be noted though that workfare was endorsed at their last conference and is still listed on their website as one of the reasons to vote for UKIP."