James Purnell says the long-term unemployed “will be required to work full-time or undertake full-time work-related activity in return for their benefits.” (par 2.18 here).
This raises several questions. Isn’t this an abuse of language? I had thought that if you work, the money you get in return is wages.
And if you have to work 40 hours a week to get Job Seekers Allowance of £60.50, you’re paid £1.50 an hour. How is this consistent with the principle of a minimum wage?
But there’s a deeper question. Purnell could have sold a similar policy differently. He could have spoken thus:
We know that the unemployed are generally significantly unhappier (pdf) than those in work. We intend to put an end to this, by offering every person who has been out of work for two years the opportunity to do meaningful work improving their local communities. This will not just lift them out of poverty, as the minimum wage and tax credits offer a higher income than out-of-work benefits. It will raise their self-esteem, end the isolation and loneliness that contributes so much to the misery of being jobless and - perhaps - act as a gateway to better jobs.
Such work is so much better than the dole that the long-term unemployed, being the best judges of their own interests, will freely choose it. There‘s no need therefore for compulsion.
So, why did Purnell not say this?
It can’t be because this policy is more expensive than his actual one which, as I said, will cost the taxpayer money.
It could be that he thinks the long-term unemployed are actually working in the black economy, and wants to compel them into the “legitimate” economy. Or perhaps he doesn’t trust the unemployed to perceive their own interests, and so feels the need to compel them.
Or maybe he’s more concerned to hand over taxpayers’ cash to companies than to the poor.
But there’s a nastier possibility. As Justin says, this is about stigmatizing the unemployed, by lumping them in with criminals doing community service. In this respect, for all the New Labour drivel about “modernization” what’s going on here is something centuries old - treating poverty as moral failure. Here’s C.B.Macpherson describing 17th century attitudes to poverty relief:
The Puritan doctrine of the poor, treating poverty as a mark of moral shortcoming, added moral obloquy to the political disregard in which the poor had always been held. The poor might deserve to be helped, but it must be done from a superior moral footing. Objects of solicitude or pity or scorn, and sometimes of fear, the poor were not full members of a moral community. (The political theory of possessive individualism, p226-7)
Nothing much has changed in the last 350 years.
Why is New Labour stigmatising poor people?
Because New Labour is Conservative. Simple answer to a simple question really.
So the poor are now the ‘Africans’ of the UK? Well I’m sure the travelling community will be relieved to have been lifted from the lowest rung of the ladder, even if it is only in Purnell’s eyes.
That’s political correctness for you!
Make it socially acceptable to stigmatise those who you have a hold over - you gotta stigmatise some group of people, if only to make yourself feel more secure, and what’s the point of holding a position unless you can show your audience you know how to use force successfully against whichever victim you can be sure you won’t lose against.
Bahhh! If this is how he launches a blairite leadership bid he’s already failed.
Let’s not forget this wasn’t the first hint of this policy. Caroline Flint already long ago announced evicting people from council houses if they were unemployed for too long. Our country is one that wants to kick the poor out on the street and spit on them…which is ok since they’re as bad as baby rapists, right?
If there was one area that we should definitely be making a defining part of our desire for change, this kind of attitude is it.
I waited for the howl from the unions that these workfare people would be taking the jobs of their members, but, unlike the response to a similar proposal a good number of years ago, it didn’t come. So one hurdle in the way of “meaningful work improving their local communities” isn’t there. Surely we already have programmes like this, for example a clean-up job near me has been a partnership between a local authority’s support for people with mental health problems who are getting back into regular meaningful activity in the community, a Lottery grant through the BBC Breathing Places programme, and volunteer organisers. Other than that type of activity, for the apparently able-bodied of fully sound mind who are not working, it seems to be a case of deciding to not change their life style (so work of the sort that migrant workers take, with its geographic dislocation, they will not do) - brutish central direction from the citadel is not going to change that.
But I’m more concerned about the inefficiency of the public sector - dealing with that will reduce taxes, and dealing with it requires a great improvement in managerial competence.
“Nothing much has changed in the last 350 years.”
Welfare dependency isn’t new either: http://historyofideas.org/journals/EH/EH40/haggar40.html
Having said that, I agree with the gist of what you are saying. The unemployed have the most to gain from these new policies and stigmatising them while you go about it is likely to be counter-productive. Perhaps this harsh rhetoric wouldn’t have been so called for had Labour started looking at this problem properly at the beginning (before Frank Field was dumped). Now they are up against the wall and are no longer the darling of the media, they are trying to use this as a rallying cry towards the center rather than what it should be, a necessary but difficult policy shift that should be handled sensitively.
[...] New Labour’s attitude to poor people. Shockingly, I still actually know some people who are going to vote for Labour. But then I look at the Tories’ benefit plans and I can see why. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started saying “the poor want to live in houses? Have we no workhouses for them? “ [...]
“I waited for the howl from the unions that these workfare people would be taking the jobs of their members, but, unlike the response to a similar proposal a good number of years ago, it didn’t come.”
because they won’t be teking therr jerbs, they’ll be taking criminals jobs.
I agree, stigmatising the poor as lazy cheats is extremely damaging, but I think this is the medias rsponsibility. The Green paper aims at giving people back control of their lives and ending the culture of dependancy. The media have taken it out of context and it is now appearing like a criminal sentence. If this understanding is adopted by society, this can be very dangerous as then the government will have to live up to this perception. What should be the focus is the lack of government acknowledgement and appreciation for people working cash in hand, on the side as a survival mechanism. Many of which are capable of working their way out of poverty but with theis new proposal they will just have to give up all they have achieved and go back to basics. That or give up benefits altogether and work on the black market.Either way at some point down the line the government wil realise they need to harness the skills of informal workers and help them into the formal economy. If you want to know more on this please check out http://comlinks.beepweb.co.uk/linksuk/ and have your say
“The Green paper aims at giving people back control of their lives and ending the culture of dependancy”
It says that they will stop peoples benefits if they don’t so work. There’s no media involvement necessary in showing the stigma here, it’s purely a government lead stigma. I’m all for blaming the media when it is stepping out of line, but this time it is not them spinning anything, this is reality. Labour wish to make people on benefits do community service for less than minimum wage or lose their benefits. It’s abhorrent and *no-one* on the left or that is liberal should be trying to defend it in any way.
If this policy is anything other than a placebo to the sensibilities of the floating voter, then it would seem to me that four things would make it more palatable:
(a) Pay the minimum wage for the work done,
(b) Ensure that no-one is left on the programme for more than, say, three months, and,
(c) Roll it out in places where there is an excess of vacancies to recruits so that (b) has a realistic chance of being achievable.
(d) Incentivise employers to select from this group rather than other groups, perhaps by reducing employers NI contribution levels if they retain the person for a year.
Otherwise we might as well go the whole hog and have their donkey jackets inscribed with ‘Welfare Scrounger’ or some such.
I was out canvassing in a well off area yesterday and Purnell’s proposals came up a few times. They were very warmly received but the people who brought it up were dyed in the wool Tories. It’s good to see Purnell attempt something which will confer little political advantage. I’ll congratulate him if it delivers, but Frank Field’s criticisms seem valid.
What I think you are touching on is the problem the Left has with a meritocracy. Having ‘taken measures’ against sexism, racism and class discrimination, the fact that some people remain ‘at the bottom of the pile’ in a meritocracy seems to rankle. Rather than levelling the playing field and accepting that individual progress is then dependent on skill and effort, the Left has to continually find new ways to interfere to get the ‘results’ it wants.
…the problem the Left has with a meritocracy… the fact that some people remain ‘at the bottom of the pile’ in a meritocracy seems to rankle.
Well, I consider myself on the left and my problem with “meritocracy” is that it’s utter nonsense. Britain isn’t a meritocracy, it’s never been one and if the type of people who bandy that word about have their way, it never will be one either. If you’d like some evidence to back that up, I’d suggest paying attention to the world around you.
God only knows what “levelling the playing field” means in this context, but I seriously doubt it means shutting down public schools and giving all kids the same education or some other Commie measure. It’s probably a Tory euphemism for “stripping those from the poorest backgrounds of the meagre protections our system allows them”, although no doubt there’s a way to clad it in enough titanium bullshit to make it sound less mendacious.
As for “skill and effort”, congratulations! You’ve just told millions of hard-working people that they have money woes because they’re talentless wastrels. Top marks - I look forward to reading this Survival of those with the wealthiest parents manifesto and witnessing the populace’s reaction to it.
they have a similar measure in Denmark, but with rather radical differences:
1. the person only works one or two days, so the benefit income matches the effective minimum wage level,
2. the work is organised by the local commune (their term for local council, village, town or city district level democracy), which is not only far more powerful than local Govt in the UK (they even decide most of the local education budgets!), but far more accountable to the local residents (there being more parties, and a fairer electoral system). The people who work, and the people who organise the work, jointly agree on what is the best practise (imagine being able to hold an opinion in new-labour’s proposal on workfare - its laughable, isn’t it?), and the work is NOT seen as a method of exploiting the unemployed, or forcing them into low-paid jobs, but as the article above says: helping them to maintain self-respect, by giving something back for the benefits they receive (which BTW, at roughly £800 a month, are significantly higher than the UKs rates).
is ANYONE not aware that these measures are pure Yankee workfare policy copying?
i would STRONGLY recommend viewing “bowling for columbine”, for the almost certain effects of this policy. This is authoritarian Fascism, pure and simple.
BTW - connect this to the proposal to make convicts “work to pay for their incarceration”, and the dots are resolving to show a picture…
as Orwell said “picture a boot stamping on a human face forever…”.
the disgusting thing is, the true rot at the core of the UK, the Tories will not change a blamed thing about this policy, unless they can tinker to make it even more abusive.
the ultra-wealthy double their holdings of UK wealth in the last 10 years, and the poorest have to slave for peanuts just to survive. Dear God Almighty, and for THIS we cheered when new-labour swept the Tories from office?
The increase in ‘responsibilities’ to look for work implies that people are not working because they lack individual motivation, when actually for single parents it’s more about lack of childcare and flexible working. And when they do find work, they are more likely to lose their jobs than others. In fact, over half of job seekers allowance claims are now from repeat claimants. How about using the model from the Portland Programme, where those who are skilled are referred to job search provision and those who aren’t are advised not to take the first job available and go for education and training? Isn’t also about time that we recognised contributions to the society outside the labour market, like caring for children?
- direct link -
Dan