<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: workfare</title></head><body> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Reuters Company News<br> FEATURE-Firms look to welfare rolls as labor shortage looms<br> <br> By Karen Jacobs<br> <br> ATLANTA, June 11 (Reuters) - Emory Bent says a job helped turn his life around.<br> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Bent, 37, had been homeless, jobless and struggling with drugs before getting a job at Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:HD - News) in New York about three years ago. Last month, the former welfare recipient graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Bent now says he wants to become a counselor to help others.<br> </blockquote> <div>snip</div> <div><br></div> <div><a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/uk-j14.shtml"><tt >http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/uk-j14.shtml</tt></a></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">Britain: Labour government targets single parents and disabled for</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">workfare<br> By Julie Hyland</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">14 June 2002</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2"><br></font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">Britain’s Labour government this week announced an intensification of its<br> efforts to dismantle welfare provision. In typical “third way” rhetoric,<br> renewed efforts to force the unemployed into low-paid work were presented<br> as a progressive measure aimed at liberating the jobless.<br> In a highly-trailed speech on June 10, Prime Minister Tony Blair<br> announced an expansion of the “welfare to work” New Deal scheme for lone</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">parents and the disabled as part of Labour’s efforts to create a new<br> “contract” between the citizen and society.<br> Opening a new Jobcentre Plus office in Streatham, London, Blair claimed<br> his government was extending a “helping hand” to those who would<br> otherwise be “written off” by the welfare system. He spoke of the scandal<br> of 2.7 million people being “left adrift” on incapacity benefit, and of<br> the 1.6 million lone parents desperate to find a “route into work”.<br> The Jobcentre Plus scheme was a symbol of Labour’s approach to welfare,<br> he claimed. In place of the tatty benefit offices that had operated under<br> the Conservatives—testament to its “take your money and get out of our<br> sight” approach to the unemployed—Labour’s vision was of an “active<br> welfare state”, which “reflects all our responsibilities: the<br> responsibility we have to engage actively with the jobless to provide<br> them with opportunities; their responsibility to engage actively with us<br> and take those opportunities.”<br> Accordingly the unemployed were to be “treated as customers and a<br> potential employee” in nicely decorated, open plan offices with a team of<br> advisers on hand to help them find the right job and, where necessary,<br> provide aids such as grants for bus fares to interviews.<br> Behind the gleaming facade of made-over benefit offices, however,<br> draconian methods are to be employed to drive people off the welfare<br> rolls. The unemployed must undertake to “come and discuss with personal<br> advisers how they can get back to work”, with financial penalties</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">incurred for those who fail to take up employment, Blair said.</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">Such practices are already used against the majority of unemployed</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">people. But the Jobcentre Plus, currently operational in 56 offices, are<br> to be “rolled out” across the country, with a further 225 offices<br> operational by next March, in order to target more vulnerable sectors,<br> such as lone parents and the disabled.<br> Once again Blair sought to obscure the vicious character of the new<br> measures by claiming they would help empower those of working age “with<br> particular barriers to work”. Help with childcare and skills training<br> would be extended for lone parents to get them back into the labour<br> market, whilst those on disability benefits would be monitored more<br> closely to ensure they were not just “written off, left to drift into<br> long-term incapacity and unemployment”.<br> Labour’s strategy was one of “transforming welfare” he insisted, and<br> ending poverty by helping the poor “help themselves”. This would “not<br> only lift people out of poverty”, but “transform their horizons,<br> aspirations and hopes as well ... giving them chance to save and build up<br> a nest egg.<br> “Only in this way will we drive up social mobility, the great force for<br> equality in dynamic market economies”, Blair stressed.<br> A number of specific training schemes were to be set up, under the</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">general heading “Ambition.”<br> The prime minister also announced the extension of the government’s<br> “stakeholder” programmes, in which people are induced to privately fund<br> retirement and educational provision through financial<br> incentives/penalties. Under the Child Trust Fund, families would be<br> encouraged to make independent provision for their children’s education<br> or training—with the government providing an “endowment” for each baby,<br> to be matched by the family, thus cementing Labour’s grand scheme of<br> “mutual responsibility” between the state and individual.<br> Blair’s hopes that his extension of workfare and private insurance and<br> education schemes would endear him to big business were in vain. His<br> announcement was treated with derision by much of the press, who<br> complained that Labour’s measures were simply a regurgitation of<br> proposals or policies already floated or implemented. The Conservative<br> press in particular complained that they had been misled in advance of<br> the speech to believe the prime minister would announce a crack down on<br> “skivers” and the “sick note” culture. Their enthusiasm for such an<br> approach had been misplaced, as the prime minister appeared to be taking<br> a somewhat “softer” line, they railed.<br> Such claims would be ludicrous if they did not involve the living<br> standards of millions of people. Unlike their Tory predecessors, Labour<br> has been able to make significant steps forward in the introduction of<br> workfare measures—something Blair boasted of in his speech. Like the<br> Conservatives, Labour argues that welfare provision is “part of the<br> problem, not the solution”, claiming that it has created a “dependency<br> culture” that is responsible for poverty.<br> All this is a means of diverting attention from the fact that it is the<br> gutting of workers living standards to fuel the wealth bonanza enjoyed by<br> the rich that is responsible for the growing levels of social inequality.<br> Labour has more reason than its predecessors do to repeat such spurious<br> claims, given that its policies have only reinforced class divisions.<br> Behind Blair’s mealy-mouthed platitudes about helping the poor, his<br> government has effectively overturned the concept of welfare provision as<br> a universal right, available to all in need. In accordance with one of<br> Blair’s favourite mantras, “No rights without responsibilities”, obeying<br> government dictates determines access to social provision.<br> Labour’s workfare policies are aimed at providing a plentiful supply of<br> cheap labour to big business, whilst running down public spending.<br> Through measures such as the “working families tax credit”, the<br> unemployed are forced into jobs on minimum rates of pay, creating a lower<br> benchmark for wages.<br> Despite Labour’s best efforts, however, the Tories and sections of<br> business still complain that the government has not gone far enough, and</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">that its “job creation” programmes constitute an unnecessary financial<br> drain on taxes. The New Deal scheme, in which employees are subsidised<br> for taking on 18-24 year olds, was the source of particular criticism in<br> the wake of a recent National Audit Office report. Whilst 339,000 18 to<br> 24-year-olds who had taken part in the programme had found jobs by<br> October 2001, during the scheme’s first two years, the NAO said that no<br> more than 20,000 of these and possibly as few as 8,000 would not have<br> found work anyway, without the scheme existing.<br> The programme was an “expensive flop”, opponents complained, as it<br> amounted to a cost to the treasury of at least Ł5,000 each year per job<br> created. Others said that any economic downturn would immediately cause<br> the scheme to run into significant problems.<br> While the Tory right is in agreement with the overall thrust of Labour’s<br> measures, it considers the government’s efforts at artificial job<br> creation and guarantees of a minimum level of subsistence to run contrary<br> to its own free market mantra. They insist that Labour should really<br> force people to “help themselves”, by pulling the welfare safety net away<br> entirely. Natural wage levels would then be determined by the market,<br> rather than be kept artificially high by state intervention, and those</font></tt></div> <div><tt><font size="+2">who can work would have to take a job or starve.<br> It was left to former Labour social security minister, Frank Field, to<br> best articulate the ideological standpoint of the Tory right in the June<br> 11 edition of the arch-Conservative Telegraph newspaper. Field was sacked<br> by Blair in 1998 for his opposition to the government’s emphasis on<br> means-tested benefit, i.e. targeting benefits only on the very poor.<br> Rather than Field’s position being motivated by concerns for social<br> equality, his article made clear that his concern was that such measures<br> undermined Labour’s emphasis on “self-help”.<br> “A party that won the 1997 election partly on the basis of its<br> determination to destroy welfare dependency is extending that dependency<br> beyond what anyone could have seriously imagined,” he wrote, and ripping<br> out the “mainspring of a free society—the drive to improve one’s own lot<br> and that of one’s family.”<br> By replacing social security benefits with a series of tax credits,<br> Labour was ensuring that “the living standards of the vast majority of<br> working families with children would be determined by the levels of tax<br> credits introduced by the Government”, creating “a form of permanent<br> serfdom”.<br> The lot of the very poor had improved, Field claimed, but at great cost.<br> Whereas early welfare had been determined by a person’s contribution<br> record, so that, “Working, saving and being honest were rewarded”, now<br> there was no such incentive, he complained.<br> See Also:<br> Britain: Labour’s employment initiatives cut welfare rolls and depress<br> wage rates<br> [15 July 2000]<br> <br> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]<br> </font></tt></div> <div><br></div> <x-sigsep><pre>-- </pre></x-sigsep> <div>Marta Russell<br> Los Angeles, CA<br> http://www.disweb.org</div> </body> </html>