Government's New Sanctions Regime for the Unemployed
Workers
in Jobcentres around the country will be trained up in the
government's new sanctions regime over the next few months, ahead of
their implementation on October 22nd. These include much
harsher penalties for claimants who fail to follow directions,
forget to attend meetings or when advisers doubt that claimants are
available for work or are “actively seeking” work.
Penalties
for all of the above are being increased from one or two weeks to an
automatic four weeks for the first offence. Second offences will
carry an additional sanction of 13 weeks. New sanctions will also
apply to people claiming Employment Support Allowance, involving
open-ended suspension from benefits as well as a fixed period
penalty up to a maximum of four weeks.
Leaving
a job or being sacked for “misconduct” (a flexible concept with
some employers) entail an automatic thirteen week sanction under the
new regime.
Capping
the government's plans is a 3 year sanction – three years of
exclusion from benefits – for those who commit three “higher
level” offences; sacked for misconduct, leaving voluntarily,
failure to participate in mandatory work activity, neglecting to
avail of an employment opportunity or refusing / failing to apply
for a job.
With
Slasher Osborne already moving to freeze benefits for two years, and
thereafter to remove the link with inflation, all of these measures
are about saving money, not about encouraging people to look for
work. Staff on the training day I attended expressed indignation
that yet again the government was simply trying to bludgeon people
out of the benefits system.
Much
of the education and training offered is held in low regard by DWP
staff, by claimants and by employers, and many of the jobs being
touted are short term, involve work in difficult conditions and/or
come with piddling salaries that even augmented with tax credits and
housing benefit are hard to live on. Both of those, by the way, have
been recently cut, and housing benefit is to face, apart from
tighter caps, a further 10% cut by 2014.
