The future of work

If you didn't see the Panorama programme last night, you really should.  It's on iplayer.  It's called Workers on the Breadline and is a real eye-opener for those who think poor people are all idle and feckless.  It looked at working people whose incomes have to be topped up by tax credits.  (The presenter used the word hand-outs a lot, and I objected to that, but perhaps he was just reflecting the language of the right-wing press.)  There were couples where both partners worked (and had no more than three children) but even with WTC were living on the edge; and there was a single man, Jason, working in a zero hours job, earning around £10k a year and getting only £300 a year in WTC.  These were real people, struggling (and in Jason's case drowning) and knowing that it will only get worse.  It was pointed out that working overtime or extra hours isn't the answer because you lose most of your benefit, and for people with children the cost of childcare is impossible.  I haven't seen the BBC do anything this competent and important for years, so it's sad to learn that they're ditching all investigative reporting from Panorama.  There were no politicians waffling; the positions of the two main parties were set out succinctly.  And two authorities offered no solutions, admitting that Britain has become a low-skilled economy and wages are far too low.  While education and skills would seem to be important, one said, if you come out of university and the only work you can get is stacking shelves, that in itself isn't the answer.
There was a disturbing report from Liverpool on Saturday that half the jobs on Merseyside are now temporary agency jobs.  (See this Liverpool Echo piece.)  Agencies like Prime Time get hand-outs from the government to take people on under the Work Programme then pay them so little that, after travel costs, they can come away with £3.72 an hour.
This is a lunatic downward spiral.  Of the families featured on the Panorama programme, one husband and wife both work at Tesco.  But they can't afford to shop there.  All the big supermarkets are losing market share to the discounters.  And that's just one obvious result of how making people suffer frozen wages and benefit cuts impacts on the economy as a whole.  Those at the very top rake in a bigger and bigger share of the nation's money, but they don't spend it down at the supermarket.

What is the answer, then?  Raising the minimum wage is an obvious part of it, despite the protests of business that they can't afford it.  Genuine skills training has to be in there too.  Jason said in the programme that the only way he could see of getting a better job was to have a driving license, but he obviously couldn't afford driving lessons.  Why not set up a free driving school for people in his position?  And anyone who has spent years working in a particular industry and then loses his job should be re-trained.  Another component is to get rid of all the free labour, workfare schemes which allow companies to avoid actually hiring people.
The answer is not the Work Programme.  Both Labour and the Lib Dems have come round to the idea that local councils have to be in control of this.  They couldn't just end the contracts but they could negotiate changes which would give councils the power to commission programmes suited to the needs of their areas, and to use the money currently being wasted on the WP to fund the the schemes many councils are already operating in conjunction with skills training organisations.

The status quo is not an option for much longer.

Financially viable?

Nobody seems to be asking at the moment whether the Work Programme is financially viable for the providers.  The Work and Pensions Committee has taken evidence from "users" and there is a focus on the voluntary sector and small organisations which have found that the programme is not working for them or for anyone else.  Charities which help the homeless are particularly concerned about the specific problems of their clients being ignored; WP providers not even asking whether someone is homeless.  Yet the charity Crisis says that it got two people into work separately from the WP but was contacted by a provider asking for details so that it could claim the outcomes.  Meanwhile the media are focussing on other groups such as the disabled.  I missed the Panorama programme, but I gather that A4e was just one of the providers that didn't come out of it very well.  The response of A4e, as usual, is to point to a success story.  Next Sunday morning at 11.00 Radio 5 Live is looking at self-employment and the WP.
But, as I said, nobody is asking whether the whole thing could founder on the fact that the providers can't afford to run it.  The government insisted from the outset that only the largest and most financially secure companies could be prime providers, and that drove some companies, such as Ingeus, to partner with companies which could guarantee their financial security.  A4e didn't do that.  Nonetheless, the DWP was surprised that some potential primes put in bids that even the government didn't think were viable.  It now appears that the attachment fee income was sufficient to keep the companies ticking over.  Maximus, for instance, said that it had broken even on the first year.  But A4e's accounts to March 2012 showed them in deep trouble, and apparently without the expectation that things would improve much.
So what would happen if a prime decided that it just couldn't afford to go on?  Would the business be transferred to another company - assuming anybody wanted it?  Would they have to pay a penalty for breach of contract?  Is the government busy renegotiating terms in order to save the skins of these companies?  If that happens, I suspect it will be slipped through without publicity.

Someone put a petition on the government's e-petition website asking for the abolition of "work for your benefit/workfare schemes in the UK".  The rest of it was eminently sensible, but unfortunately the DWP was able to seize on the description and deny that there was any such thing as workfare in this country (it's American) and equally no such thing as "work for your benefit" - it's all about support.  How lucky that they changed the title of Labour's pilot scheme from "Work for your Benefit" to "Mandatory Work Activity".  

Who benefits?

The focus is on sickness and disability benefits today, as Channel 4 and the BBC both screen programmes on the assessment system (Channel 4 at 8.00 and Panorama on BBC at 8.30).  Panorama has questioned the "government appointed adviser on testing welfare claimants", Prof Malcolm Harrington.  According to a preview in the Telegraph, the professor admits that there are flaws in the system.  The programme highlights a particular case, a man who suffered from heart failure and "died 39 days after being declared fit for work". However, the familiar loathing of anyone on benefits is on show in a particularly nasty way in the Express this morning.  "New war on sick benefits" it shrieks.  The language in this article would make a fine case study in right-wing propaganda.  Note the verbs.  Taxpayers "shelled out"; families are "mired" in dependency; claimants are "raking in" money.  And the statistics are absurd.  But they have a quote from the disgusting Taxpayers' Alliance, so that must validate it.

No doubt they would approve of the plan which is about to be rolled out across the country, according to the Guardian; to make people who have been unemployed for 3 years do "community work" for 6 months. The paper has the views of the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion, which says that it could result in 1.06 million people being forced onto the scheme because the Work Programme will not work.  The article also says that the decision in the Jamie Wilson case is expected before 10 August.  He's the chap who took the DWP to court along with Cait Reilly.

The Guardian also has revelations about how donors to the Tory party are making millions from welfare companies.  A firm called Sovereign Capital owns ESG which has £73m worth of government contracts, including for the WP in the Midlands.  The article details all the donations and connections.  There's a rather half-hearted quote from Labour's Liam Byrne.  He's in a difficult position, of course.  David Blunkett and A4e?

That Panorama Programme

Last night's Panorama programme about unemployment was, on the whole, fair. But there was one glaring omission.

First, we were told that a "revolution" is coming in getting people back to work, and the vox pops showed the prevailing attitudes. But then we were introduced to real people who actually did want to work. And we were shown a number of different schemes to train people for jobs, all of them locally run and funded. What about New Deal and Flexible New Deal, I wondered. FND has been run in North Wales by Serco and BCTV, so where were they? One young man, Adam, had been on something only identified as a "course". Was this FND? He had secured a work placement for himself, at Morrison's. He came away from that without a job, but was later offered 18 hours a week with the retailer. He took it. Another lad, Chris, had been sanctioned for refusing to apply for a particular job and was without his benefits for 6 months. His attitude is not that uncommon. While Chris Grayling, along with most people, believe that the unemployed have no right to be choosy, it's usually about maintaining some sort of control over your life.

The local MP, Chris Ruane, talked about the dangers of stigmatising the unemployed. He pointed out that 50% of the jobs in his constituency are in the public sector, and many of those jobs are going. The boss of Rehab, one of the new Work Programme contractors in the area, was cautious about the prospects of getting the long-term jobless back into work.

Why do these programmes shy away from naming the private contractors these days? Grayling is confident that the WP will succeed because it only pays out for sustainable jobs. (That wouldn't include Adam and his 18 hours a week.) It's as if the terrible record of the last 5 years is to be forgotten; the "revolution" will be successful.

Watch it if you must

A new series of The Fairy Jobmother begins on Channel 4 on Tuesday 7 June. I won't be watching. I wouldn't waste a minute of my life on it. If you do, dear reader, do post your thoughts.

It's worth remembering how this particular piece of what's been termed "poverty porn" came about. Channel 4 screened Benefit Busters, three programmes which took a serious look at the issues surrounding the welfare-to-work industry. The first two were filmed in A4e offices. Who now remembers the scenes in Hull, of clients being insulted and given nothing useful to do, of the man who got a job only to have it come to an end after a week? No, it was the first programme, which saw Hayley Taylor haranguing single mothers in Doncaster, which impressed producers. Ms Taylor was a character. And so she became a star, leaving A4e for a whole new career, here and in the US.

So will she fix up more hopeless cases with jobs which they certainly wouldn't have got if the cameras weren't there? Will you be shown idle, feckless people as if they were typical of the unemployed? Probably.

The BBC Panorama programme tonight (Monday 6 June) ought to be more informative: "With the government promising a welfare revolution, getting people off benefits and into work, Panorama visits the seaside resort of Rhyl in North Wales. In some parts of the town, nearly half of the adult population are on benefits. The programme follows the real life stories of some of the unemployed there, and asks the government whether this battle can really be won." But will there be any mention of the New Deal and FND providers who have dealt with these people in the past? Probably not.

The Panorama Programme

The BBC having sorted out iplayer, I've now watched last night's programme about NEETs.

Back in 2007 four unemployed young men in Swindon, where there were plenty of jobs, were challenged to get work. This was a follow-up to see what has happened to them in the last three years. Digby Jones, former head of the CBI, had only a small role in the programme, but there were questions which could have been asked of him. We were told that he is "passionate about improving employment skills". But there was no mention of the fact that businesses have long since ceased to train their own employees. They decided a couple of decades ago that they would only take on people, ready qualified and experienced, off the shelf; the tax-payer has had to pick up the bill for training. Of the 4 young men, 2 got work through a work placement while on New Deal. Both are low-paid, low skills jobs; but no one would argue that this isn't a good outcome for them. Both had been employed in other jobs since 2007, but one lost his job when the company he worked for went out of business in the crash; the other resigned after 7 months. They are now seen as New Deal successes and are still in work.

The other two are still out of work. Tim had a job in a juice bar but lost it after 3 months for bad time-keeping. Ben got agency work at BMW and loved it, but was a casualty of the recession. He also had the prospect of a job through a New Deal placement, as a night porter in a hotel, but turned it down. The job went to another New Deal client after a work placement. At the end of the programme Ben was being interviewed by an FE college for an apprenticeship. Tim is doing a 3-month voluntary course to improve his employability. Both talked about the demoralisation of being unemployed. Jones had no sympathy. They were eminently employable, he said, telling them to get their hair cut, and trying to fire them up by humiliating them. Both Ben's parents and Jones said they were in favour of Workfare - force NEETs on to training or similar schemes or they forfeit their benefits. The punch line to the programme was the statement that each NEET will cost the tax-payer over £100k.

How you react to this programme will depend on your personal experience. What it highlighted for me was the lack of real skills training for young people. Schools have not engaged with vocational training enough, and the government has been concerned with getting 50% of kids to go to university and has ignored the rest.

The China strategy

There's an interesting article in the English online edition of the China People's Daily which asks whether it's too late for foreign companies wanting to enter the Chinese market. It's a massive market with 1.3 billion potential customers; but as China invests in, and develops, its own private sector, is there less scope for outsiders? The answer is yes-and-no; but "Roy Newey, group board director of A4e, a services business which helps people who are unemployed get back into work, is someone not daunted by the prospect of entering China. The Sheffield, UK-based operation is already in 11 international markets and is hoping to set up an operation in the country soon. "I have been on a China-British Business Council trade mission recently and I didn't get any sense among those on that trip that there was any lack of enthusiasm for doing business in China," he said. Newey believes the company provides the sort of specialized service for which there is a gap in the market. "We help people who are out of work get back into jobs and we believe we could play a role in China," he said."

I didn't see the Panorama programme last night, but will, I hope, watch it later today. However, it certainly angered someone who left a comment. I can't accept the comment because it's abusive, but he calls it "a thinly-disguised attempt to promote the workfare idea". It "ignores vast issues such as the likes of A4e" and there is no discussion of capitalism.

PS. The programme is listed on iplayer, but what is playing is actually an earlier programme on immigration. Is this another BBC foul-up?

A good time to bash the unemployed

The BBC is to broadcast a Panorama programme about the young unemployed, tomorrow 26 April at 8.30 pm. It returns to a programme they filmed in 2007 about four young unemployed people in Swindon. "The programme first met them in 2007 and set them real-life Apprentice-style work challenges, with dramatic results. Since then the recession has struck, and hit Swindon - and their prospects - hard. How have they responded?" (BBC website) Today's Times gives us a taste of what is in this programme. "The former government minister Lord Jones has suggested that unemployed young people who refuse to look for a job should be “starved back to work” rather than continue to claim thousands of pounds in benefits." It's predictable stuff. "One of the pair, who were from middle-class families, told Jones that he and his girlfriend were paid about £12,000 a year in jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit, and there was no reason for them to look for work. This is equivalent to a gross income of £15,000-£16,000." Shocking. And Jones' conclusion? "He said that while looking for a job, claimants should carry out community work — such as cleaning lavatories or removing graffiti — or study at college. While he did not support forced starvation, he believed anyone who refused three offers of jobs should lose the dole and be put in hostels and given “subsistence rations” of food and water. Jones said: “I’d say to them, ‘Sorry, mate, you have just surrendered your choices in life’.”"

The comments on the article are equally predictable. But the unemployed will be asking the obvious question. Where do those job offers come from? As we've pointed out before, you are not handed a job, you have to go out and ask for it. And no government, whatever the rhetoric, is going to create jobs specifically for the unemployed; and no government (one sincerely hopes) is going to change the law to remove the concept of the personal allowance, the minimum someone needs to live on.

It's a good time for the right-wing press to carry articles like this. It's less obvious why the BBC should choose an election campaign to run programmes like this. - hard. How have they responded?s. Since then the recession has struck, and hit Swindon - and their prospects - hard. How have they responded?