Harder times for the unemployed (1996)

From the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing governments can do to solve the capitalist problem of unemployment. Indeed, there is little talk these days about 'solving' it, the emphasis is simply on what to do with the 'culprits'

From October Unemployment Benefit—the Dole—will be known as the “Job Seekers Allowance”. Along with this will come targeting agreements, directives, responsibilities, job plans, prescribed programmes, reviews and flexibility. Buried under the tarnished gloss of this jargon lie compulsion, regimentation, sanctions and hardship for those who challenge the myth of exploitation by an employer as a “choice”. It means that the Tory government have finally recognised that the exercise of continually massaging the jobless figures is a worn-out facade and that the use of coercion is the only alternative in an effort to reduce the cost of maintaining the jobless white at the same time this will provide an opportunity for employers to take full advantage of short-term orders and low stocks for which cheap casual labour is ideally suited.

Austerity measures

The JSA should be viewed in the context of a long list of austerity measures affecting Social Security payments over many years. With the cost of Social Security a burden on the capitalist class all changes have been implemented with a view to reducing this financial bill. But paradoxically government intentions have not been matched by the reality. For despite the efforts to deter claimants by increasing the complexity and size of the benefit forms, along with tougher criteria on claimants' entitlement, the working class under the pressure of circumstances have in increasing numbers applied resourcefulness to find loopholes in the DSS minefield. Hence, the total bill for running the DSS has escalated to £93 billion. Whilst actual payments have decreased in relative value the total number of claimants has actually increased—along with fraud and the take-up rate for different benefits. Yet fortunately for the capitalists the take-up rate still falls far short of that estimated, resulting in a surplus of £3.2 billion returned to the Treasury in 1995/96, the difference between expected claimants and actual payments.

The government hope that the full enforcement of the sanctions contained within the JSA will make substantial savings and reductions in the unemployment register. Firstly by deterring registration, and secondly by placing the onus of finding a job on the individual claimant irrespective of the state of the labour market. By ignoring the fact that labour market demand is virtually stagnant and that the unemployed reserve are on hold until more production becomes profitable, it is a short step to asserting that the non-existent jobs are really there and that it only needs the unemployed to become “Jobseekers” to winkle them out or even to create them.

Workers who disagree with their Job Agreement (which is in fact a contractual obligation backed up by penalty reductions in benefit if not carried out) and its clauses of Job Plan, Jobseekers Directives, Review Procedure, regular attendance at Job Centres for “active signing” and are unable to prove they are “actively seeking work”, can expect a withdrawal of benefit for 1 to 26 weeks, or at least be faced with the misery of applying for hardship payments for their dependants only.

When these measures are combined with the changes that have already taken place in limiting Unemployment Benefit, Housing Benefit and Mortgage Interest payments and the action taken to align accommodation with the circumstances of unemployment through a notional “Relevant Rent” —take your choice, bedsit or doorway—they amount to increasing oppression and frustration for the unemployed.

Job Centre chaos

It is not only the claimants who are going to suffer the consequences of implementing the sanctions contained in the JSA. On the other side of the counters are another group of workers who have to deal with the short fuses generated by capitalism in a panic. On them falls the burden of being the paid enforcers when it comes to applying the sanctions. To help them in their endeavours they will be computer-linked with other Job Centres nation-wide and with the local labour Market System so they can ensure claimants are targeted and doing the rounds and that the Job Centres are also expected to reach the target demanded by Peter Lilley of 25 percent efficiency savings over the next three years. On top of this they will have received training in counselling skills to persuade claimants that the various options (which they have no choice on), contained within their Job Plan—retraining, employment placement; voluntary-work; signing up with employment agencies etc. are all in the claimants’ short-term interests, provided that is that they are happy to ignore the low wages, part-time and casual one-hour contracts and adverse working conditions which are not even acceptable to the low standards of the Health and Safety Executive. In order to protect Job Centre staff from the expected fallout from the outraged claimants who have sussed they have been classified as forced labour, the staff will be enclosed in booths protected by hardened shatterproof Perspex with security guards patrolling the floor.

Such a volatile situation with workers blaming each other instead of the system of wage slavery can only be expected from capitalism. Indeed as long as capitalism lasts the workers’ relative misery', destitution and deprivation will continue to fluctuate with the sway of boom and crisis.

This continuing uncertainty will find no relief by supporting the Labour Party. They have made it quite clear they agree with Peter Lilley that some form of sanctions are necessary for the unemployed. Their total agreement with letting the market set its own level of compulsion is sufficient testimony to the fact that they will end up doing much the same as the Tory ratbags are now applying. In any event it is not which party is in government but the compulsion built-in to the wages system that is detrimental to human relationships and the obstacle to our social well-being.

Gravedigger