29.08.1996

No slave labour, No benefit cuts

JSA

For people signing on, JSA will mean:

• Increased pressure to go on useless training schemes or into low paid dead-end jobs. Most present ‘voluntary’ schemes will become compulsory
• Signing on will be like having a Restart every other week
• Extensive use of Jobseekers Directives - orders to do this or that to find a job can even include changing the way you dress, your hairstyle or your ‘attitude’
• 100% benefit sanctions for failure to comply, replacing the present 40%. If you refuse a job at any level of pay or leave work voluntarily (or just get sacked) you will get no benefit at all for up to six months
• Only six months’ non-means tested benefit for those who have paid full stamp (rather than 12 months as before). This means people with partners in paid work will get nothing and people under 25 will be worse off. Up to 18,000 people in London and the South East will lose a total of £8 million between them.

For waged workers, JSA will mean:

• An increase in national insurance contributions despite the cut in associated benefits
• If you get the sack or walk out of a job, no benefit at all for up to six months
• An increase in low paid part-time and casual jobs, undermining wages and conditions because unemployed workers will have to either take these jobs or lose all benefit
• Massive job losses in the Employment Service/Benefits Agency (up to 30% in some areas)
• An increase in assaults on job centre staff from claimants with nothing left to lose, like the recent stabbings at Bexleyheath job centre

West London is being used as a testing ground for JSA and the Tories are running ‘trials’ in Southall, Ealing, Acton, Chiswick and Shepherds Bush job centres. These trials will help them to introduce the whole system in October.