05.09.1996
No slave labour
From this October the Tories’ Jobseekers Allowance will become law. This will mean a massive assault on welfare benefits and the living standards of the working class in general - it must be fought by the entire labour movement
The Tories are out to save money, or so they say. The JSA is meant to save the government £175 million over the next two years. As always though, these ‘savings’ will be at our expense. First they inflict mass unemployment and slave-wages upon us. Then they want to hack away at the poverty-level benefits we are forced to live on. Soon we will be forced to work for our benefits, which will please the bosses no end.
The living standards and working conditions of the working class are miserable enough now. When the JSA gets into full swing, life will rapidly become a nightmare for large sections of the working class - as every day becomes an endurance test, with more and more petty and spiteful regulations to contend with, and battle against.
For workers signing on, the JSA will represent harassment and intimidation. The facade of ‘choice’ will quickly vanish, as most of the present ‘voluntary’ schemes will be made compulsory. We will have to waste our time, our lives, on useless (everybody knows it) training schemes. But at least the Tories can keep on gerrymandering the unemployment figures and continue feeding the tabloid and conservative press with lies about the economic ‘upturn’.
If you refuse a job at any level of pay or leave work voluntarily (or even just get sacked) you will get no benefit at all for up to six months - starvation days lie ahead. There will be 100% benefit sanctions for failure to comply to the new ‘beefed up’ jobseekers directives, replacing the current 40% penalty. Seeing how these directives have the authority to instruct you to change your hairstyle or even get a new ‘attitude’, there could be very long queues outside the soup kitchens after October.
Things will not be much better for those ‘lucky’ enough to have a job. If you get the sack - a very likely possibility these days, as the bosses get increasingly cocky - you will be deprived of benefit for six months. There will be a dramatic increase in low-paid part-time and casual jobs, which will ultimately undermine wages and conditions for all workers - unemployed workers will have to either take these jobs or lose all benefit. A no-win situation for all of us, thanks to the JSA.
Naturally, the JSA will also mean job losses in the employment service and benefits agencies itself. This could be up to 30% in some areas. Those staff that remain will have to face the understandable anger of claimants, as desperation creeps in. This will almost certainly lead to increased assaults on staff. Benefit workers have taken a lead in organising against the JSA. Initial trials in parts of the country have already seen increased workload and deteriorating conditions. Workers are taking a stand against pressure to police their own class. One thing you can guarantee is that signing on, or working in a job centre, will not be a pleasant experience.
If the JSA is implemented, it would mark a significant victory for the bosses and the Tories. We would be a slave class - ‘officially’. Workers will become more atomised and more alienated. The trade unions will be weakened yet again. Many in our class will be driven into crime and destitution.
We cannot allow this to happen - nor can we allow the Labour Party to get off the hook. Tony Blair and company, if in power, will produce their own version of the JSA. The union bureaucrats will prove to be useless, if not treacherous.
We need to by-pass the Labour Party and go beyond the union barons (looking forward as they are to cucumber sandwiches and Italian Chardon-nay at Number 10) by organising ourselves. We must unite all those under threat from the JSA and give them a political voice.
This task must also be emphasised to leading class militants and revolutionaries who have already taken a lead in organising a fightback. Many revolutionaries in the Socialist Labour Party have made this the main focus of their work in the branches. This has certainly had a positive mobilising effect both for the campaign and the SLP.
Nevertheless we should not lose sight of the fact that to make any campaign victories permanent the working class needs to forge political organisation that can put it at the head of society.
That organisation must therefore be democratic, internationalist and revolutionary. This must be the main task for all revolutionaries today.
The JSA can be defeated, if we take ourselves seriously.
Paul Greenaway