03.10.1996

Smash the JSA

On Monday October 7 the Tories’ Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) will become a reality. From that date it will replace unemployment benefit and income support, and will be backed up by an array of sanctions and draconian conditions which represent a further assault on the living conditions of those without work.

The JSA is a licence for the government to harass the unemployed and drive down wages of those in work, in an attempt to slash public expenditure.

For those signing on, the JSA will mean:

• Interrogation every fortnight, being forced to provide documentary evidence of efforts to find work.
• Widespread use of Jobseekers Directions, where claimants will be ordered to change their dress, hair and even ‘attitude’, go on worthless training schemes, or even accept a job that pays less than benefit received (ie, less than £1 per hour).
• Jobseekers Directions must be obeyed and will be backed up by ‘sanctions’. Any failure to comply with the regulations in the previous two points will be enforced by the removal of 100% of benefits received. Refusal of a job at any level of pay, leaving a job ‘voluntarily’ or being sacked means no benefit for six months.

Inevitably this will also have devastating consequences for those in work:

• The threat of losing a job will be a much more powerful weapon in the bosses’ hands.
• Current wages and conditions will be undermined, with an increase in low paid part-time and casual jobs, as the unemployed will be forced to take those jobs, whatever the pay (or lose all their benefit).
• Increase in national insurance contributions, despite the cut in associated benefits.
• Thousands of job losses in the Employment Service (ES) and the Benefits Agency (BA) and increased stress and assaults on job centre staff from claimants with nothing left to lose.

Clearly all workers must support the campaign against the JSA. What is needed is a strategy based on united action. The fight is not with BA workers, many of whom are low paid and will be intimidated and under tremendous pressure from their managers to implement the JSA. They have already taken three days of strike action over inadequate health and safety provisions linked with the introduction of the JSA. This must be built on. What is desperately needed now is for these workers in the job centres to impose a campaign of non-cooperation with the JSA. This has to be done with or without the national leadership of their union, the CPSA. Local CPSA branches must pass resolutions and implement such a campaign, with a commitment to defend any worker victimised by management. Yes, place demands on the national ‘leadership’, but do not rely on them. In the end it is the organisation, strength and determination of rank and file trade union members that will result in successful opposition to JSA.

The other immediate task is to organise the unemployed. Management admits it is already well behind with their plans to introduce the JSA, so we need to use this chaos and confusion to our advantage by prolonging this disruption with the aim of burying the JSA.

When intimidation and ‘sanctions’ are taken against individual claimants we have to be prepared to defend them by organising demonstrations and occupations of job centres, preferably with the support of trade union members inside.

To defeat the JSA we need unity between the employed and the unemployed. A widespread campaign of non-implementation and non-cooperation, uniting claimants and benefits workers, could destroy the JSA and mark an important victory for the working class.

Nick Clarke