14.11.1996

Tories and Labour vie to hit jobless

Capitalism’s worldwide squeeze strikes home

As European Union figures showing that poverty is increasing in Britain faster than in any other EU country were released, the government has stepped up its vicious anti-working class drive to force even more workers onto the breadline.

The proportion of the population living below the poverty line (defined by the EU as those receiving less than half the average income) rose from 14.3% to 17.2% between 1983 and 1993. Both Labour and Tory are keen to exacerbate this trend. The Tories have fought any interference by Europe in their attacks on workers. This week they have been in a battle with the European court over a maximum 48-hour working week.

Now Labour’s Gordon Brown warns that British capitalism cannot afford many aspects of the Social Chapter. Part and parcel of European integration on capitalism’s terms is the need to impoverish the working class to safeguard the bosses’ economy.

The Tories latest drive to poverty pay is by extending its ‘workfare’ scheme, aimed at making further cutbacks on welfare spending. Already the Jobseekers Allowance, implemented in October, is not only making unemployed workers’ lives a misery, but hitting benefit agency staff as well, many of whom are having to work seven days a week to process claims in the new system. And the harassment has hardly begun.

The notorious ‘Project Work’ pilot, at present in operation in the mid-Kent and Hull areas, is to come into force in another 29 districts in 1997. The scheme, which forces the long-term unemployed to do ‘useful community work’ for their benefit plus £10 per week, will affect almost one-third of the 350,000 people between 18 and 49 who have been out of work for more than two years. They will be targeted for 13 weeks of intensive job searching, followed by 13 weeks of compulsory work. Those who refuse cooperation will have their benefit cut off.

Employment secretary Gillian Shephard claimed that 25% more people were leaving the unemployment register in the two trial areas than in the rest of the country. She ascribed this increase to the ‘dole cheats’ who claim unemployment benefit but have unofficial work and are therefore unable to put in the required hours. But this increase is achieved on a very low base. In fact only five percent of those directed to ‘Project Work’ would conceivably come into Shephard’s ‘cheats’ category - people who refused to take part and left the unemployment register without finding work. A further 10% found a permanent job on completion of their slave labour stint, but the remaining 85% ended up back on the dole queue.

Forcing the unemployed to work for their benefit can never bring the bosses much in the way of genuinely useful work, of course. Unlike in slave societies, where simple, labour-intensive tasks could be completed successfully using unskilled labour, under modern capitalism a skilled and reasonably motivated workforce is required.

Most employers regard such forced labour as more trouble than it is worth, so the workfare ‘volunteers’ find themselves performing dead-end cleaning and tidying jobs for cash-strapped charities or public employers. However, workfare schemes are useful for propaganda purposes and as a weapon for intimidating workers into accepting jobs at poverty wages.

Predictably Labour’s employment spokesperson, David Blunkett, welcomed the targeting of ‘moonlighters’, while criticising the obvious futility of the scheme as a means of finding permanent work. In one sense he thinks the government is not going far enough in clamping down on the jobless. Labour wants to offer all the unemployed a ‘fairer’ choice between useless ‘training’ schemes and workfare. Such schemes will be entirely voluntary, Blunkett assures us. One drawback though - those who refuse to comply will be denied benefit.

Opposition to the JSA amongst CPSA workers in benefit offices, and unemployed workers, has to date been muted. But much worse is around the corner. Unemployed workers clearly need to organise to bring employed and unemployed together against the attacks on all our living conditions.

Peter Manson