They Are Not Idiots, So What Are They? - TLBs?

We do not have Work for Your Benefit or Workfare schemes in this country ...

"We do not have Work for Your Benefit or Workfare schemes in this country. Workfare is an American term used to describe employment programmes which force all jobseekers to work at a certain point of their claim in order to continue to receive benefit."

DWP here say that we do - JSA MWA AND ESE SCHEMES – FURTHER GUIDANCE FOR DECISION MAKERS ...

"Meaning of Work for your benefit schemes

3 The “Get Britain Working” initiatives, i.e. mandatory work programmes, such as the MWA and ESE schemes fall within the meaning of “Work for your benefit” schemes."

Government Lies In Response To Workfare Petition
 
Nigel

Modern-Day Tattoo

11:33AM GMT 20 Dec 2012

Jobless to be remotely monitored by Government

"Benefit claimants will have their online job applications remotely monitored by the Government to see whether they are making serious attempts to find work.

Mr Duncan Smith said the website will mean Job Centre advisers are able to target their help at jobseekers with problems

From the beginning of next year, the unemployed will have to look for work through the Coalition's new Universal Jobmatch website or potentially risk losing their benefits.
The website will scan the CVs of benefit claimants and automatically match them up with job openings that suit their skills.

It will also allow employers to search for new workers among the unemployed and send messages inviting them to interviews.

However, the activities of benefit claimants can also be tracked using devices known as "cookies", so their Job Centre advisers can know how many searches they have been doing, suggest potential jobs and see whether they are turning down viable opportunities.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said the scheme would "revolutionise" the process of looking for work."

Monday 10 December 2012 UK

Universal Jobmatch: the key questions

"The new Universal Jobmatch website has left many jobseekers worried about the safety of their personal information - and claimants uncertain about whether they are obliged to register."

In 2013 Universal Jobmatch to be mandatory?

20 December 2012 Last updated at 15:13

Iain Duncan Smith's 'tough' site for jobseekers

"Jobseekers in England, Scotland and Wales will have to use a new government website that can automatically tell jobcentres about their applications - or risk losing their benefit payments."

Friday 21 December 2012 

Unemployed to be forced to sign up to Universal Jobmatch website at the centre of security concerns 

"Jobseekers complain that they don’t want to upload sensitive information, such as a CV"

December 20, 2012

Universal Job Search IS to be Made Compulsory

"Jobseekers in England, Scotland and Wales will have to use a new government website that can automatically tell jobcentres about their applications – or risk losing their benefit payments."

Last updated: December 20th, 2012

Internet snooping on job seekers: not just creepy but a shocking waste of money

"The system simply won't work. The tech-savvy will simply switch off the cookies and carry on supplying paper evidence; professionals will struggle to find realistic jobs on the government mandated site; the non-tech-savvy but corrupt will apply for the minimum quota of jobs per week and stay on their sofas (just as they do now); the only people who will suffer will be those genuinely in need of work who are forced to choose between being "internet babes" or being forced to stack shelves or lose benefits, or those completely lacking IT skills, who will not apply for things online, and suffer the consequence of losing benefits or being sent into the work programme."

"The Government shouldn't be making a system designed to distrust citizens and make those who don't check the boxes suffer. If ministers want to check people are applying for jobs, they might consider sorting out the massive flaws in the Job Centre online site first; and then do it by simpler methods – for example, BCCs of emails sent to specific mailboxes would serve the same purpose, but without the creepy 1984 aspect, or insisting that jobs must go through the Government's web portal. Iain Duncan Smith would do well to remember that the state is supposed to be the servant of the people, not the master."

Saturday 22 December 2012 20.45 GMT

Iain Duncan Smith's advisers warn of consequence of benefits crackdown 

"Committee says withdrawing benefits for those judged unwilling to seek work risks driving claimants into 'crime or prostitution'

Iain Duncan Smith's own advisers have urged a softening of his benefits crackdown after hearing evidence that it risked pushing the poorest in society into "crime or prostitution".

Thursday 20 December 2012 16.20 GMT

Unemployed to be forced to use government job website

"Duncan Smith said it would be mandatory for jobseeker's allowance (JSA) claimants to use the site from early in the new year, but no JSA claimant would be required to allow their jobcentre adviser to see any of their activity on the site."

Thursday 20 Dec 2012 10:33 pm

Log on or stop signing on, Iain Duncan Smith says in warning to job seekers

"Benefit claimants will be hauled before job advisers every day if their online activity shows they are not looking for work, Iain Duncan Smith has warned.

Launching the government’s new Jobmatch website, the work and pensions secretary said people would be expected to apply for at least three jobs a week.

He said that signing up to the website, which matches job seekers with employers, would become mandatory for claimants from next year.

Under European law, people have to give permission to allow job centre staff to remotely look at what vacancies they have applied for. But Mr Duncan Smith told Metro doing so would be a ‘trip wire’ which would flag up to a job centre that they may not be looking hard enough for work."

Unemployed to be forced to use Universal Jobmatch

Web-only universal credit 'will leave thousands in crisis'

Empty Threats and Tantrums Are All Iain Duncan Smith Has Left In Universal Jobmatch Fiasco

So many coalition successes so far, but few match the brilliance of the Universal Jobmatch website

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Universal Jobmatch: Seeker home page and actions for advisers (DWP) 

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2 December 2012

Universal Jobmatch (FOIR)

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20 December 2012

Universal Jobmatch re-clarification is required after the statement made by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (FOIR)

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24 December 2012

Information returned from cookies on universal jobmatch (FOIR)

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Cookies - New EU cookie law (e-Privacy Directive) (ICO)

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Nigel

You Are Undone If You Once Forget That The Fruits Of The Earth Belong To Us All, And The Earth Itself To Nobody

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Goodbye welfare, hello workfare

"The social contract between state and individual is being rewritten. Aided by media rhetoric of ‘dole queens’ and ‘benefit scroungers’, workfare is part of a wider narrative arguing that countries can no longer guarantee the welfare of their citizens.

This narrative exposes the real thinking behind workfare: to deter people from claiming welfare and reduce welfare expenditure.

Unemployment is no longer a consequence of competition for jobs in a globalized market, or the failure of governments’ economic policies. Instead, it is the personal failure of the individual to gain employment, regardless of financial crisis or recession.

Yet blaming the individual looks increasingly weak. The International Labour Organization recently issued a report which concluded that the global economy needs to create 600 million jobs in response to the employment crisis.

As workfare decreases paid employment, it also undermines economic recovery.

This creates a paradox: while the concept of welfare is eroded and those who receive it are expected to get less for doing more, companies involved in workfare benefit from higher profits without employing more people.

Tesco has acknowledged that it has profited from approximately 300,000 hours of unpaid work from 1,400 placements in ‘recent months’.

Neoliberal governments and the workfare industry are actively intervening to restructure the labour market by suppressing wages and increasing the pressure on people to accept low-paid work.

The labour market is becoming a workfare market."

Nigel

Working?

Work Programme: the experience of different user groups (video)

Meeting started on Wednesday 19 December at 9.40am. Ended at 11.36am

HoC Work and Pensions Committee Wednesday 19 December 2012: Wilson Room

Witnesses

Mr Dave Simmonds, Director, Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (Inclusion), Ian Mulheirn, Director, Social Market Foundation (SMF), and Professor Roy Sainsbury, Research Director and Professor of Social Policy, University of York

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 835-i

Work Programme: the experience of different user groups (documents)

Visit the Committee's homepage.

13 December 2012

Statement from The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts

Margaret Hodge is "astonished" at the ineffectiveness of the Work Programme

"This first analysis of the Work Programme performance figures shows the extent to which the scheme is failing participants, and particularly the young and the harder-to-help. Against a contractual target of 5.5 per cent, the lowest performing provider did not manage to place a single person in the under 25 category into a job lasting six months. The Work Programme was specifically designed to incentivise providers to assist those furthest from the work place, but the appalling performance for ESA ex-incapacity claimants demonstrates how this experiment simply is not working. Between June 2011 and July 2012, of the some 9,500 ex-incapacity claimants referred to providers, I am astonished that only 20 people have been placed in a job that has lasted three months.

My committee will be taking evidence from the department next week when we shall expect a clear explanation for what action is underway to turn performance around and get the Work Programme working for participants and the taxpayer."

2:43PM GMT 27 Nov 2012

Iain Duncan Smith’s Work Programme 'worse than doing nothing'

"Iain Duncan Smith’s £5 billion scheme for tackling long-term unemployment is worse at helping the jobless find work than doing nothing at all, official results suggest.

Figures for the first year of the Work Programme showed that just two in every 100 people who enrolled in the scheme have been employed for six months or more."

The Work Programme isn’t working (LFF)

Work Programme figures prove Emma Harrison wrong

'Abysmal' A4e awarded another handout

Exclusive: A4e and a £200m back-to-work scandal

A4e CEO Andrew Dutton gives a Year in Review

NAO highlights Work Programme failings

Work Programme charities warn of imminent contract failures

Prime providers starving Work Programme subcontractors of referrals

Charities claim 'better than welfare-to-work industry

A strange kind of success: Work programme pushes ahead despite 3.5% success rate

To what extent are charities involved in the Work Programme?

BIG UK Charities caught feeding at the trough of Government Workfare

The year in management: 2012

Navca calls for review of the Work Programme to stop large contractors 'abusing local charities'

Durham Work Programme

Addaction scheme outdoes the Work Programme by focusing on self-esteem

Work Programme needs to focus on the right skills

Work Programme Increases Hardship and Makes Little Difference to Compliance

MP in blast at job programme

‘Jobs crisis’ wake up call

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December 2012

RR 823 Evaluation of Mandatory Work Activity (DWP)

December 2012

RR 824 Evaluation of Support for the Very Long-Term Unemployed Trailblazer (DWP)

2008

Department for Work and Pensions Research Report No 533 (DWP)

"A comparative review of workfare programmes in the United States, Canada and Australia: Richard Crisp and Del Roy Fletcher, (2008)"

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Disregarded: The True Story of the Failure of the UK's Work Programme

Which providers have left the Work Programme?

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Nigel