• Nigel Danby, CPSA North Humberside (personal capacity) On April 9 the Tories plan to introduce US-style workfare into Britain. The Projoct Work scheme will be tosted out first in Hull and Maidstone.
Project Work replaces the compulsory Restart programme for those unemployed two years or more. Restart lasts two weeks. The new scheme takes six months: three months Job Club, three months work experience. Benefit is lost If you refuse to go on the scheme, drop out or are 'disruptive'. Young people will be hardest hit, not Just because they are more likely to be fit Is stopped. ally penniless. Ished. unemployed. After October 1996, young single people will have no right to DSS hardship payments If their beneThousands of young people are already llving on £35 a week Income Support. The new system wlll leave many literJob Centre workers here are angry at being chosen to carry out the Torles' latest attack on the Jobless. There Is little pretence from management that ProJect Work will help the unemployed. They live in the same fantasy world as the Torles the Jobless are to blame for their situation and deserve to be punCPSA opposes Project Work as an attack on the unemployed and as part of the preparation for the Job Seeker's Allowance. CPSA policy is to boycott anything to do with JSA. On Project Work, the way forward is clear. With the Employment Service permanently understaffed, strike action would wreck Project Work. The fight agalnst workfare, though, cannot be won by Job Centre workers alone. Hull Trades Council Is to launch a campalgn against Project Work, Involving other trades unionists, Labour Party members and the unemployed. Only by unity in action against Project Work can we tell the Torles - and La bour's Gordon Brown -where to stick their workfare schemes. F& PIT GE NUCPS.
Also Unemployed Workers Centres are bullding a lobby of Parliament on the 18th Aprll, when the JSA Is being introduced. There are many local meetings in the coming months.
Get Active! Contact Nigel Danby, TU side office, Crosskill House, Job Centre, Mill Lane, Beverly, East Yorks, HU17 7NH. Please mark your envelope 'in confidence'. Claimants may soon havo to prove their entitlement to bonofits or lose them under a plan being considered by the Tories. In cuts of a quarter to the running costs of the DSS, they will undorgo the samo procoduros faced by asylum seokors at present. Even the Torios are split on the cuts. Petor Lilley in a loakod momo complained about their devastating impact. Kenneth Clarke has spoken publicly of his foars that deep cuts now would cause demonsterations like those seen in Paris.
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