A YOUNG MOTHER seeking work in a Humberside village is offered a job - at a pitiful £2.50 an hour. Not wanting to turn it down out of hand, she investigates the cost of local childcare. The minimum is £3 per hour.
But when she turns down the job, because it would cost her 50p per hour to go to work, she is told that her unemployment benefit will be stopped, because she is refusing to work.
She appeals against this brutal jugement: and after due consideration the social security adjudicator rules that her benefit should be stopped. Apparently it is incumbent on a claimant to take any work they are offered, no matter how much it may cost them. This may appear to be one isolated case of an unfortunte victim of the system: but similar outrageous decisions are likely to fall on tens of thousands of desperately poor and unemployed workers this autumn. The jobseekers Allowance (ISA) is the Tories New Danger to the According to the Tories up to 90,000 claimants will lose their working class. It will replace the present unemployment benefit, and is desioneo to save me government money. Assemble at 12 noon Shepherds Bush Rally at 2.30 Labour and Trades Council Hall, 16 Church Street, Acton.
No Tory workfare The Tories estimate up to 90,000 claimants will lose their benefit altogether and another 150,000 will have their benefit reduced in the next year as a result of the JSA. Many claimants will be left penniless by refusing to sign an "agreement" allowing benefit staff the power to force them into slave labour.
From October the JSA will force the unemployed to make a choice between accepting dead end jobs on poverty pay or being robbed or their deners. dy procucine a conscript army of cheap labour the Tories hope to further drive down the wages of all workers and rebuild Britain as a sweatshop economy.
Some will be robbed of benefits for failing to comply with ridiculous directives including that they should cut their hair to become more employable.
Young people and women will bear the brunt of the new benefit regime. All youth will suffer a cut in benefits - up to 60% in some cases. Carers will find it almost impossible to claim as they need to prove they can work 40 hours per week.
Furthermore new claimants will receive non means tested benefit for only six months instead of a year. Adult dependents of claimants will lose their additional benefit altogether.
60,000 more claimants will lose their right to sign on by post Unions fear with its introduction a rise in assaults on their members by desperate claimants whom they have had to turn down for benefit.
Tn (as reacteo wit aseries of strikes against the ]SA, mainly demanding safety screens. So far they have not received enough support trom olner unions ase ute unemployed.
Benefits staff could also be joining the unemployed due to the JSA could Anti-JSA groups can play a be as high as 30% in some areas.
However the range of sponsors for the anti- SA demonstracion in London on the 7th September shows the potential for this campaign.
CPSA activists should fight to escalate the current action and widen its demands. Pressure should be put on the union bureacracy to prevent them ditching the JSA dispute in favour of a planned campaign against privatisation. The blossoming anti-JSA groups can play a decisive role in convincing CPSA members to step up their fight.
The ISA is a threat to all workers. Unions should be backing local campaigns against the JSA.
The need for full employment and a minimum wage should be re. stated. The TUC should be made to respond to the spark the campaigns will give to the organisation of the unemployed.
The unemployed join a long list of claimant groups attacked by the Tories, including single parents through the Child Support Act, disabled people through the scrapping of Invalidity Benefit, and Asylum Seekers through the Asylum and Immigration Bill.
The Tories have felt confident to pursue these attacks because New Labour has turned its back on these groups and failed to offer them any defence.
Blair's team has refused to promise the scrapping of the JSA because they too want to introduce Workfare schemes. Blair's team are adamant that there will be no increase in taxation, no extra public spending and therefore no more money for benefits under a Labour government.
Resolutions to Labour Conference (including one from Jarrow - a )SA pilot area) shows the hostility of many party activists to Workfare. JSA campaigns must not ignore this support: they must fight for Labour Councils to boycott JSA.
The opposition of Hull City Council to 'Project Work', another Tory workfare scheme shows this is not impossible. )SA campaigns can expose an achilles heel of the Tories, their record on unemployment.
By the labour movement linking up with unemployed workers rather than bending over backwards to the bosses, it can build up its own strength to really challenge the bosses. United we can never be derented.
decisive role in convincing CPSA members to step up their fight.