PROJECT Work, the Tories workfare scheme is to be ditched by Labour. Yet under the new government, the unemployed still face the choice of working for peanuts or losing their benefit.
David Blunkett has promised to keep and "improve" all aspects of the delivery of the hated Job Seekers Allowance. The jobless will be increasingly subject to sanctions through its provisions for refusing to take menial, dangerous, low paid work.
Labour's Welfare to Work programme will 'offer' youth education or training, a work trial with a company, or a placement with an environmental task force.
If the young jobless reject these THE POSTON OF LEAD DANCER WIF TRE BOLSHOI BALLET THEN I'LL HAVE TO CANCEL YOUR JSA options they will also suffer benefit cuts. Single parents are likely to face similar treatment.
Labour would scrap the JSA if it were serious about providing opportunities for the unemployed. The JSA limits the hours the jobless can study. The lower rate of JSA awarded to under 25s is barely sufficient for them to buy food, let alone pay for stamps or fares to interviews.
The JSA is designed to get. claimants off the register - not into work. Anybody can be penalised for taking insufficient steps to look for jobs under the legislation. Through 'directions', Employment Service staff can demand their clients do almost anything or have their money stopped.
Many claimants are coerced through the JSA into taking jobs well below any decent 'minimum wage. However Jobcentre vacancies often pay more than those displayed in Employment agencies, which the jobless are increasingly forced to visit in compliance with their Jobseekers agreements. The JSA enables private agencies to profit at the expense of the unemployed and civil servants. PRAN Tony Blair should be creating jobs through improving public services. Yet he is sacking firefighters, nurses and teachers to keep within Tory spending limits.
His ridiculous faith in private enterprise is shown in Welfare to Work. It will provide generous handouts to bosses to take on the young and long term unemployed. The same companies that have made vast profits by laying off thousands will now be paid vast sums to reemploy a few of them at crap rates of pay.
Undermined
Labour's adoption of the Tory economic programme threatens to undermine Welfare to Work. Blair hopes it will take 250,000 youth off the dole, but if he can't offer any more money to colleges soon they will cut their places by the same amount next year.
Labour seeks to pay for its scheme through a windfall tax on private utilities. Although we welcome taking a slice out of the profits for the common good, why shouldn't we have all their profits -which they have amassed over the last few years charging us exorbitant prices and making people redundant.
After more than two decades of mass unemployment, Blair's policies are no solution. Labour should embark on a massive programme of public works where those leaving the dole are paid a decent wage, instead of allowing the fat cats to milk the jobless and welfare state.
The death of Project Work was to a large extent due to workers and the unemployed forcing the bosses to boycott the slave labour scheme. Socialists must struggle against Labour's replacement and the JSA. We need public sector jobs not pri-