The government has been hard at it coming up with new ideas to punish those who are unemployed and on benefit. The latest such idea involves forcing people to work for nothing or starve. This is now being legally challenged as it breaks laws against bonded labour i.e. slavery!
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When it comes to the question of unemployment the Tories
(and it must be said the right wing of Labour also) like to explain this tricky
problem away by blaming it all on “workshy” elements who simply won’t get a
job. In this Tory fantasy, people simply sit around claiming benefits rather
than looking for work until they become long-term unemployed. The truth, of
course, is very different. The
recent sharp rise in unemployment is entirely down to the laying off of those
in work combined with the slump in available jobs. The cutting of public sector
jobs in particular has had a particularly harsh effect in the so-called
unemployment hotspots where traditional industries have long gone with nothing
taking its place. Many sections of society – the young, the middle-aged and
women – have been especially hard hit by the rise in unemployment. No wonder
some people have simply given up the fight for work – they are offered nothing
or next to nothing, month after month after month.
What real help that did exist to help people find work has
been undermined by the cuts in job centres and other support services,
especially those aimed at young people. All the government can now come up with
are schemes to “force” people into anything going. This is all variations on the
infamous Workfare method that right wing governments have been trying to bring
in for decades. The latest such scheme now being piloted involves forcing
selected people on benefit to work for nothing. The scheme, now being launched by the Department for (no)
Work and (no) Pensions (DWP) is called Mandatory Work Activity (MWA.) The
government says it is about forcing people who have forgotten how to work into
schemes that will give them that experience once again. They have to do that work or starve. This
is a project in the 19th century tradition of the old Work Houses.
A Sunday Times report (8/1/12) tries to justify the scheme
by saying many of those told to do the work are actually working already in the
so-called Grey Economy and simply then disappear. However, the Grey Economy
exists not because workers want to work in it but because cheapskate bosses
just want to avoid paying their share of taxes, N.I. etc. The report then goes on to reveal
something of the truth about this scheme.
According to the Sunday Times: ‘ Joanne Long, a spokeswoman
for the lobby group Boycott Workfare said “ The work programme is a cash gift
from the government to businesses, which can replace employees with a constant
free labour source mandated to work by the job centre at risk of destitution.”
Bizarrely, it seems the MWA scheme may not only be putting
people out of work since firms get free labour instead, it may also be
hindering those who are already taking action to get new work. The Sunday Times
article raises the case of a graduate who had been working unpaid at a museum
to gain experience to get work at a later stage in that sector. She was instead
forced to work for two weeks without pay at Poundland – what benefit was this?
The ultimate irony is that the scheme is being challenged in
court by lawyers who are saying that MWA may contravene European and UK law.
Not least they are saying that the scheme contravenes laws prohibiting
compulsory or forced labour, also known as bonded labour. In
other words, The Tories have nationalised slavery.
The
labour movement needs to mount a robust campaign against these 19th
Century style attacks on the unemployed. They need support to help them get
real work not punishments and penalties, treating them like criminals. Above
all, they need real jobs with real pay, that raises the question of fighting
for socialist policies that will create the jobs necessary to defeat
unemployment and solve the problems of society. For example, there is a
shortage of decent new homes and a proper programme of repair and upgrading
of existing ones. Yet the workers who could do the job, or be trained for it,
are out of work. This is the classic irony of capitalism in crisis. Capitalism
has failed – all it wants to do is create more profits at our expense. A socialist plan of production based
around the nationalisation of the monopolies and banks would release the
resources to tackle all the problems of society once and for all. All the
government – and the system they defend – can offer is the reverse. It is time
to fight back.
