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Unemployed to be forced to turn up to jobcentres for 35 hours a week

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    Sun Tzu.Sun Tzu. Posts: 19,064
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    Its not going to happen because just look at the maths, its basically unworkable. You can't have thousands of people into one job centre.
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    [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 16,986
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    Sun Tzu. wrote: »
    Its not going to happen because just look at the maths, its basically unworkable. You can't have thousands of people into one job centre.

    Maybe they'll be divided into shifts to ease congestion. :D
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    mintbromintbro Posts: 6,733
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    These toffs want to live in the real world

    I had to apply for a crisis loan last year to feed myself, informed them I only had a box of muesli left, they then refused to give me anything as this was enough to feed me for a week
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    RhumbatuggerRhumbatugger Posts: 85,713
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    Maybe they'll be divided into shifts to ease congestion. :D

    They'll be forced to wait outside in herds, waiting for their time to come in.
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    [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 16,986
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    mintbro wrote: »
    These toffs want to live in the real world

    I had to apply for a crisis loan last year to feed myself, informed them I only had a box of muesli left, they then refused to give me anything as this was enough to feed me for a week

    I should think that would be enough for 6 weeks unless you are eating to excess. :D
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    stud u likestud u like Posts: 42,100
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    mintbro wrote: »
    These toffs want to live in the real world

    I had to apply for a crisis loan last year to feed myself, informed them I only had a box of muesli left, they then refused to give me anything as this was enough to feed me for a week

    I know some one who spends crisis loans on prostitutes.
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    NX-74205NX-74205 Posts: 4,691
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    Is there enough room in these job centres to allow thousands of people to sit there doing nothing for 35 hours a week? I ask because my local job centre is nowhere near big enough to accommodate large groups of people on a daily basis.

    Then there's the cost, I don't know exactly what JSA is (something like £70 isn't it?) but if I were out of work, couldn't afford to run a car and had to attend this it would cost me £30 per week in travel alone, then when you factor in lunch costs of say £5 a day that's £55 per week. So how do they expect people to live on the £15 per week that's left?
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    LockesLockes Posts: 6,568
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    I know some one who spends crisis loans on prostitutes.

    really?, because they don't exist anymore
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    [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 68,508
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    Maybe they will create new centres for these activities to take place in, rather than using existing job centres. The article isn't really clear on that point.
    True. It mentions 'classrooms', presumably very large ones. It doesn't sound much of a money saver, by the time you have recruited all the extra staff and built all the new premises.
    scruffpot wrote: »
    Ok... what would you suggest would benefit people to get them into a form of employment who are found to be cheating the system, long term unemployed for no apparent reason, or not doing what they should be doing?

    This is looking at the problem the wrong way round. There is no point in taking a punitive attitude to unemployed people unless there are jobs - actual jobs, not chugging or commission only or zero hours contracts - available to offer them. Trying to insist that people sit in classrooms doing pointless and poorly funded non-courses just to make sure they are under observation during working hours is DIRE. No one in the world would object to unemployed people being obliged to take proper jobs they are qualified to do, or to doing sensible, properly targeted training courses. There is no useful training course that is likely to take the form of a compulsory classroom full of people of wildly different needs, from graduates to people who sign their name with a cross, being taught on the cheap because the job centre have been ordered to keep them locked in from 9 to 5.
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    AbominationAbomination Posts: 6,483
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    NX-74205 wrote: »
    Then there's the cost, I don't know exactly what JSA is (something like £70 isn't it?) but if I were out of work, couldn't afford to run a car and had to attend this it would cost me £30 per week in travel alone, then when you factor in lunch costs of say £5 a day that's £55 per week. So how do they expect people to live on the £15 per week that's left?

    JSA is £71 a week, or £56 a week if you're under 25.

    When I was on jury service last year, the daily lunch allowance was £6...I'd never seen anything like it! That was over half of my usual weekly money just for one meal, and it was heavenly :p
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    Sun Tzu.Sun Tzu. Posts: 19,064
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    Maybe they'll be divided into shifts to ease congestion. :D
    Unrealistic simply due to the time they are open. Are they going to hire more staff? Possibly having to double the amount of job centre staff to be able to do this?
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    CBFreakCBFreak Posts: 28,602
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    JSA is £71 a week, or £56 a week if you're under 25.

    When I was on jury service last year, the daily lunch allowance was £6...I'd never seen anything like it! That was over half of my usual weekly money just for one meal, and it was heavenly :p

    I get around £100 a week because of a Disability premium. Still that money doesn't go very far. Especially when you need to replace a load of necessity items and essentials.
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    [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 16,986
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    IDS has just said there will be "Attendance Centres" whatever or wherever they are. Their purpose is to make sure people are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Whatever that is supposed to be, working I thought but maybe I have that bit wrong.

    Why not just incarcerate all unemployed and release them when they have secured a job lol
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    phylo_roadkingphylo_roadking Posts: 21,339
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    Are they going to hire more staff? Possibly having to double the amount of job centre staff to be able to do this?

    Can claimants even GET to Job Centres every day??? What about rural communites where the rural bus services have shrunk to two or three times A WEEK??? :eek:
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    haphashhaphash Posts: 21,448
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    IDS has just said there will be "Attendance Centres" whatever or wherever they are. Their purpose is to make sure people are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Whatever that is supposed to be, working I thought but maybe I have that bit wrong.

    Why not just incarcerate all unemployed and release them when they have secured a job lol

    looks like we are heading that way :mad:
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    Ancient IDTVAncient IDTV Posts: 10,185
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    JSA is £71 a week, or £56 a week if you're under 25.

    Those are the maximum amounts. The amount of income based JSA you receive depends on how much you have in savings and investments.
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    Ancient IDTVAncient IDTV Posts: 10,185
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    IDS has just said there will be "Attendance Centres" whatever or wherever they are. Their purpose is to make sure people are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Whatever that is supposed to be, working I thought but maybe I have that bit wrong.

    Why not just incarcerate all unemployed and release them when they have secured a job lol

    In that case, this really is just a re-hash of the New Deal, except with job centre staff rather than a separate provider.
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    Sun Tzu.Sun Tzu. Posts: 19,064
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    Can claimants even GET to Job Centres every day??? What about rural communites where the rural bus services have shrunk to two or three times A WEEK??? :eek:
    What about disabled people? People with drug addictions? Drink addictions?

    IDS has just said there will be "Attendance Centres" whatever or wherever they are. Their purpose is to make sure people are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Whatever that is supposed to be, working I thought but maybe I have that bit wrong.

    Why not just incarcerate all unemployed and release them when they have secured a job lol
    There is a thing in Northern Ireland called peoples first and I have seen the inside of the building it was in and there was like 10+ PCs at the minimum.

    How on earth are they going to accommodate HUNDREDS of people every day? This was a 2 week course which only had like 5-6 people.

    Unworkable.
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    tigragirltigragirl Posts: 13,477
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    Can claimants even GET to Job Centres every day??? What about rural communites where the rural bus services have shrunk to two or three times A WEEK??? :eek:
    No doubt they would ask you would get to work if you were offered a job
    Add this news to the news that people on working tax credit will also have to go the the jobcentre when universal credit comes in I can see people queuing around the block to get in
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    [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 9,720
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    NX-74205 wrote: »
    Is there enough room in these job centres to allow thousands of people to sit there doing nothing for 35 hours a week? I ask because my local job centre is nowhere near big enough to accommodate large groups of people on a daily basis.

    Then there's the cost, I don't know exactly what JSA is (something like £70 isn't it?) but if I were out of work, couldn't afford to run a car and had to attend this it would cost me £30 per week in travel alone, then when you factor in lunch costs of say £5 a day that's £55 per week. So how do they expect people to live on the £15 per week that's left?

    That's some packed lunch! :eek:
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    Lucylocket88Lucylocket88 Posts: 5,049
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    NX-74205 wrote: »
    Is there enough room in these job centres to allow thousands of people to sit there doing nothing for 35 hours a week? I ask because my local job centre is nowhere near big enough to accommodate large groups of people on a daily basis.

    Then there's the cost, I don't know exactly what JSA is (something like £70 isn't it?) but if I were out of work, couldn't afford to run a car and had to attend this it would cost me £30 per week in travel alone, then when you factor in lunch costs of say £5 a day that's £55 per week. So how do they expect people to live on the £15 per week that's left?

    No disrespect, but if someone has next to nothing, I do not think they would be able to afford to pay £5 for lunch everyday. There are some people out there, who are so poor right now, they need to rely on food banks.
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    DMN1968DMN1968 Posts: 2,875
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    No disrespect, but if someone has next to nothing, I do not think they would be able to afford to pay £5 for lunch everyday. There are some people out there, who are so poor right now, they need to rely on food banks.

    Firstly, people would still have to pay for lunch in one form or another whether they are at work, a job centre or sat at home. People need to eat regardless of their situation.

    Secondly, you can do lunch for a heck of a lot less than £5/day. The packed lunch I take to work I estimate costs around £1.50, and is healthy.
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    plateletplatelet Posts: 26,400
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    mintbro wrote: »
    They should decide what they want, yesterday it was making the unemployed pick up litter etc now it's attending the job centre

    Yeah but this is conference trolling.

    By the end of the week the unemployed will be forced to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before they went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down jobcentre, and pay Osborne for permission to come in, and when they get home Cameron would kill them, and dance about on their graves singing "Hallelujah."

    Doesn't really matter because it's not going to happen
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    [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 36,630
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    Actually, this new plan is very similar to the now defunct New Deal, where about 60 people were crammed into one room with a few computers for about 35 hours a week. I actually went through that, and it really was grim.

    When I first read about this I thought the same.

    It does seem just like the previous New Deal Scheme, the only difference being claimants will attend the Job Centre everyday instead of the premises of a private company.

    The Tories made a big thing about ND not working, and supposedly that was one of the main reasons it was replaced by schemes like The Work Programme, so why do they think an almost identical scheme will work any better?.

    With all these new ideas it's getting very confusing indeed.

    I am currently on The Work Programme, so wonder how this and the proposed mandatory feeding the elderly or cleaning graffiti schemes, will affect me.

    First the long term unemployed will be made to work for benefits, but now the long term unemployed will have to attend the JC everyday, but the long term unemployed are already being put onto schemes like the WP. So it's all rather confusing and ill thought out.

    I was unemployed previously, a few years ago and I actually volunteered to go on New Deal. Stupidly I thought it would help. I wasn't long term unemployed back then, but asked to go on ND because I thought this could actually help. It was frigging god awful, but even as a volunteer I could not leave the programme once started without losing benefits.

    We had around 100 claimants spread across two rooms. One working computer (became two a couple of weeks later once their IT guys actually fixed a second, but a third one never worked). We had a printer that failed after a couple of weeks, that their IT guys never did fix. In the end one of the claimants brought in a new network cable to get it working. During the 13 weeks we had many different advisers, so you just got to know one and he'd be replaced with another. The building had a lift that was almost constantly out of order, the toilets had broken toilet seats with excrement up the walls (despite the best efforts of the cleaners), you had to ask at reception for a toilet roll if you needed one, and hand the unused bit of roll back to the receptionist, they charged for tea and coffee, they constantly left files opened on desks with sensitive info on them and the filing cabinets were never locked, leading to claimants reading each other's personal info. We were made to sit down every day with the Yellow Pages and write to every employer in a given employment sector. This led to people sending their CV to the same employers every week to meet their quotas. One of my friends owned a small shop in town at the time, and was often inundated with CVs from people on New Deal, and after the first couple of weeks would just bin all the letters without even opening them.

    We had guys arrested for violence onsite, arrested for drug offences and arguments etc. were common. We even had one guy carted off by the police (and eventually jailed for a couple of months) for sexually harassing female clients on the course. An adviser who eventually resigned because he was caught shagging a couple of female clients too.

    The whole experience was horrific.

    I'm not saying the proposed scheme will be as bad of course, but I don't see how resurrecting a scheme the Tories themselves said was a failure is going to be any better.
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    DinkyDoobieDinkyDoobie Posts: 17,786
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    At this rate the unemployed are going to be running the entire country for £60 a week.

    35 hours at the jobcentre, cooking for old people and community service. seems like a busy week.
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