Workfare to be imposed in Britain

[Hannah Bell]

Britain is being subjected to a savage programme of social engineering, designed to create an economy where millions work for much less than the present £5.93 an hour minimum wage. This centres on plans to introduce workfare for the long-term unemployed, who will be forced to work for their benefit plus a £1-an-hour top-up.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is set to introduce US-style compulsory “workfare”, under threat of withdrawal of benefits to entire families. A new “claimant commitment” will include sterner conditions, notably the threat that unemployed people who refuse community work or the offer of a job may lose their jobseeker’s allowance for three months; if they refuse twice, six months; and three years on third refusal.

The £30 or £40 a week, or £1 an hour, those forced to do such work will receive is one sixth of the present minimum wage and sets a new benchmark that will see it effectively nullified.

The meagre £65 a week unemployment allowance will be removed for three months on a first “offence” of refusing work, six months the second time and three years after a third breach. People will also be subject to penalties for failing to turn up on time or not working hard enough. Those convicted of benefit fraud could also have their benefits stopped for three years. There will be no right of appeal.

The net result will be the mobilisation of the unemployed, including single mothers and over a million of the sick and infirm on incapacity benefits, as a “reserve army of labour”. They will either directly replace existing workers’ jobs or be used to depress wage levels.

This exercise is being sold first of all by whipping up populist prejudice against the supposedly “workshy” and the “feckless”, who are unemployed as a “lifestyle choice”. Prime Minister David Cameron declared that “a life of benefits will no longer be an option”. People “don’t pay their taxes to pay for people to stay on benefit”, he said.


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/work-n13.shtml