Longer article at Open Democracy with interviews from people on jobseekers’ allowance around the country. They talk about sanctions, the utter uselessness of the work programme and the reasons why jobcentres are in no position to make Osborne’s ridiculous Help To Work Scheme happen:
“After barely five minutes the jobcentre doors open and a young man bursts out, raging. He is as furious as hell. He is screaming ‘Wankers’ and ‘Fucking Cunts’, and spitting as he shouts. We all stand still and watch him – the unemployed workers’ group members, me, people walking to and from the jobcentre and people standing at the bus-stop across the road on Cambridge Avenue. We’re all half-waiting for a punch-up and for a moment, it seems that we’ll get it.
“I’ve just been sanctioned for 13 fucking weeks!” the young man screams as he stamps down the jobcentre ramp. “Thirteen weeks! I’m going to come back here with a fucking hammer!” I wonder if he will. Thirteen weeks is a very long time to go without any income. I know that I couldn’t afford three months without money coming in and I’m not on JSA. Clarence, who has a relaxed manner and an ability to put people at ease, steps forward to say something. The unemployed workers’ group helps local people with problems like sanctions. Maybe this guy could come along to the weekly meeting? I step forward and ask the young man if he wants to talk about the sanction. He absolutely does not. A jobcentre adviser has just told him that he’ll get no money for three months. “Why the fuck would I want to talk about it?” he shrieks as he disappears towards the high street. “I’m coming back here with a fucking hammer!””
People leave jobcentres with problems, not solutions. I don’t think I’ve seen a shambles to beat it, and I’ve been around. Person after person reels out of these jobcentres, often with folders full of official paper – unsigned letters demanding attendance at we’re-not-telling-you-what-this-is-about meetings, sheets instructing people to attend work programme classes in one part of London and to drop jobsearch sheets off in another (it’s basically ‘taking pieces of paper for an outing’, JSA claimant Angela Smith told me just this week), numbers to call to chase sanctioned benefits, or to switch to ESA, numbers to call that are literally never answered, forms to fill in for emergency loans with no suggestion that they’ll be granted, pointless instructions to apply for as many as 20 jobs a week, often using the notoriously useless Universal Jobmatch, and so on. I have yet to meet a single person who has found a job through their jobcentre. Everyone I meet who finds work finds it themselves, through ads and contacts. Adding Help To Work’s daily signings-on and workfare obligations to this mess will be a stretch. I can’t imagine that jobcentres will be able to keep on top of it.