Good news: you’ve got a job. Bad news: you won’t be paid for two months

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Here’s a story of another employment shambles – yet another example of the reasons why low-wage work is impossible to survive on:

“Alice” (name changed), is in her early 40s. She’s been claiming Universal Credit for about three years.

Alice has recently been employed as a jobcentre security guard. This is Alice’s first job for some time. She needs the work and she needs the money. Alice has serious rent arrears (she’s being evicted from her flat because of that), council tax debt and more.

Unfortunately, starting work won’t improve Alice’s situation – certainly not in the first instance.

Alice has been told that she won’t get her first wages for nearly two months.

That’s because the company that employed Alice (a contractor/subsidiary/whatever that apparently supplies guards under the G4S Secure Solutions banner) has an horrendously punitive pay system.

Payday is the last day of each month. People get paid a month in arrears. So – if someone starts work at the beginning of April, for example, they must wait until May 31st for their first wages. They get nothing on 30 April. I have seen HR emails which outline this “system” to pissed-off employees who ask about it. People ask about it, because they can’t believe it. The emails describe the timelag. I swear to god. I keep looking at those emails and that is what they say. This stuff does my head in.

Two months is a long time to go without money. It is an especially long time to go without money when you have no money to start with – when you’ve been out of work for years and you’re about to lose your flat, because you can’t afford rent.

Alice said:

“I don’t have money. I don’t have money to eat – I have, like, £5 for… I’m going to have to be on a diet.”

There’s more.

At training, Alice and other guard trainees were told that their employer would only pay them one month’s wages in that first payment at the end of the first two months. The trainer said that they would receive that month’s outstanding wages when their employment ended.

Alice said:

“It’s like I’m paying deposit to work for them or something.”

Brilliant.

I looked at the HR emails again. I concluded that the month’s “withheld wages” likely has to do with the month-in-arrears payment system. In our previous example, if a person started work at the beginning of April and was first paid wages on 31st May, they would only be paid for their April earnings on 31 May. They wouldn’t be paid their May wages until 30 June.

This stuff drives people up the wall.

So.

Alice and other guards are told by their employer to tell jobcentres that they’re with G4S Secure Solutions when they turn up for work. I’ve seen messages with that exact instruction. So, I asked G4S for comment on this wages behaviour from companies that supply security guards under the G4S banner.

This part of the exercise was as thankless as you’d expect.

G4S was pissed off. I wouldn’t tell them the name of the company that was sending in security guards on its behalf. I had reason for withholding that name for now – protecting Alice from retribution being one. I was hoping (ha) that G4S would take the initiative anyway – that it would immediately announce an inspection of every supplier and anyone who appeared to be providing guards on its behalf to ensure that everyone operated on the level.

Such initiative is never taken, of course. You rarely get initiative. You only get corporate defensiveness.

I got this from G4S:

“We only work with sub-contractors approved by the security industry association approved contractor scheme and we expect the organisations we use to align to our policies for remuneration, cash advances and uniform provision,” etc, etc.

I also got a lot of moaning – G4S saying it was unfair to make connections between itself and other companies without handing over details. The hell with that. I hand over nothing. G4S has less to lose than Alice. As I say, I couldn’t see why G4S couldn’t take some sort of initiative regardless.

I rang the company that employed Alice to ask about the connection between itself and G4S – and also, as it happens, to ask about applying for security guard roles for someone else. Needless to say, nobody called back. So – we’ll keep at it. Maybe there are companies out there who send guards off to jobcentres, tell them to say they work for G4S if anyone asks and then have a laugh out the back. Hell – maybe there really are. This end of the employment scene is infernal. The thing teems with corporates, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and anyone else who has an eye to the main chance and no notion of fairness or responsibility. When Alice and I first spoke, she wasn’t entirely sure who she was working for. That happens all the time.

Her new employment has presented Alice with other money problems.

She’s had to take another Universal Credit loan to pay for expensive peak-hour travel across London to the jobcentres sites that she works at. Like everyone I talk to who claims Universal Credit, Alice is already paying back a Universal Credit advance loan which she took out to cover another debt.

Her jobcentre work coach said that the DWP would suspend repayments on the first loan while Alice waited for her first wages. Unfortunately, a loan repayment deduction was still made from Alice’s last Universal Credit payment. Her work coach said that he couldn’t give Alice a free travel pass, because her employer wasn’t able to say in advance exactly which days Alice would be working, or where. Alice has a zero hours contract and is sent to different jobcentres. Those decisions are made on the day.

—

Anyway.

I realise that many people couldn’t care less what happens to jobcentre security guards. God knows I’ve reported first-hand experiences of guard aggression. The point I’m making is that there are people out there who find work, but still can’t earn.

I’d also make the point that government likes the sort of tension that festers at jobcentres. It takes stressed, bullied and poverty-stricken benefit claimants, low-paid security guards and jobcentre advisers with the power to sanction people’s benefit payments, and abandons everyone to each other in jobcentres. It’s hard not to conclude that carnage has always been the plan.

91 thoughts on “Good news: you’ve got a job. Bad news: you won’t be paid for two months”

  1. It was common practice to do this years ago when workers were paid weekly, which wasn’t too bad, you only had to get through the first fortnight ’til you got a wage and payday was generally on a Thursday in my part of the world, then when you left the company to work somewhere else you got paid your week-in-hand upon leaving along with any outstanding holiday pay plus the week you had just worked, so that would then tide you over the waiting period in your next job. Plus also people got paid in cash in those days (70s/80s). It wasn’t too bad on a weekly pay system, and if in continuous employment, but going from nothing into monthly payment in arrears is hopeless and the Government should supply some kind of back -to-work Grant to cover such circumstances. Oh and G4s is a notoriously bad company.

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    • These people do my nut in. They seem to have beefed up their press office as well. Because that’s the most important thing etc

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      • These sorts of giant companies become like a monster well able to stonewall critics, and deflect blame, deny everything, pass the buck, etc. and keep the activities of their various subcontractors at arms length to the point where only Governmental Committees or official tribunals /enquiries can challenge them. Just the way the Tories want it. No workers Rights, no company culpability, just big profits for investors with no comeback and Benefit Sanctions for workers who don’t don’t tow the line. Capitalism at its worst.

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  3. When wages were weekly you got your wage at the end of the second week by working a week in hand, These scum have now turned the week in hand to a MONTH in hand because the pay is monthly. Why not do a government petition so that employers have to pay the employee all but the first seven days wages, and that the wages ore based on the first seven days of the month. Also the employer could put the first seven days wages into a scheme that pays interest so the person gets the wage plus interest when they leave the employer.

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  4. And as I have said before, the old Dole Office never had any security guards and neither did the Jobcentres in the beginning. If Claimants were being treated fairly rather than being bullied and threatened there would be no need for bloody G4s guards in Jobcentres.

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      • I have similar misgivings about security guards and their ilk, but I hate to see any worker being treated badly, even a security guard. By and large they work awful hours and get paid a pittance. As Alice is in London, it might be worth her while to contact the IWGB who do represent security guards. The only drawback is that membership of this union is £9 a month, but at least it’s a union run by its members and not bureaucrats:

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    • I imagine that the security guard need was deliberately fostered by the powers that be, as a way of controlling and intimidating those forced to use a jobcentre – just another way for the rich to control the working class, like Thatcher vowing to break the unions, its another step in the tory dream of absolute power over the working classes ☹

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      • Yes, Fear is a tool that governments use as a means of social control, hence the intimidating G4s guards and the (threat of) Sanctions. The hope is that people will be so desperate and fearful that they will take any job, even if they’re not going to be paid for weeks on end.

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  5. These payment delays from the employers are all part and parcel of the cheap labour, zero-hours employment market. Some employers now are not paying at all for the first month, as this is regarded as ‘training’ . Rather than actual employment. And of course they can hire and fire staff as and when they like.
    Backed up by Universal Credit, which was designed to support a continuous churn of low-cost disposable labour.
    Either people have been very naive, or the Tories have been very clever at disguising the full reality of what Universal Credit will mean for future employment.

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    • It is amazing. This is work putting people in actual debt. Who tf has a few spare grand hanging around to live off until your employer gets around to paying you?

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  6. I find it hard to come here. Here is where we come to face reality, and reality today in our wonderful right wing controlled country; is stark. It’s brutal.

    Those scumbags vying for leadership of the dictator party should be forced to live by their own rules for at least one year.
    I remember an odious twat across the pond suggesting that he could manage well on benefit; it was all about ‘budgeting’. The smirking swine agreed to prove it. He ran out of money by the 4th day. Turd.

    This is the reality room. This is what is happening in this country; and it’s getting worse. That failed abortion Johnson (notice how this repugnant slug has tidied up his hair?) is likely to be our next dictator. Dark bloody days.

    The only long shot benefit might-might be that he becomes so repellent that Labour start to look viable. Only when things affect practically everyone will they do anything to change them.
    Corbyn was a leader of some hope. He’s blown that by not being decisive. That is infuriating!

    G4S? In that same country (Australia), they have a rotten reputation. They are brutal to ‘detainees’; the Au’s don’t call them refugee’s. Secret filming by….someone, showed their behaviour. It reminded me of the Deep South of the USA in the days of open racism/beatings/murders.The AuGov didn’t give a rat’s arse.

    I’m no longer certain that I will be alive to witness any change, but change can only come from mass solidarity; look at Hong Kong.

    In the meantime people on low incomes/disabled/menatal health cannot live. They have to fight everyday just to survive as Alice does. Poor bloody sods.
    _____________________________
    My HA no longer threatens me. I challenged them to take me to Court.That was their last threat; they’ve now used up all their ammo, and are not responding at all, this clearly coming from the CEO who I also wrote to.
    They’ve been overcharging older tenants on two statutory licences, believing that the oldies wouldn’t care or wouldn’t notice. I did. They’ve been bobbing and weaving on the issue for over a year now.
    __________________________________________

    And this is NOTHING compared to what this lass and so many others are going through. Ed Daffearn who lived in Grenfell Tower for 18 years and warned the management company 7 months before that people could die in a fire, -made a significant remark. He said: ‘ It is the last thing I think about before I fall asleep, and the first thing I think about before I wake up’.
    Me too.

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  7. Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. It just goes to show that if you have the right kind of background, and the right connections, you can act like an educated buffoon, be completely unsuitable for the role, and still end up as PM.
    Now we see the real benefit of the clowning, hanging from zip-wires, making stupid remarks, getting fired for making things up, falsely denying having an affair, and then being found out. Paying £320,000 for useless, second-hand German Water Cannon. Which then had to be scrapped.
    Making one diplomatic gaffe after another, from colonial poetry in Myanmar, to disastrous comments about a helpless British hostage in Iran.
    All part of the enormous, ego-driven production, the staggering personal arrogance, that is the life and destiny of this blond colossus. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. A true symbol of our age.

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    • Not forgetting the racist comments about Muslim women looking like a letterbox, and Africans with “watermelon smiles”, and his Brexit retort of “fuck business” . The man’s an eejit, unfit for any public office. Just goes to show how the old boy Bullingdon network can work wonders in promoting any wealthy well-connected Toff to the top.

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    • Am actually getting sick to death of the media coverage of the bloody Tory leadership selection process, like it’s got anything to do with the rest of us, or as if we had any say in the matter. They are Tories, whoever wins is a Tory, how can any outcome possibly be of any benefit to anyone else? Who gives a fuck? Wake me up if any of them get assassinated.

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    • Thing is Ken, if you’ve got no money to begin with and you don’t know how many hours you are going to be working, and you’re not going to be paid for 2 months, then you can’t possibly afford to do it! Wouldn’t you agree?

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      • Exactly Trev. This is the basic financial difficulty so many people are in, when it comes to taking a job.
        They don’t have enough money to keep themselves while they wait two months to be paid.
        A huge gap of time opens up where they have no idea how they are going to survive.
        To the wealthy Tories who started these welfare reforms, there are always financial reserves. You just ‘pop something on a credit card ‘ etc.

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        • Politicians live on a different planet, especially Tory ones. They just can’t /won’t understand that thousands if not millions of people in this country are living hand-to-mouth without access to savings or credit. Heck, most of us haven’t even got anything left to sell or pawn! Even ordinarily, without unforseen extra expenses or situations, it’s normally a case of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul ‘ just to get by.

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    • WTF! That really is bad. Those security guards were guilty of false imprisonment and any police attending should have robustly pointed that out – and if anything they’ve exacerbated their legal position by only letting the protestors out after one of them had a panic attack.

      Obviously the security guards panicked and then overreacted, though really, are a bunch of disabled protestors really that scary? I’m sure they’re noisy and more than a little awkward, but if things get really confrontational, the police should be called, though they are equally somewhat hampered as they are as ill equipped as the rest of society for dealing with the needs of many disabled people. And basically, any sane organisation would just let the protestors hold their protest, and merely ensure that no-one is threatened or hurt whilst it continues, but, as we know, the DWP is no normal organisation, anc certainly not sane.

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      • Yes, locking the doors with people inside was not only a breach of civil liberties but also a health & safety risk, good job there wasn’t a fire. The security should be sent for re-training.

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      • Mind you, they are doing a thankless job and some of them might not have been paid for weeks/months! Rather them than me. I mean DWP security guard? That’s a job you can stick right up your arse.

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        • Indeed! A few years ago whilst signing on I got to chatting to the G4S security people as I’d gotten to know them a bit whilst picketing the Jobcentre with the IWW. One time I went in to sign on one of them, who’d seemed interested in the union, (not that the IWW would touch a potential oppressor of workers with a bargepole) said that I could consider his line of work – I just smiled and said that I’d consider it. I did consider it, and a nanosecond later decided that it wasn’t for me.

          I’ve always found that the best way to deal with people doing jobs that you don’t exactly approve of, (even though sadly there sometimes a justified need for security people/police) is to remain polite, as the decent/half-decent ones will respond positively, whilst the real bastards will remain unmoved no matter what, and even there being reasonable pays dividends as it makes it more difficult to go over the top in response. Just look how difficult those Extinction Rebellion protestors made it for the police through being peaceful and reasonable. Personally I’ve always found it very effective to be polite, reasonable and just a little awkward with the police on demos – they inevitably ask who is in charge, to which my standard response was that no one was in charge, and that we’d just spontaneously assembled – which means that if they want to arrest anyone, they have to arrest all, and that can have awkward logistical consequences when there are a couple of hundred of you. Though, having said that, it can almost be guaranteed that a couple of idiots will turn up who think it’s really socking to the system to get themselves arrested for doing something totally stupid and pointless.

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          • Oh I do try to be civil to the security guards and I realise they have a job to do, but what a bloody job! I see them standing there whilst I’m waiting and they look bored out of their minds. But I think some of them over step their mark, one of them once complimented me on what I was wearing (brown brogues and a long winter overcoat) like that was unusual and I thought it was a bit patronising, mind you he’s probably used to seeing people dressed in hoodies & jogging pants etc. About a year later the same guy told me not to take personal calls in the jobcentre and to go outside, but I was waiting to be called to sign on and the call was from the nurse at my GP’s giving me my blood test results, so I was pissed off about that, trying to listen to her whilst he was butting in. Other times I’ve had them hovering about behind me when signing on, as the Adviser was determined to argue and it was her who was raising her voice not me, which was rather intimidating.

          • I know what you’re saying Trev, some of them do go overboard, and though I’d never voice it I think that that type have self image/inadequacy issues and are on some kind of a power trip. It must be frustrating for them, as they’re wannabe coppers who probably wouldn’t make the grade because of stability issues etc – which is kind of scary when considering some who get to be cops. But yeah, they do have a pretty awful job – and yes, they do look bored out of their minds most of the time, though the only time I see them is when I sign on, which is at 9am, when the JCP+ is just opening, so it’s the start of their day, and they are actually busy doing something. But for probably 95% of the time they just seem to be standing around, as it isn’t really that often that someone really seriously kicks off and they are needed.

  11. Zero hours jobs are bloody hopeless, I’ve just been sent an email job alert for a cleaning job at Lidl and it says “1 to 20 hours per week”. How can you sign off JSA to do that? You would have to be on UC and therefore able to declare what hours you’ve worked, which is ok in theory but could lead to all sorts of complications in reality. This particular job pays £9 per hour, but it’s all academic as I wouldn’t be able to even get there as it’s miles away in a small town out in the sticks (a place called Todmorden, famed for UFO sightings/abductions!).

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    • You see this all the time Trev on Universal Credit. Big promises for the Jobcentre, then it comes down to nothing.
      I know someone who transferred expecting a full-time job, but the employer messed him about, and he’s ended up averaging 6 hours per week. Take out travel costs etc. he’s no better off. Plus always the worry about how much UC he is going to get, or if he is going to get any at all.
      But then UC was never really about earning money, but taking people off old-style benefits and making them do zero-hours work instead.

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      • Universal Credit was ostensibly set up to enable people to work on & off temporary jobs by providing the flexibility to still (easily) claim Benefits that they are entitled to when not working, without the necessity to keep signing off & back on all the time or making fresh claims, but it doesn’t even do that properly because the system is such a complicated bloody shambles and was overly ambitious from its conception , a bad idea from the start because of the complexities involved. I bet if you made a claim for UC then started declaring oddball hours of temporary work before the claim had even been processed (5 weeks +) then all hell would break loose. On top of the inherent dysfunction they had to also complicate things by making it punitive with unrealistic jobsearch demands etc. It is unfit for purpose, even on their own terms of forcing people into shit jobs, it’s unworkable and not something that represents an attractive helpful prospect to any temporary or part-time / zero hours workers. It might be alright IF you can manage to navigate the system, jump through the hoops, get your claim processed and payments in place THEN avoid taking or having to declare any of those shitty jobs AND manage to satisfy the jobsearch rules, maybe you will be ok, just maybe.

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  12. While poverty, homelessness and crime increases, and Society goes to shit with thousands of people falling through the shredded remains of a safety net, and millions of people have to use foodbanks, here’s the wider picture of what’s really going on in this fucked up world, from Farage & Brexit to Trump, racism, xenophobia and the global rise of the Right wing:

    Trumpism: Capitalism’s Plan B

    https://www.redpepper.org.uk/trumpism-goes-global/

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  15. When I signed on today I had been told it was to be a “group session” up on the top floor. So I got there and was shown into a small room with lots of chairs put out. There were 2 G4ss guards standing outside the door of this little room. I entered and took a seat then was informed by the Adviser running the so-called “group” that the group consisted of just myself! He then introduced himself and said “I don’t know if you’ve seen me before”, I replied that I had, that it was him who signed me on last time 2 weeks ago and that it was he who had booked me in to this “group session”. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. Anyway the gist of it was him trying to convince me to go to an employer of my choice and plead with them to let me work there for a while for no wage. Yeah right. I reminded him that I already do unpaid voluntary work and have done for the last 2 years, and that I am also still attending the Right Steps to Work programme that the jobcentre referred me to. Then I signed on (on paper, not the electronic pad) and was given my next appointment then left. What a complete and utter load of nonsense.

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    • I am so bloody sorry to hear this. I’m damned if I know how people stay sane with this heinous treatment.
      I remember being in this situation very many years ago across the pond. In those days you were not ‘punished’. I had refused to go, but the Manager of all people who I knew, told me to have a little faith and give it a go.
      About 5 of us sat around in a circle and this female sat down with her clipboard; and then asked us what we wanted?!! There were puzzled looks all round until one girl timidly told her ‘we wanted jobs’. This bureaucratic vacant lot then wrote, saying it as she wrote it: ”we–want–jobs”. I walked out.
      What the hell fired use was that crap!
      Now though, the damage of conservativism has made the act of walking away a crime that is punished by sanctioning. I don’t know if this is the same in Oz, and I don’t want to know.
      God! I hate them.

      (Btw: Thanks for the link on exulansis. It has opened a really interesting thought provoking site. The inventor of all these words John Keonig is a profound guy.)

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      • Hey you’re welcome, that Koenig guy certainly thinks out of the box and I wonder what he would have made of my experience in the Jobcentre today which was kinda surreal come to think of it 😵 , like an absurdist sketch from Monty Python or Spike Milligan that left me thinking wtf? Life imitating Art imitating life…

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        • I think that those of us in possession of a surreal and absurdist sense of humour are those perhaps best place to survive the DWP regime relatively sane. Take it too seriously and we’d all go nuts

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          • Absolutely Padi, being a fan of Bertolt Brecht stands me in good stead in that regard!

    • At one time in my local JC a couple of years ago, they were trying to get people who didn’t use social media to start a Facebook account . The purpose of which was to ‘sell themselves’ into a job. By putting up an appealing photo and a short employment history. And sending out a general message in which you were supposed to let people know you desperately wanted to work . Fortunately this could not be made mandatory, and so the vast majority put two fingers up to the idea.

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    • Re: the solo group Trev, that is ridiculous even by DWP standards.
      You should write to your MP about it.

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          • Haha yes 😊 that seems to fit the bill, trouble is it’s not that easy to “choose your own adventure” when you are limited by a. lack of cash and b. difficulty in making decisions, although I am prepared to admit the possibility that I did subconsciously chose my own adventure prior to reincarnating and this actually is my adventure that I find myself living. I’ve given up on trying to make any sense of it.

        • I love that! It really made me laugh, and God knows yer gorra laff!

          Downunder anecdote: I worked for a large bureaucracy to fund finishing law. We received quite a few forms from people who had mental health problems. They were easy to detect… (not putting these folks down; I suspect even back then the system was driving them mad).
          Voting there is compulsory. One year it was a really crap selection (I mean worse than normal). I did not vote. I got summonsed, with the inevitable form to fill in to show ‘just cause’.
          I set about the task with gusto filling the form in with different coloured pen/capitals/underlined/-and then worked my way up the side panels, finally pinning a rough piece of paper to the form saying my psych said I was not to be placed under any kind of stress.

          It was a a rebellion election, well over 8,000 people ultimately found themsleves summonsed by the Electoral Commission.
          I wasn’t one of them!

          In that same department we got a letter from a guy who called us a bunch of c…./f……/t…./scum of the earth (in some cases he was right).
          He signed it: ”Yours respectfully.” He actually meant that.
          They were better days,-all we did was rock with laughter, not hammer the poor sod.

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    • I read the link, then went on to other links on the page.
      The mentally impaired, disabled, elderly, young , middle aged………….they are now enslaved.

      Right wing policies have enslaved the vulnerable. The first response by system is to justify or just plainly-openly cover up. NOBODY is giving any protection, not least the people who are in place to do so.

      I utterly despair. As one person suggested (and was ridiculed) in the Guardian, we need a massive uprising, a massive people revolt. it won’t happen of course.
      Society today is consumingly self centred. So many have embraced the principle of ‘if it isn’t a problem for me, it isn’t a problem at all’.

      Will it ever end?

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      • I know, it’s disgusting and depressing,but it certainly will never end so long as the Tories remain in power, or if the Rightwing ‘Centrists’ (Blairite neoliberals) manage to take over the Labour party again. For now our only hope is a Corbyn/McDonnell led Labour government, something the Establishment are shit-scared of and will try to prevent by any means including dirty tricks and smear campaigns etc.

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  22. Those of you who have suffered throughout these long hard years of ‘Austerity’, all those relying on foodbanks, those who have endured the JSA freeze, the Benefits Cap, Sanctions, wage freezes, zero hours contracts and Minimum Wage jobs, lets just remind ourselves of what our Leaders and Representatives got away with as homelessness and child poverty rose….

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33552499

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47405259

    https://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2019/06/brexit-is-1-trillion-con-job.html?m=1

    Angry? You bloody well should be.

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  23. Harrogate in Yorkshire always used to be a gentile and affluent place but I guess times change, it’s certainly no Hartlepool but it has its share of problems and poverty. Now Universal Credit migration is to take place there:

    https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/harrogates-great-migration-why-the-leafy-district-has-been-chosen-to-trial-universal-credit-61824

    https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/our-region/north-yorkshire-moors-and-coast/harrogate/harrogate-picked-as-latest-universal-credit-roll-out-pilot-site-amber-rudd-mp-announces-1-9643554

    https://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/news/dwp-announces-trial-site-universal-credit-managed-migration-pilot

    Foodbanks in Harrogate are preparing for the inevitable increase in demand.

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    • Increasingly my interactions with my advisor indicates that they can individually excercise a lot of discretion, e.g. initially for the first 3 months it’s usual to have weekly appointments in the JCP+, but that’s down to the advisor. Mine seems happy to keep them at fortnightly. apart from the last one, when it was extended to four weeks. It also seems that a lot of the crap stuff that some advisors come out with about the availability of loans, or up front cash for travel to interviews or clothing for interviews is down to individual advisor discretion, as mine has made a point of telling me about the availability of this kind of help with no prompting from me – not that I need help with travel expenses as I now have a bus pass courtesy of the Welsh Assembly Government, (who also pay the element of Council Tax that claimants in England have to pay).

      It seems to me that this would suggest that, whilst UC as a system is crap, that the many of those working as advisors are choosing to either be totally incompetent, or abuse the power they possess, thus making UC a far more unpleasant experience than it needs to be. I’m now wondering that if advisors have so much discretion on things like extra financial help for attending interviews, (though this funding might just be for Wales from the WAG) then perhaps the also hold similar discretion over sanctions?

      There is now increasing talk of having the entire welfare system devolved to Wales, though I know that the First Minister was initially opposed to it. However, I think he’s going to increasingly find it more and more difficult to defend a system that’s clearly failing.

      https://nation.cymru/opinion/westminster-is-condemning-our-children-to-poverty-wales-needs-to-take-control-of-welfare-to-lift-them-out/

      Of course, I wouldn’t want to see claimants and those in need in England suffer, but if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland developed separate and more compassionate systems, that would put pressure on the system in England too – though more typically I suspect there’d more likely to be complaints about how the Welsh and the Scots are having a better deal, and that it’s unfair – like we hear over NHS prescription charges from people who live just over the border. They’re free for everyone in Wales, but not in England. When I hear those kinds of complaints I usually suggest that, instead of complaining, agitate to get free scripts in England too!

      Should we get a more humane system in Wales, I know for a fact that there are many of us who would delight in helping people in England get a similar system.

      Reply ↓

      • Yes prescription charges are something I have to bear in mind if I were to get a job, at the moment I get them free as a JSA recipient but if in work would have to pay for.
        As for the Jobcentre, I’ve just got back from signing on this morning and it was with my actual Adviser that I’m assigned to, a really awkward woman who is never happy. I haven’t seen her for about 6 weeks and was hoping I’d seen the back of her, but no, she’s back and with the same old attitude and same script, “but you’re not getting any of these jobs you’re applying for, why’s that? What is stopping you from moving into work? Why do you think you’re not getting any of these jobs ?” etc. etc. She does my head in.

        Reply ↓

        • I think it’s just part of the script she thinks she has to spiel – probably not the sharpest tool in the box, and perhaps, just maybe there is an element, (maybe even a large one?) where she’d bought right into the rhetoric about people without a job. Though she should actually be questioning a system that just doesn’t want older workers. Once someone reaches 50 it becomes increasingly hard to get work if they’ve lost a job. Perhaps your advisor needs to be reminded about the rampant ageism that exists in our society? I’m sure if she joined all the dots she’d realise that most of those on her workload who are over 50 are those who struggle to get a job.

          Reply ↓

          • Well you would think so but I did mention all of that but she wouldn’t have it, she just said that people of my age do get jobs. I told her that if an employer has a choice of applicants they would be more likely to pick someone in their 30s who has recently been in work rather than someone approaching 60 who hasn’t worked for a long time. They are also more likely to hire someone who lives nearby or has transport than someone who lives 15 miles away and has no transport. These things are obvious to anyone with any sense, but the Jobcentre are hardwired to go into denial mode. I told her that some jobs specify that you must have own transport or live close to the job location. I also told her that some employers (even agencies) require applicants to have a clean bill of health, and some ask for 5 years solid work history. But I bet next time I see her she will be at it all over again, like a broken record. She was also questioning the quality of my applications and suggesting that I might need help from some idiot. I am perfectly capable of compiling a CV and composing an application letter, more so than most of the retards that I have previously been directed to for assistance. I am perfectly capable of using a computer and the internet, I do not need the help of any privatised employment adviser. The fact that I have a Degree ought to tell her that.

          • I know what you mean Trev. I’m guessing that your advisor is still quite young, (i.e. 30s) and therefore probably can’t get her head around ageism as it’s not a factor for her (yet). I find that for so many people solipsism is something that rules their lives – anything but attempt to understand things from the perspective of others, or that other people’s experiences are also a valid contribution to the understanding of society and how it functions, and malfunctions.

            I get you about you having a degree – but even if younger people have a degree nowadays, it’s so devalued. Many who get a degree these days seem to struggle to spell their own name correctly – I’m being facetious, of course, but having invigilated exams at a local university I often wonder about some of the candidates who struggle to even complete the details on the cover of the answer book and need the simplest of things explained. And most of them seem to need to be reminded what the date is, and I got used to asking them to ensure they were in the right room and sitting the correct exam!

            God help us when they get to run society…

    • The regime for the unemployed in Ireland seems much less strict in general compared to that in the UK. It’s still a little draconian in places, but with a sanction lasting for 9 weeks in cases where it would last at least six months in the UK puts it into perspective. It also seems that generally the sanctions regime is at least a little more humane in that initially it usually seems to consist of a reduction for the first 21 days before a 9 week complete sanction is imposed.

      There are also some interesting rules regarding older workers, those 62 and older, as the system recognises that there is prejudice against older workers.

      https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/social_welfare_payments/unemployed_people/jobseekers_benefit.html

      But as you say Trev, there seems to be a much greater awareness that people can’t live on fresh air, as seems to be case in the UK.

      Reply ↓

      • And the amount of Benefit paid is much higher than over here, and the Irish economy/GDP surely has to be much smaller than UK so if they can afford it then so can we. Mind you the population is much smaller in Eire too, but then the amount of Revenue they collect must also be smaller compared to UK.

        Reply ↓

        • Actually the Irish GDP is significantly higher than that of the UK, standing at 69,330.69 USD in 2017 as opposed to the UK figure of 39,720.44 USD in the same year. Of course, the population of Ireland is much smaller, which stood at 4.784 million in 2017, with the UK standing at 66.04 million in the same year so nearly 14 times greater population in the UK. And let’s not forget that Ireland has shown real recovery from the effects of the 2008 banking crisis, wheras the UK hasn’t – but then we’ve had 10 years of ideologically imposed austerity where we’ve paid for the bailing out of the banks and the wholesale further enrichment of the already obscenely rich. The general cost of living is quite a bit higher in Ireland, as shown by this chart:

          https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=Ireland

          But, yes, paying such low levels of benefit in the UK is very much a choice, and they could easily be paid at a significantly higher rate, but then that would put pressure on putting the minimum wage up – which is probably the last thing the scum ruling us want.

          Reply ↓

          • I’m really surprised at that, I had no idea the Irish GDP is way larger than UK, I find that quite astonishing. I know they have a lot of tourism but when I visited and toured around the country several years ago there seemed to be pretty much nothing in the way of industry, maybe a bit of farming and fishing but no big towns & cities like you have here, hardly any traffic, hardly any people, just seemed very laid back with not much going on.

          • A lot of international companies such as Apple and Google as well as Facebook are located in Ireland, which will drive the GDP up somewhat. There isn’t a lot of heavy industry in what is now the republic, as the industrial revolution in Ireland was pretty much stifled at birth as mainland Britain didn’t want a competitor close, and Ireland’s role was seen as supplying agricultural products – which Ireland produced in plenty, though all for export. It’s little known in the UK that during the so called famine in Ireland during the 1840s Ireland was exporting record amounts of grain and beef whilst the common Irish people were starving. This was exacerbated by the fact that the population was growing as fast as it was everywhere else with no industrial development to soak up that population growth, hence the mass emigration to the mainland Britain and to North America – by the end of the 19th century the population of Ireland had halved. The population has never recovered in number.

  40. Pingback: We’ve stopped your Universal Credit today without warning because you’re working without pay… | Kate Belgrave

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