A few thoughts on now-legendary government plans to have jobcentre work coaches decide whether people are fit to work and how hard:

There are many problems with this hogwash, but the one we’ll talk about today is the pot luck element (already a problem). Sick and disabled people in such a system will have to rely on fair treatment from work coaches (already very much hit and miss). Put simply, people will have to hope that they get a work coach who isn’t a punitive twat.

Which isn’t always a sure thing. Some frontline officers are decent. Others, alas, really are out to lunch.

I’ve been thinking about this, because I recently had a long conversation with a frontline DWP officer who, just a few minutes in, struck me as totally gone.

This person was a universal credit case manager who, funnily enough, was on a Stockport PCS picket line, striking for better pay. I was interviewing strikers and talked with this case manager at length. Actually – this person talked to me at length. I mostly stood there wondering why I’d been born.

This caseworker couldn’t have channelled Mel Stride better if they’d actually been Mel Stride. The caseworker said it all: benefit claimants were lazy, their mental health problems were bogus, that anyone could be a millionaire if they tried (wasn’t sure about this, given that the strikers were out for a few measly percent) and – slight tangent – that social media turned people into turkeys (have to say I agreed with that one).

Anyway.

The red flags went up early on, but the one I’ll start with waved vigorously at me – when the caseworker said that benefit claimants should model themselves on Elon Musk.

“[When] Elon Musk started out people were saying, “electric cars, mate – that’s not going to take off.” He’s now outstripping Toyota, because he showed up. That’s all we ask claimants to do.”

Oh goody, I thought. Bet this plays well. As a caseworker, our comrade here had the power to start (or not start) benefit claims, to stop payments, to read about people’s health and their personal circumstances, and to make decisions about their incomes on the basis of that.

Knowing this and hearing the Musk thing, your hopes for a fair world tank. When you spend hours with claimants who have literacy problems, health problems, age problems and work-related injuries, etc, the last person you want to hear from is another frontline clown who believes that getting work – and getting Musk-rich for that matter – is entirely a matter of the right stuff and backbone. No matter if your backbone is crumbling, or full of arthritis, or whatever it is. No matter if you apply for job after job, but can’t buy an interview because of your age. Our caseworker didn’t really touch on the many and often complicated reasons why people don’t work, apart from suggesting that too many of them arse around on facebook.

“Anything is possible,” the caseworker said. “They talk about the American dream. The dream is all around you.”

It certainly is for Elon Musk. I did wonder if it always was in Stockport.

At the jobcentre and job clubs I spend time at, I’ve talked with a lot of local people who claim universal credit because their wages are so low that they need subsidising to live, or because they lost jobs or businesses in the pandemic, or because they have serious mental health issues and not a lot of help because services have gone, or because they struggle to work, or find work, because of their health and/or age. They have to work, or claim benefits, though, because the pension age keeps climbing and they have yet to drop dead.

Also, my feeling has always been that Elon Musk got ahead because he’s an overindulged sociopath, rather than, say, stuck in an unheated Brinnington hovel with literacy issues and a heart condition, but maybe I and we just need to start looking lively.

That’s all street homeless people needed to do, our caseworker said, moving on to this group. All that homeless people needed was a big smile and a broom:

“I’ve got nothing against them [homeless people]. They are very vulnerable, you know – half the day without food. [But] – get yourself a brush [broom], go round the back [of local businesses] and sweep up. Then you can say [to the business owner], “I’m homeless, but I can do this.” Then you say, “I know it’s a bit cheeky to ask, but is there any chance I can get a fiver for food and drink?” They’ll go, “yep, right, there you go.” If that word spreads, he’ll tell the next business owner and before you know it, 5 years have gone and you’re running a professional cleaning business.”

No doubt such heartwarming stories play out all the time, though possibly most often in movies. I got the feeling that our caseworker had watched a fair few of those.

It is my experience that real life is a little less… linear. The street homeless people I’ve worked with over the years had potential, all right, but had also been devastated by experiences such as early years in care, abusive families, abusive relationships, military service, or serious mental health problems since their teens – experiences that many only ever managed to blot out with spice, bubble and booze. These people didn’t have an “I can’t be bothered,” problem so much as an “I want to die,” problem. It never occurred to me that this could be sorted by handing out a few dustbusters.

Ditto for mental health problems – but our comrade had doubts about those, too.

“People who are long term on universal credit, [they know] if they put things [in their universal credit journal] like, “oh, me mental health, or me depression,” we have to jump straight on that [and sort out that claimant’s problems first].”

Mm. I thought of the many long-term claimants I’ve sat with who’ve been in floods of tears as they’ve tried to solve a benefits or housing problem via a computer or officer who says No. Serious depression and anxiety are rife in this world. Given the number of benefit claimants who commit suicide, they also seem to be real.

So.

I suppose we could give this caseworker the benefit of the doubt and say that they were the sort of person to get a bit carried away in a chat. You wouldn’t want to count on that, though – problem being that if you were a benefit claimant, you’d have to. Which is the point, of course. Fairness is not mandated in the benefits system, to say the very least. Getting a sympathetic work coach, or caseworker, comes down to the luck of the draw.