Workfare: Work for Your Benefit Sanctions exposed
Post Categories: DWP • Welfare Reform • uk government • unemployment • workfare
Tags: benefit sanctions, decision maker, Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work for Your Benefit Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2010, mandatory work placements, work experience, work experience placements, work for your benefit, Work for Your Benefit Sanctions, Work for Your Benefits, work placement, workfare
Today, Flexible New Deal scandal will reveal the extent of sanctions that apply to those who fail to comply to the regulations. These are more increased than the extent of the sanctions available to those on Flexible New Deal Stage 4.
The regulations (Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work for Your Benefit Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2010) are to cease in 3 years from 22nd November 2010.
Sanctions
Benefit sanctions of up to 26 weeks are available to those on the Work for Your Benefits (workfare) pilots if they:
- Refuse to accept or take up a place on the Work for Your Benefit (workfare) scheme after being notified by Jobcentre Plus staff (or Flexible New Deal provider?)(1)
- Fail to accept or take up a place on the Work for Your Benefit (workfare) scheme after being notified by Jobcentre Plus staff (or Flexible New Deal provider?)(1)
- Give up a place on the Work for Your Benefit (workfare) scheme
- Lose a place on the Work for Your Benefit (workfare) scheme as a result of misconduct (2)
- Fail to attend any place at anytime as instructed to by the Work for Your Benefit (workfare) scheme provider (3)
- Fail to provide answers to questions asked by the Work for Your Benefit (workfare) scheme provider (4)
- Fail to (or refuse to) provide information about their educational qualifications, employment history, vocational training undertaken, skills and experience, aspirations (career), the steps taken to obtain or improve chances of getting a job and any work related abilities (5)
- Refuse to participate in a notified “work experience placement” (6)
- Fail to participate in a notified “work experience placement” (7)
- Fail to (or refuse to) participate in job search “arrangements” (8)
- Fail to (or refuse to) carry out a “reasonable” instruction issued by the the Work for Your Benefit scheme provider with a “view” to assisting them to obtain employment (9)
Notes:
- The regulations stated “an officer of the Secretary of State” and not an “Employment Officer”. We assume this phrase means an employee of the Government and not solely the DWP as Secretary of State doesn’t solely mean the Work and Pensions idiot. This phrase of “officer” could extend to any person working for a company who have won a contract for the services as tendered out. Unlike Employment Officer where on Flexible New Deal Stage 4 only some employees of the private businesses have such Employment Officer status – officer could mean all collectively.
- This is a wildcard – at current there is no definition of what misconduct could mean. It is fair to say that if the workfare providers have an problem against any workfare participant (“slave”) this could easily be channeled into being defined as “misconduct”.
- A “place” is to mean any location (not strictly the workfare provider’s premises). This regulation clause sounds to be time focused so lateness could also be seen as a failure to attend (FTA). It is likely there will be a 10 minute grace period for lateness, with anyone being more late (or alleged to be late) being deemed as not attending (Although the activity could last all day). There is no grace allowance for first offence (although guidance might allow this as “good cause”) so traffic jams (for example) could result in a loss of benefits for 2 weeks.
- You can be sanctioned for the right to remain silent. I think its not right that the provider has the ability to threaten a sanction for someone refusing to answer a question which they might have a decent enough reason not to answer. The clause reads “…failed to provide answers to questions asked by a Scheme provider and appropriate information about” – I have interpretated this as reading “…failed to provide answers to questions asked by the scheme provider and failed to give appropriate information about [...] (as) asked by a Scheme provider”. The intention might have meant such answers to questions being about the list that followed but in my eyes would be extremely poor English (and thats coming from me!).
- Why would there be a sanction for refusing to provide such information? I would assume that most would be sent from Jobcentre Plus anyway (like they are under Flexible New Deal).
- Interesting…. I have heard of “work experience” and “work placements” but never a “work experience placement”… I think it means Community Service.
- Failure to participate probably means “failure to actively participate”… If you stop briefly for an unofficial break or aren’t working hard enough, you will get sanctioned the same as if you refused to work full stop.
- “Arrangements”: I assume this means being loaded into a minibus, dropped off in town and told to register with agencies and to also go to Jobcentre Plus to use job points and have to wait around in order to be picked up and taken back to a detention centre… if you walk off you will have failed to participate in such “arrangements”. Job search arrangements are likely to be far fetching to mean any activity that could assist you into obtaining paid or unpaid work-like activity. This stems off to mean anything to improve your chances of finding work – such as doing work voluntary, “team building” exercises and any activity at all on the scheme (as the scheme itself is legally intended to help you find employment)
- This is similar to a Jobseeker Direction (a written notice telling you to do something) with the difference that it also applies to verbal instructions (without any evidence of such existing) by any employee or volunteer of the workfare provider. The worrying parts are the words “reasonable” and “view”. It isn’t clear what reasonable is….and this is left to a Decision Maker to determine. Also “with a view”…. what the fuck is that supposed to mean on the statutory books?! Are these wankers deciding to move into the real estate market by forming DWP estate agents? I think they would make a good estate agent. This means pretty much all instructions must be complied with.
Sanction snippet
Failure to participate in the Scheme
7.—(1) A person (“P”) is to be regarded as having failed to comply with these Regulations where P—
(a) refused or failed to accept or take up a place on the Scheme notified to P by an officer of the Secretary of State;
(b) gave up a place on the Scheme;
(c) lost a place on the Scheme as the result of misconduct;
(d) failed to attend at a place or time notified to P by a Scheme provider;
(e) failed to provide answers to questions asked by a Scheme provider and appropriate information about—
(i) P’s educational qualifications;
(ii) P’s employment history;
(iii) any vocational training P has undertaken;
(iv) any skills or experience P has acquired which fit P for employment or self-employment;
(v) the steps taken by P to obtain employment or to improve P’s chances of obtaining employment;
(vi) P’s aspirations for future employment or self-employment; and
(vii) P’s work-related abilities;(f) refused or failed to participate in a work experience placement of which P was notified by a Scheme provider;
(g) refused or failed to participate in arrangements made by a Scheme provider to assist participants with job search; or
(h) refused or failed to carry out a reasonable instruction given to P by a Scheme provider with a view to assisting P to obtain employment.
Sanction Comments
Feel free to leave comments on your thoughts of these sanctions.
Link Summary
- Manchester Jobseekers: 40 hours week workfare for 6 months
- Flexible New Deal: Who can award sanction doubts?
- John Leech MP opposes Work for your Benefit scheme
- Work for Your Benefit: providers to sell workfare victims to private businesses?
- Work for Your Benefit is Slavery
- TBG Learning to run workfare pilots?
9 Responses to “Workfare: Work for Your Benefit Sanctions exposed”
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can they please put in a clause for excess flatulence. Verbal crap tooo
I had 3 people in my group who literally made me feel sick, I think they had moldy coats or something, and plenty turned up each day with mud on their pants and jackets.
Some of the points are silly though, our “teacher” wanted us to fill in a piece of paper with lots of information about ourselves so they could sell us to potential placements. I did the very basic stuff and put mostly refer to C.V on a lot of questions because they already had it on their system and they should be going directly off C.V’s. I guess I would have gotten sanctioned for failure to participate lol.
Oh no, not mud!
I literally mean caked in mud not just a little bit, so much for been presentable and ready for work.
“improve chances of getting a job”
this does not in anyway imply that you will find any suitable paid employment,so in reality its back to square one,sounding tough as they like to do but i reality offering noting only the usual “methods”.
its very highly unlikely those with a disability will have to attend any of this nonsense,those that are forced onto this are likely treated nothing less then criminals,it appears to unemployed in this country is now treated as a crime with the same consequences,however the new deal was the same with those on community service and those jobless treated the same by managers.
This is just open to abuse from unscrupulous employers – and frankly what other kind would be willing to take people on for full time work at £64 a week? Do they justify it by saying ‘it’s experience’ or that ‘there’s jobs at the end of it’? This is just wrong.
That’s the question people need to ask.
The flexible New Deal Providers are mere scam artists. All they’re interested in is the tax payers money that the Government have allocated them. Doubtless too bonuses are incurred for reaching certain targets. Our glorious Government care not a jot as the sanctions imposed allow them to massage dole queue statistics… which to them with an election coming up is more important than saving money by tackling the real issues.
Flexible New Deal is simply a smoke screen. The tax paying public are kept happy with the thought that their money is being put to good use, yet it is actually costing tax payers money to implement and is actually merely an extra expenditure for the tax payer. Wasteful. Labour try to cure things by throwing money at it, money this country does not have.
As a matter of curiosity I wonder how many civil servants have thought about the following.
1 Will they loose their job
2 If/When they loose their job will they be fast tracked onto work for your benefits.
3 Will that mean they could essentially beput in the position of doing the same job but being paid starvation wages.
4 If they get sanctioned will they sanction themselves ?.
GOT A SERIOUS MEANING TO IT A BIT OF A PISS TAKE REALLY BUT COULD THIS HAPPEN
1. Possibly.
2. Likely.
3. No. The job wouldnt be pen-pushing twiddling thumb office work but dirty hands on physical Community Service.
4. No. DWP are good at picking useless wankers into the job – any prior experience doesn’t seem to wash too well with them (or perhaps its just that after you leave a Jobcentre Plus job you dont go back).
(I know its was more for a comical approach but the above would be proper answers to it)