Hackney Unemployed Workers is an autonomous group supported by the London Coalition Against Poverty (LCAP). The group was formed in 2008, following direct action at a local job centre in support of two LCAP members whose benefit claims had not been processed for weeks. Harry McGill and Anne-Marie O’Reilly write about the campaign and the recent welfare system ‘reforms’.
The mainstream and corporate media have hardly given the Welfare Reform Act 2009 a mention. It is not a sexy-enough subject for them. As a result, the welfare system we have now is being dismantled without comment - the very thing our good Labour party promised to uphold and protect. And as with all acts in parliament, we don’t get a chance to suck it and see if we like it first. By the time we know what it is about, it’s already in place. Part of the many new changes to working people’s lives, should they find themselves thrown onto the dole due to the economic downturn, is the introduction of ‘workfare’, or the ‘work for your benefit’ scheme. Workfare has been used in America for some time now and has failed to achieve what it was supposedly created for; that is, to get unemployed people into regular paid work. Here in the UK, the government calls its current version of it the New Deal. This is the forerunner to the ‘workfare’ system that will be piloted in the UK next year. Initially, this will send people who have been unemployed for two or more years to ‘work placements’, where they will be expected to work 40-hour weeks for six months without pay. Instead, they will receive their dole money as usual at less than a third of minimum wage. One of the effects Workfare has had on the labour force in America is that the companies employing the lowest paid workers are able to get rid of their paid workforce. After welfare changes in 1996, over 30,000 union jobs in the New York City parks department and transportation were lost within a year as unemployed workers were forced to work the jobs for free to get their benefits. What happens to all the people who lose their jobs to this influx of free forced labour?, Well, after being sacked, they end up forming large queues at job centres or private contracted agencies the following week. This is essentially the same system that has been piloted in Manchester and East Anglia in Autumn last year. Hackney Unemployed Workers plan to make it impossible for these pilot schemes to be rolled out. At a national meeting in October 2009, with over 20 groups present, we ‘plotted’ ways to ensure that the pilots do not succeed and to damage the political viability for Workfare schemes to be set up elsewhere. In Hackney, London, one in five people of working age are claiming out-of-work benefits. When our group started meeting in April 2009, there were 37 job-seekers for every new job advertised in the borough. Matters have got worse since then. The recession hit following a sustained attack on Jobcentre services (500 closures in five years and thousands of job losses). Members of our group know just what it means to navigate run-down public services: lost documents, delays in processing claims, benefits stopped without warning with weeks of hardship before they start again, and penalisation for bureaucratic errors are the norm. As a group, we defend, at different levels, welfare as a right not a benefit. If someone experiencing problems with their claim comes along to our meeting, then others will volunteer to support them to get it sorted out. Strategies include strongly worded letters, authoritative phone calls, a show of numbers in support of the person affected, as well as office occupations at local job centres. For example, in June 2009, 25 unemployed workers and supporters carrying placards and banners occupied the Jobcentre in Hackney Central, with demands for members’ claims to be resolved; for conditions at the job centre to be improved; for people to be treated with respect; for baby-changing facilities and access to toilets; and against welfare abolition. The manager refused to accept our demands and had the police remove us. A week later, however, we realised how useful the action had been for establishing a ‘working relationship’. When a single parent whose income support had been stopped came to our meeting, five people joined her to demand a meeting with the manager. This was granted within an hour and her claim was resolved within a week. In our experience, you can’t separate individual from wider political actions. Through taking action in support of each other, we build our understanding of how the system impinges in different ways on different people; we build our experience of different tactics, and new people join the group all the time. At the same time, we understand that our bad experiences are the result of a political ideology that criminalises claimants (even though ‘benefit fraud’ is at an all-time low) and seeks to make our worth dependent on work - as defined in the narrow terms of waged work for someone else’s profit. This ideology means that things will get worse unless we stand together to resist these attacks on single parents, unemployed workers and people with impairments or illnesses. We share our resources with other grassroots groups and plan to take co-ordinated action against the companies applying for the contracts to run ‘work-for-your-benefit’ pilots. We also intend to publicise unemployed workers’ stories to counter the media’s ridiculous treatment of people accessing welfare. We believe we’re at the start of a new movement to claim welfare as a right not a benefit. Get in touch if you are involved in a similar group or want to start one up! For more on Hackney Unemployed Workers, see the groups website at http://hackneyunemployedworkers.wordpress.com.
For more information on LCAP, see www.lcap.org.uk.
There’s also a national ‘No to Welfare Abolition’ discussion list: http://groups.google.com/group/no-to-welfare-abolition.
The mainstream and corporate media have hardly given the Welfare Reform Act 2009 a mention. It is not a sexy-enough subject for them. As a result, the welfare system we have now is being dismantled without comment - the very thing our good Labour party promised to uphold and protect. And as with all acts in parliament, we don’t get a chance to suck it and see if we like it first. By the time we know what it is about, it’s already in place. Part of the many new changes to working people’s lives, should they find themselves thrown onto the dole due to the economic downturn, is the introduction of ‘workfare’, or the ‘work for your benefit’ scheme. Workfare has been used in America for some time now and has failed to achieve what it was supposedly created for; that is, to get unemployed people into regular paid work. Here in the UK, the government calls its current version of it the New Deal. This is the forerunner to the ‘workfare’ system that will be piloted in the UK next year. Initially, this will send people who have been unemployed for two or more years to ‘work placements’, where they will be expected to work 40-hour weeks for six months without pay. Instead, they will receive their dole money as usual at less than a third of minimum wage. One of the effects Workfare has had on the labour force in America is that the companies employing the lowest paid workers are able to get rid of their paid workforce. After welfare changes in 1996, over 30,000 union jobs in the New York City parks department and transportation were lost within a year as unemployed workers were forced to work the jobs for free to get their benefits. What happens to all the people who lose their jobs to this influx of free forced labour?, Well, after being sacked, they end up forming large queues at job centres or private contracted agencies the following week. This is essentially the same system that has been piloted in Manchester and East Anglia in Autumn last year. Hackney Unemployed Workers plan to make it impossible for these pilot schemes to be rolled out. At a national meeting in October 2009, with over 20 groups present, we ‘plotted’ ways to ensure that the pilots do not succeed and to damage the political viability for Workfare schemes to be set up elsewhere. In Hackney, London, one in five people of working age are claiming out-of-work benefits. When our group started meeting in April 2009, there were 37 job-seekers for every new job advertised in the borough. Matters have got worse since then. The recession hit following a sustained attack on Jobcentre services (500 closures in five years and thousands of job losses). Members of our group know just what it means to navigate run-down public services: lost documents, delays in processing claims, benefits stopped without warning with weeks of hardship before they start again, and penalisation for bureaucratic errors are the norm. As a group, we defend, at different levels, welfare as a right not a benefit. If someone experiencing problems with their claim comes along to our meeting, then others will volunteer to support them to get it sorted out. Strategies include strongly worded letters, authoritative phone calls, a show of numbers in support of the person affected, as well as office occupations at local job centres. For example, in June 2009, 25 unemployed workers and supporters carrying placards and banners occupied the Jobcentre in Hackney Central, with demands for members’ claims to be resolved; for conditions at the job centre to be improved; for people to be treated with respect; for baby-changing facilities and access to toilets; and against welfare abolition. The manager refused to accept our demands and had the police remove us. A week later, however, we realised how useful the action had been for establishing a ‘working relationship’. When a single parent whose income support had been stopped came to our meeting, five people joined her to demand a meeting with the manager. This was granted within an hour and her claim was resolved within a week. In our experience, you can’t separate individual from wider political actions. Through taking action in support of each other, we build our understanding of how the system impinges in different ways on different people; we build our experience of different tactics, and new people join the group all the time. At the same time, we understand that our bad experiences are the result of a political ideology that criminalises claimants (even though ‘benefit fraud’ is at an all-time low) and seeks to make our worth dependent on work - as defined in the narrow terms of waged work for someone else’s profit. This ideology means that things will get worse unless we stand together to resist these attacks on single parents, unemployed workers and people with impairments or illnesses. We share our resources with other grassroots groups and plan to take co-ordinated action against the companies applying for the contracts to run ‘work-for-your-benefit’ pilots. We also intend to publicise unemployed workers’ stories to counter the media’s ridiculous treatment of people accessing welfare. We believe we’re at the start of a new movement to claim welfare as a right not a benefit. Get in touch if you are involved in a similar group or want to start one up! For more on Hackney Unemployed Workers, see the groups website at http://hackneyunemployedworkers.wordpress.com.
For more information on LCAP, see www.lcap.org.uk.
There’s also a national ‘No to Welfare Abolition’ discussion list: http://groups.google.com/group/no-to-welfare-abolition.
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