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- Government Investment To Rebuild Schools
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- Supporting hard-working families and people
- 100th new hospital
- Health care getting better and better
- Reduction of MRSA
- Save money, save energy
- 10 years of the National Minimum Wage
- Work for dole plans: what do you think?
Work for dole plans: what do you think?
I am supporting new plans which would see long-term jobless helping to improve the local community in St. Helens.
Labour’s proposals mean people who have been unemployed for two years – or those who go on and off of benefits – would have to work for their benefits and for the benefit of the local community.
Long term unemployment is down in St. Helens and more people are in work than ever before.
But the days of mass unemployment mean that in some families in St. Helens worklessness has been passed down from generation to generation. For some people who have never known regular employment we need to help them get into the habit of working life.
So this is a win-win situation for our area. Unemployed people will get valuable experience of work that employers are looking for. It will help flush out the people who are abusing the system or working while still signing on. And we can all think of work that needs doing in the local community.
These proposals are in consultation until October. Myself and Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, really want to hear what you think about these plans.
Leave your comments below and have your say on Labour’s new plans.
Copyright © 2008 Shaun Woodward MP
Recent comments
10/09/2008 8:54 pm Darren
Not happy. I'm of those to be enslaved by the proposed system.
If it was a fair system where I work for just the number of hours required to earn JSA on minimum wage with additional expenses like transport, clothing, meals and equipment subsidised, proper relevant training and an emphasis on providing all this from within a sustainable employment placement opportunity where if the employer likes me he takes me on full time after a trial period, then OK. (A bit like New Deal as it was originally proposed before the budget was slashed to that of every other rubbish back to work scheme of the past).
Instead, I end up being sentenced to long-term community service like a criminal, expected to do a full time job, with all the expenses involved in working full time, without the benefits of working full-time, on nothing more than JSA.
While back to work schemes focus on preparing people for work only on a raw basic skills level outside of work rather than preparing people for an actual job inside of an actual job with full training, qualifications and skills to actually do said job, (like Apprenticeships which are few and far between at the present time), all you're going to end up with is a lot of people who are only 'ready to work' as an unemployable bum so far as most employers are concerned.
As for the idea that this would magically encourage me to get into sustainable full time employment, what employment?
I have GCSEs, A-Levels, skills, experience and vocational qualifications. Yet I can't even get a steady job as a no-experience-required cleaner as I'm not 'relevently' skilled experienced and qualified enough for virtually all the jobs out there, never mind this one.
You wanted some feedback to the proposed welfare reforms. Well this is how they would affect me personally.
And there are millions like me. And more still with the present economic downturn forcing people out of work and reducing still further the sustainable full-time jobs available.
A nice big pool of slave labour for the workhouse then.