Benefits

Britain's austerity drive: fight the cuts!

On Monday 7 June, David Cameron declared war on British workers — the public sector workers who will lose jobs, the jobless who will lose benefits, the working-class people who will find the services they depend on are gone, or have been privatised out. Britain’s “way of life”, said Cameron, would be fundamentally disrupted, for years to come. Was Cameron just preparing expectations and talking up the scale of the cuts? No. One consultancy firm, Capital Economics, predicts as many as 750,000 jobs will go in the public sector. We are not, as Cameron put it, “all in this together”. Bosses who...

London Coalition Against Poverty: building up the confidence to fight

Vicki Morris spoke to Eran Cohen from London Coalition Against Poverty about the ideas behind their network. VM: What is “direct action casework” and what are its advantages/disadvantages over broader political campaigns around poverty? EC: Direct action casework is a combination of social-work type legal casework mixed with direct action. The practice is fairly old (there’s many examples from the USA in the 1930s) and the idea is simple when operated in a welfare state: someone who is refused the housing/benefits they’re entitled to through intimidation or a dodgy legal basis (what we call...

Plotting and scheming against benefit cuts

On 14 November, just as the government was introducing “Work for your Benefit” pilot schemes, members of twenty-three different groups from around the UK met in Manchester to share information and plan resistance to government welfare reform. The meeting set up some working groups to plan action and agreed to meet again in April 2010. Full report on demands of the campaign will soon be on www.workersliberty.org and in the next issue of Solidarity

Plotting and Scheming for Welfare not Workfare

On 12 November, it became legal to force unemployed people to work for their benefits – to do 40-hour-weeks for under a third of the minimum wage. The Government's Welfare Reform Act introduced 'Work for your Benefit' pilot schemes, which once completed can be rolled out without any further debate. It also attacked single parents – who face sanctions if they fail to prepare for work outside the home as soon as their child turns three – and people with impairments, disabilities or severe and enduring illnesses. Two days later, members of twenty-three different groups from around the UK met to...

Plotting and scheming for Welfare not Workfare

On 12 November, it became legal to force unemployed people to work for their benefits – to do 40-hour-weeks for under a third of the minimum wage. The Government's Welfare Reform Act introduced 'Work for your Benefit' pilot schemes, which once completed can be rolled out without any further debate. It also attacked single parents – who face sanctions if they fail to prepare for work as soon as their child turns one – and people with impairments or severe and enduring illnesses. Two days later, members of twenty-four different groups from around the UK met to share information and plan...

Brown courts the Daily Mail

Gordon Brown used the opportunity of Labour Party conference to pick on a group of people who are poor, powerless and not much older than children. Did it make him feel big when he announced “from now on all 16 and 17 year old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes”? Did he feel like a proper pillar of the establishment when he assured the tax paying public that “these shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly”? He knew that the...

A council relief centre worker’s blog

Tuesday 10 February 2009 Last night — not many evacuees stay overnight, but they have horrific stories. A grandmother from Darwin whose daughter and three grandchildren died at Kinglake trying to escape, people who have lost their home and are just waiting to hear what's happened to their loved ones. People drive into the centre with great urgency wanting to donate. A bloke drove up fast at midnight and got out of his ute really aggro. He had an esky full of drinks "for the kids", bars and can openers. He was also pretty full and stank of alcohol. I thought he was going to biff me he was so...

“Bankers” occupy the DWP

Twenty-five activists dressed as bankers staged an occupation at the Department for Work and Pensions on Monday 9 March. Taking over the lobby of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Adelphi House they leafleted staff throughout the building. Carrying banners saying “Target the rich not the poor” and “Stop the Welfare Abolition Bill”, sat in front of the entry barriers and refused to leave. The aim of the protest was to highlight that fact the Welfare Reform Bill was designed by bankers, penalises the poor, and abolishes income support for single parents and incapacity benefit. The Bill which...

Squeeze on single parents: Still very “New” Labour

New Labour Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell is redoubling his efforts to be crowned most vicious bastard in Parliament by unveiling new plans to force single parents into work once their child reaches the age of one. In the context of other New Labour welfare policies, the move reaffirms the government’s utter contempt for some of the most vulnerable and exploited people in British society. Last year, the government “reformed” incapacity benefit along similar lines to tie it much more closely to claimants’ ability (or “readiness”) to work. A government report from economist Professor...

Jobless figure is rising

As the economic crisis generalises — creeping out of the financial markets and into the productive economy — material effects on working-class lives begin to hit home. Along with rocketing costs of living and house repossessions, unemployment looks set to increase. According to predictions from the TUC, the number of people out of work for more than one year will double by the end of 2009. Long-term unemployment (as measured by the government) could increase to 700,000 and the total unemployment levels will increase to over two million. Official figures show that in the three months up to June...

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