Bungling Minister for Welfare Reform, the aptly named Lord Fraud, has today announced that Atos style assessments are to be introduced into the workplace.
The Government is to provide new Occupational Health services for any business that needs them, with the aim of cutting down absence in the workplace due to sickness.
It is claimed that the new ‘advisory and assessments service’ is about preventing people ending up on what’s left of sickness benefits. In truth it is about giving employers the chance to over-ride GP’s decisions on whether someone is too ill to work.
In an announcement today the DWP claim: “Under the current system, the vast majority of fit notes declare employees to be unfit for work.”
‘Fit notes’ are what used to be called ‘sick notes’, but the term was changed recently in yet more Orwellian language mangling by the DWP. The reason for this change is now clear. An announcement that the vast majority of sick notes declare employees to be unfit for work would sound a bit silly after all.
Lord Fraud seems to want to be to force people to work even when their own doctor says they are too ill. Far from stopping people ending up on sickness benefits, the outcome is likely to be yet more dismissals and more unemployment. People who are ill are likely to be dragged into the work place after a quick chat with an assessor, or presumably they will face the sack.
It is unclear so far who will carry out these new state funded Occupational Health services, but no doubt Atos – who carry out the desperately flawed Work Capability benefit assessments – will be chomping at the bit at the thought of yet more tax payer’s cash.
Every week people die of their conditions shortly after being declared ‘fit for work’ by Atos. The stressful process had led to a tragically increasing number of suicides. Lord Fraud’s announcement means it will no longer be sick and disabled claimants forced into these kind of demeaning and crude health checks, but anyone with the cheek to take a couple of days off with the flu.
Atos already carry out occupational health already for hundreds of thousands of both public and private sector employers. In yet another corporate subsidy, it now seems that firms who can’t afford a company like Atos to bully staff will have one subsidised by the tax payer.
Atos also offer consultancy in ‘headcount reduction’. Some people have even been found unfit for work and sacked on the company’s recommendation, and then found ‘fit for work’ at their benefit assessment.
Lord Fraud’s announcement is yet another attack on the working conditions of everyone and viciously undermines the autonomy of doctors. Anyone left who thinks the war on welfare is just about attacking so called ‘benefit scroungers’ should pay careful attention.
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the void 
OH WELL BETTER GET MY SHOVEL THEN DIG THE HOLE BFOR THEY OUTLAW THAT EVEN
Well this shouldn’t come as any surprise; the Capitalists know their days are numbered, so they’re trying to rake it in before they go to the wall.
yup roll on Armageddon
Look forward to the Members of parliament being sudjected to this after all if it’s good enough for us then it’s good enough for them…. Oh wait it’s not like that is it! This should prove interesting as people who have never had contact with the Government now will find themselves involved in this load of crap.Lets see if they now get it and join in with the rest of us.
Well said Rosemarie, exactly what i have just posted on my Facebook wall!!x
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Behind the scenes video about DWP and ATOS decision making…
(copy and post this link into your browser)
This is hilarious, absolutely brilliant!
This was bound to happen. GPs have always been in a difficult position with sick notes – even when they believe someone is fit to work, they are often under pressure from the patient to sign them off. The medical blogs are full of these stories. This new policy avoids the problem by bringing in a third party to do the dirty work
Since when has it been ‘dirty work’ to sign someone off from work because they are sick?
Ooohh the GP’s are under pressure? Well that’s part of their job isn’t it? To decide if people are well enough to attend work?
We’re not talking about someone who has a cold, but people who have life threatening illness’s or who have had a chronic disabling condition from the day they were born that are being declared fit for work by ATOS.
Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & POLITICAL JOURNAL.
Ah the revolving door of being found unfit then sacked then found fit not long after bang goes job security . Still as I posted yesterday there are jobs to be found if you want to work for welfare to work providers . This must be that growth that gidiot talks about
Many employers will see this a way to discriminate against their 50-plus employees, who are more likely to have health issues and could otherwise be occupying long-service pay scales and blocking younger, cheaper replacements indefinitely, due to state retirement age being pulled away into the dwindling distance.
Atos will forcibly ‘retire’ these people as disabled, before reassessing them as ‘fit to work’ and dumping them on JSA and workfare slavery – once any savings they might have put by for their chimeral futures have been decimated
It seems to be part of the “Shock and Awe” strategy of Westminster at present when scarcely a day goes by without another assault on the unemployed/sick/disabled being announced. It’s about as compassionate as the mob who set about your namesake. There is only One Truth and the free-market fanatics have it and there is no valid resistance possible from their point of view.
I wish somebody would put a bullet in Freud’s head and have done with it.
Me too.
So where is the FOM in all this ? One the one hand making sure you don’t get ill because of work and yet offering diplomas for anyone wanting to be a disability assessor providing they have gone through atos course . Are they an independant organisation or not ( they are a registered charity ) this is another concern about organisations which are meant to represent state employees but seem far to close to private industry for comfort .
Dynamic Dave doesn’t need to repatriate employment or human rights laws his changing them to suit himself anyway knowing as has been proved on lost test cases ( with pension age increased and Cait Riley’s case regarding being forced to work on menial tasks), that the European courts will back him anyway.
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Rich fools i love it when i totally rip them off muhahahaha ,Tory fools not long left now for the con dems until they get smashed in the election 🙂 🙂
DuncanB
When gp’s are under pressure,they either take it out on their patients or they take early retirement on generous pensions, nobody sections them to months in an asylum.
The princess of darkness, Dame Carol Black, actually uses nazi-esque imagery to describe the chronically sick and disabled.
In a presentation she gave in Sept 2011 at Glasgow University on “worklessness” (an equally imaginary concept as her non-existent “sicknote culture”), she likens the disabled on benefits to a Victorian plague of cholera. See her slide 6 “turn off the tap” –
Click to access media_210447_en.pdf
Fellow knight of the realm, Mansel Aylward also attended the same neoliberal propaganda beano. I’ve no idea if the now newly knighted Simon Wessely attended who is another important medical mandarin academic whose unethical quack science is also behind the ESA regime –
Worklessness and Health – Symposium
University of Glasgow – 1st September, 2011
http://www.gla.ac.uk/researchinstitutes/healthwellbeing/research/publichealth/hwlgroup/scottishobservatoryforworkhealth/worklessnessandhealthsymposium/
Cruel and unjust way to treat disabled and sick people, so let’s say someone who suffers from a mental illness is deemed fit for work because they can pick up a pen and touch their toes and they know who the priminister is. Well I have to ask this who is going to condenmed if heaven forbid they hurt someone because they can’t cope with being around crowds of people. Now I am not being patronising to people who suffer from mental issues some of them want to work and contribute as it gives them a sense of belonging, but they should not be forced to in my honest opinion. Also many disabled people had a job. we all remember the remploy factories that this corrupt government shut down thus putting many disabled people out of a job and now disabled people are made to suffer because of that desicion.
Condemned? Me.
That’s who.
You think ATOS are clueless about mental health, try The Probation Service,
So far i’ve been accused of bigotry,( really?) alcoholism (i don’t drink ) drug abuse, (prescription) and of blaming my health condition for the crime i committed when i went off the rails.
The first letter i sent to ATOS described how when faced with crowds and a perceived threat i WILL react with violence.
Im not proud of it, i have tried to seek help for it, the only professional expert help being in the psychiatric unit. No help before apart from my GP god bless him, who wasn’t a specialist in mental health, the clue is in the title, general practitioner, and after release i had one follow up session.
Since then i have been waiting to see the mental health primary healthcare team for nigh on a year.
Lets get one thing straight, i have never hid behind my health, medication, and subsequent additional stress caused by atos and failing the assessment and being cast off benefit, for what i did, it was me, i lost it, the stresses got me and i cracked.
Id have cracked even if i’d been well, im certain of that.
Before the assessment i NEVER got in to trouble, i could handle my problem, manage it. Avoid people when at my worst. Avoid situations likely to exasperate the problem.
Within days of being found fit, i had to walk in town centers, mingle with crowds, attend the Joke Center Plus sausage factory where they couldn’t give a flying shit- when i think back to how manic i was in there the first time, im filled with shame still.
All in a heightened state of anxiety.
One particular notable probation session, the officer sat there and argued semantics about the definition of mental health with me, now an offender with a record of violence lets not forget, when i mentioned in passing, i was mentally ill.
“No you are not mentally ill”
I beg your pardon? So why was i locked in a secure unit?
“You have a condition”
Cue argument for what felt like 20 minutes on the semantics of the definition of illness over condition, until i finally conceded, Ok then define mental illness and define a mental health condition-
“An illness is treated with medication. A condition with therapy”
Hang on a minute, i WAS medicated, but after discussion with a REAL, medically qualified, professional psychiatrist, we agreed that it would be best in my case to try and forgo medication and see if i could be helped with therapy- MY CHOICE.
Therapy im still waiting for i may add.
Consider this. A probation service offender is there to help stop offenders from re-offending.
I left there and seriously considered topping myself. If i hadnt collapsed with nervous exhaustion i have no doubt id be on that Callums list up there.
One: You get ill. You doctor signs you off for a month. Atos call you in for a workplace assessment but you are too ill to attend. This is construed as gross misconduct, because they deem this a perfectly reasonable request, and you are fired. You then recover enough to crawl out of your sick bed and go to the dole office to sign on, but your claim is rejected because you were fired for gross misconduct.
Or
Two: You get ill. Your doctor signs you off for a month. Atos call you in for a workplace assessment and once you get there you are found fit for work. Since you are not sick, according to them, you should not have taken time off and you are fired for gross misconduct. You then go to the dole office to sign on and your claim is rejected because you were fired for gross misconduct.
Catch-22. It’s unarguable with.
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It’s chilling, totally terrifying. How did we get here? Well, in a nutshell, I guess we got here because big business has gained too much power, far more than politicians. But you won’t get either a Tory or a New Labour politician to admit that.
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BROKENBRITAINUNDERTORIES – UK ONLY INTERVENES FOR SELF INTEREST
Where was Britain when genocide was taking place in Rwanda some 1,000,000 people were slaughtered .Where was Britain in the Congo when internal mass rape and murder was taking place
The Algerians have certainly learnt a lesson about Britain from those two conflicts ,they handled the hostage situation and occupation of a gas field by terrorists themselves .Sadly all hostages were not rescued by the swift response by the Algerian authorities ,but they were decisive and took immediate action .Involvement by Britain would have delayed the process while it worked out the benefits of involvement .Iraq and Libya were both oil rich conquests .Why are there no weapons of mass destruction inspections taking place in Israel ,they are armed to the teeth .
We incite warring fractions by selling them arms ,then intervene for the spoils .Materialism overrides moral justification in Britain today by Government
USA and UK only attack people who cant fight back on an even playing field.Rich men send the plebs to die for their financial interests. At home they are killing of the poor and sick plebs using Nazi firm Atos.
Ha ha.
That’s about right
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