Statistics released by the DWP today show that the performance of the Work Programme – which was already achieving less than doing nothing at all – is steadily getting worse.
By June 2013 a lower percentage of people who had been on the scheme for one full year had found a job which lasted at least 6 months – known as a sustained job outcome – than in the previous two months. In April 2013 14% of claimants who had been on the scheme for one year had found sustained jobs, by June this had dropped to 13%.
Following intervention by the UK Statistics Agency, the latest Work Programme figures now focus on the numbers of people finding work after spending one year on the scheme. This change has been introduced to reflect that the longer someone has been on the two year Work Programme, the more likely they are to find a job. This means that the number of job outcome payments, paid to welfare-to-work companies when someone has been in work for six months (or 3 months for the ‘hardest to help’), will rise over time. This has nothing to do with the Work Programme becoming more successful – it simply means that as more people are referred onto the programme, and more people have been on the scheme longer, then there will be more job outcomes.
Despite this change in how the statistics are presented, the skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban is attempting to bamboozle the press and public alike by claiming that: “More than 168,000 jobseekers have escaped long-term unemployment and found lasting work – normally at least 6 months – through the Work Programme, an increase of 37,000 in 3 months”
To place this figure in context, the DWP also admit: “1.14 million people had been referred to the Work Programme and been on it for long enough to count in today’s employment performance figures.” Which means that for just under a million people, the Work Programme has been a complete waste of time.
No matter how hard DWP Ministers try to spin the facts, the truth is that the Work Programme is currently performing even worse last quarter’s dismal figures. The number of people on the sickness and disability benefit Employment Support Allowance (ESA) finding work after one year on the Work Programme has remained more or less stable, at the shameful rate of just 4%. But for those on mainstream unemployment benefits things are getting worse. According to the DWP: “Until the most recent quarter, the proportion of JSA intake groups achieving a Job Outcome payment within a year has increased month to month. Whilst the general trend is still increasing the most recent quarter shows a decrease in these levels.”
The latest statistics also contain the details of what has happened to the first group to complete the two year Work Programme. This is the intake who began on the scheme in June 2011. Just 22.5% of this group achieved a sustained job outcome at some point during this two years, a truly shocking figure woefully below the number who would have been expected to find work without any help at all.
Of the 74, 630 people who began on the Work Programme in June 2011, 54,000 of them were referred back to Jobcentre Plus two years later. And this does not mean 20,000 people got jobs. Some will have claimed a pension, moved in with a partner and become ineligible for benefits, or in some cases died.
It has been clear for a long time that the Work Programme isn’t working. Long term unemployment is at record levels and still rising. No matter how much unemployed people are bullied and humiliated by welfare-to-work companies, it will not make one bit of difference to the number of people out of work. Unemployment isn’t caused by unemployed people. But don’t expect any change to come from the DWP. Iain Duncan Smith will carry on regardless, spending billions of pounds of tax payer’s money in an ever more desperate attempt to try and prove that the poor are responsible for their own misfortune.
Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid
the void 
Reblogged this on kickingthecat.
The Tories and NuLab exported so many jobs to the far east, this was done for their rich friends, in order that they made more PROFIT from the cheap slaves working in unsafe sweatshop conditions…PROFIT before people is their mantra.
Too true Annos.
@johnnyvoid what do you make of the back to work emergency legislation impact assessment stuff with regard to sanctions zealotry and bureacratic drivel I posted on the hovis blog? Mind numbing eh that’s if you can understand it all
Let’s face it, Bob, if you are JSA you WILL be sanctioned at some point, it is just a case of taking your turn. The whole point of PWPS (Post Work Programme Support (stop laughing))/MIR (Mandatory Intervention Regime is to stitch up jobseekers for a sanction. There is no way any jobseeker is going to survive this shit without being sanctioned. Jobseekers would be best advised to put aside a few cans of beans, if and when they can, as an emergency supply for when the shit hits the fan… and it will.
@Beanz on Toast (Again1 but they are using all this crap,to avoid paying any compensation or backdating any lost benefits due to er…sanctions…its bloody daft or evil..choose which..
It is not guaranteed that everyone on JSA will be sanctioned…. although Sanction Doubts may be raised on occasion, for example if you have been matched to non existant vacancies on Universal Job Match which did not exist but where JCP require you to prove that you have applied. The best option for the candidate is to do more than what is being asked in terms of the jobs that they apply for, and maintain a robust Job Search Diary.
what?
you mean do a 70 hour week and still not get paid?????
@JED GOODRIGHT Well there is this you can do..
Eowyn, I too am keeping a ‘robust job diary search’. It would be silly not to!!!. Although its hard to focus on looking for work when you have to spend hours looking for jobs that don’t exist (scams), jobs that are not appropriate to your skills, a shite UJM website as well as pestering employers with CVs etc. What a waste of my fucking time!!!!
Yes Bernadette H, but like all of the governments stealth measures whether divide and conquer or underhand tactics there is method in their madness, if you are tied to a computer looking for work you are not out on the streets demonstrating against this evil lot.
ps That is what workfare is all about too, keeping the disgruntled unemployed from demonstrating and rioting, now even assembling!
@guy lets not forget the gagging bill that will help silence any criticism
People have a tendency to think that all work has a purpose. Coal mining is hard, but necessary – we need coal. Working in the sewers is unpleasant, but someone has to keep the sewers in order. The same with a kitchen slave. Some people eat in restaurants, therefore someone else has to wash dishes 80 hours a week. This is civilisation and there is nothing further to discuss. But is the work of a kitchen slave necessary for civilisation. Where is the real need for big hotels and fancy restaurants? There may be a need for hotels, but is it necessary that they have hundreds of people toiling for them? If you assume that the work of a kitchen slave is more or less useless, you have to ask yourself why someone wants him to continue working… this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.
George Orwell
I wrote in an earlier post that if sweat was the criteria for high incomes then the working class would all be millionaires, not the middle and upper classes.
i was parked for the hole 2 years and now been dumped back to the jcp to deal with as i still got nothing to go on a cv, went to my exit review to get a copy and was told it will be posted to me, prob just said that to get rid of me n ill never see 1 as they even said how can i do an exit report when there is nothing to go on 1 and with out a cv 90% of the jobs out there i cant apply for and will be unable to use ujm as i dont have a cv.
@superted according to Richard Branson he ignores all CV sent to him…
What a farce. Utter fucking madness. I’ve finished my two year stint on the Shirk Programe (thank God), but now have to see an adviser at Jokecentre Plus instead (yaaawn). I attended yesterday, and the silly bitch was blathering on about getting me a CSCS card so I can apply for labouring jobs. Thankfully the course is fully booked until November, but in any case I am highly unlikely to gain employment as a Labourer at my age! So now instead of that I am to apply for temporary part-time employment under a local Council-funded scheme called the Employment Opportunity Fund, which will obviously balls-up my Housing Benefit claim and make me worse off than on the dole.
@landless I honestly don’t think jcp GAF any more what happens to claimants
My own stint with the Work Programme ended in July. I attended the JCP office a couple of days ago to sign on, and was presented with a letter informing me that I have to attend a Work Programme Completer Interview in early October. So after being left to my own devices for slightly over two months they now want me to undertake six months of ”more intensive support”. But hang on…isn’t the Work Programme Completer Interview for a JSA claimant supposed to take place within 15 working days of the Work Programme completion date?
This from “What Do They Know?”, a DWP document entitled ‘PWPS Guidance v12 2013 09 05’:
Click to access PWPS%20Guidance%20v12%202013%2009%2005.pdf
L.P I am in the same situation as you. But I have been told I have to undertake 16 job activities a week, so thats 32 a fortnight. Write to 10 employers, visit 6 employers, telephone 4 employers and access that shite UJM site 6 times a week. Theres no money for bus fares, postage, printing, telephone costs, FUCK ALL!!!
I’ve just been told to apply for 5 jobs per week, and be registered with at least 6 agencies, all of which I’ve done. I’ve created 2 Universal Jobshite accounts, and given them access to neither. Thanks to the Data Protection Act you don’t have to tick the little box that grants the DWP permission to snoop on your activity. I take in print-outs of my online job applications and they seem satisfied so far. BUT I’m now being coerced into applying for this Council jobs fund thing and possibly working 16 – 30 Hours per week for 12 months, and I’m guessing it will be Min. Wage so I’ll be more skint than on JSA AND have to travel to work somehow. It might also mean that I still have to do jobsearch and attend interviews.
It will (?almost certainly) be min. wage (council role) & (almost certainly) still involve doing jobsearch/attending interviews (you’ve worked that out already, though).
Do you (or does anyone) know if the raising of a doubt (this language is all so bizarre & punitive) generally need written evidence to support the written statement of fact to be accepted/removed – or do they generally come back asking for (certified in some way) ‘proof’? Thanks already.
@superted according to Richard Branson he ignores all CV sent to him…
not got 1 to send anyway pmsl cant wait to see what my adviser is going to say after 2 years of nothing, well went to my induction 2 years ago and had my exit review this week and that was it had 3 letters that was sent out weeks after the interviews date and sanctions for not going but i won them all anyway im super ted not fucking doctor who with a time machine lol.:)
All of this shite is based around the false belief that unemployment is caused either because people are shirking work (which can be addressed by a terrifying regime based on threat and sanction) or that there is something wrong with them that can be fixed (quickly and easily via a few classes about polishing up CVs and such like).
The truth is that there are too few “sustainable” jobs distributed homogeneously throughout the UK and that employers are rejecting Work Programme “clients” giving what jobs there are available to employed or recently unemployed men and women.
The Work Programme and Universal Credit are both based on the false premise that you can force people into jobs that do not exist or that are unavailable to them. IDS, Freud, and Hoban are a disgrace to British politics, Great Britain, and the human race.
I find that being threatened (with starvation/homelessness) works wonders for my morale and that having money deducted, randomly, at source, from minimalist income always helps me be at my best when approaching prospective employers!!
It’s been such a help so far, that it’s odds-on will probably be first in the queue (whatever the weather)/or sleeping in a tent outside anyway, at the polling station ready to vote either tory/labour/libdem in 2015 …]
If only the time would go a bit faster.
The work program advisor is trying to push me into any old p/t agency temp work just to get a fee I feel. I am not sure but think if your part time stints add up to a certain amount, they are able to get an outcome result. I want to work (who doesn’t?) but I may resist getting a job until my Work Programme finishes in 2 years so as to avoid them gaining any fee from my exploitation. Silly I know but proof that the WP is worse than doing nothing. Before this scheme I had done p/t work and was looking for both p/t and f/t but I am now only open to full time permanent work as I am not going to be used by these people. They are not there to help unemployed only themselves despite what the jobcentre say. One of the reasons I am in the situation I’m in is from being pressured a few years ago by the jobcentre into taking ‘any’ job rather than the type of job I’d have made a career of. That leads to cyclic go nowhere type of employment that leaves one unattractive to employers. Never listen to Jobcentre advisors they have no idea!
@ALL !! A4E staff to be prosecuted !!! ..
http://blog.cps.gov.uk/2013/09/-nine-charged-over-a4e-fraud.html
and the work program is going where???????
10 years
@PARDEM 10 years? wot about wasted lives of the victims..they wont get that back…
@bobchewie “Ingeus and G4S will gain referrals as a reward for better performance”
Not a good day for A4E:
“One of the main firms running the government’s welfare-to-work programme has been punished for poor performance”
“A4E will see a cut in the number of referrals in the East Midlands, South Yorkshire and Merseyside, following an analysis of all contractors by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)”
‘Welfare-to-work provider penalised’, BBC News, 26 Sep 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24286806
@PARDEM Ingeus and G4S will gain referrals as a reward for better performance”” that would G4S the useless money grabbing company would it?
It’s fucked.
A4E, for instance, there’s been allegations of fraud for years, during which the founder was appointed ‘Family Champion’ by the government then…blah, blah, blah, etc, etc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4e
Feel like this sometimes:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/11/italian-anarchists-kneecap-nuclear-executive
Vote Labour
I was with A4E in Merseyside. They were complete rubbish,everyone was treated the same no matter what their work experience,nothing but waste of space CV/spec letter courses,no real training or qualifications of any sort,incompetent advisors and no job opportunities whatsoever. To make matters worse jobseekers with them for two years now have to endure the DWP hit squads,so people have to suffer due to A4E’s woeful performance.A4E should not just have the number of referrals reduced,they should get none at all and told to pay back the money they have already been given for doing sod all.
“A4E said it set itself “extremely high standards” and was “confident” of making improvements.”, extremely high standards of delusion and con artistry more like.
How could Work Programme be improved, says a thing they sent me (WPP).
I’m now thinking: “Burnt down?”
JD, I’m fairly sure that the ‘taking any job’ line of argument is over-rated.
There is simply no need to inform them if and when you find work. All you are obligated to do when ending your claim is to complete and return the JSA booklet you were given when you first claimed.
You can ask any new employer not to share your personal information with any third party, which effectively means that any parasite workfare company would not be able to claim anything for a positive outcome as they would have no evidence that you had found employment.
If you withdraw your consent to have your personal information shared with third parties whilst on Workfare you effectively throw a spanner in the works of the way that Workfare operates – the Workfare cannot, for example, send your CV to prospective employers.
You don’t even have to sign any documentation the Workfare company provides, though obviously they will try to con you into doings so.
The bottom line is that the only information they are entitled to is that which they already have, provided by the Jobcentre when they referred you.
The most likely outcome of doing the above is that you’ll be ‘parked’ for the two year duration of Workfare, but that’s better than having to jump through silly hoops and go for the crappiest of minimum wage jobs that they want you to apply for – it buys time, and that, for us, is gold dust as it gives time for the penny to drop that there never will be ‘full employment’ and that there has to be a whole rethink about what working actually means.
Even in the low wage economies of China and India modern industrial practices means that fewer and fewer workers are needed, so increasingly the future isn’t working, so a different approach will have to develop, which basically means some form of citizens income, as of right, thus changing conceptions of employment/unemployment entirely. The trouble is that none of our numbskull politicians have so far managed to grasp that fact and so seem to be stuck with the lop-sided moral notion that unemployment is the fault of the unemployed.
As always, there is more than enough money about to pay for all of us to receive a no quibble basic income, and pay for all the needs of society with lots of change remaining. The problem is that the money is in the wrong places. Work isn’t going to go away, but the need to work stupidly long hours could be done away with tomorrow if the will was there. We only have to remember the anarcho-syndicalist run industries of Civil War Spain to realise that they expected factory workers to work three or four hours a day to cover basic living needs and contribute to society – it would have been even fewer hours, but there was a war on at the time!
yes we all cash cows for the tory friendswho claim monies on our bodies yet we get poorer has of sanctions but hay like emmathey make vast profits on your body jeff3
there’s only so much of this shit that a man can read
For fuck’s sake what are you all doing???
2 years on work programmes, computer courses to prove your alive, sanctions for farting – WHY DO WE PUT UP WITH THIS????
THIS HAS TO CHANGE – WHEN ARE WE GOING TO MOVE FROM BEING VICTIMS TO TAKING FUCKING CONTROL???????????????????
Securing your rights on Welfare to Work(fare)
Reblogged this on Vox Political.
Pingback: The Work Programme Is Getting Worse Latest Figu...
DWP:Unfit for Purpose
“Fraud office to examine Serco tagging contracts”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24289650
In much pain and up from my bed for the third time tonight ……
what we need is to MLKit – Martin Luther King it
We need a nationwide campaign – not just amongst disabled people – amongst the whole population – no room for arrogance
we need it loud
we need it visible
we need it nationwide not just in london and the metropolitan cities
we need the WARS – we are not scroungers – to mobilise a language of peace and threat against those that do us harm
we need the DPWT – disabled people with tanks – to support a mass campaign
we need the WDLD3 – we don’t like descriptor three faction – to stand at the back and make a lot of squeeling noises
we need the whole population behind us in the full knowledge that it could be them tomorrow
I had a dream too
@johnnyvoid @all i keep seeing this a lot Welfare to Work (UK) what is this shit? private members groups?
http://linkd.in/14MyGsf
lots of private members only welfare to work groups…
Welfare to Work (UK)
“This group is intended to act as a focal point for business networking and discussion around the welfare-to-work industry in the UK. This includes delivery of DWP-funded programmes as well as any other funding routes aimed at moving people into employment. It acts as a complement to the services and community on the Indus Delta website”
http://uk.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1835494
Indus Delta website:
http://indusdelta.co.uk/
“Indus Delta is the UK welfare to work industry’s most up to date destination for news, discussion and online resources.
This is an online community and we welcome contributions from welfare to work professionals in our free discussion forum. Register as a user and login to ask questions, post discussion topics and benefit from the experience of our professional network”
‘About Indus Delta’
http://indusdelta.co.uk/page/what_thing_called_indus_delta
££££££££££££££££££££££££££:
“Our Contract Explorer tool easily allows you to see who is delivering contracts relevant to welfare to work. You can search for contracts by contract package area”
http://indusdelta.co.uk/page/contract_explorer
http://stats.cesi.org.uk/CPA_WP_summary(3)/CPA_WP_summary(3).htm
“You only have power over people as long as you don’t take every everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
– Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
“When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing left to lose”,
@shirleynott DAMN and ive just lost my nothing as well now..
WORKFARE FOR ALL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2434182/Now-work-benefits-Ministers-unveil-tough-crackdown-payments-jobless.html
“The YouGov survey shows most voters [are cunts]”
@pardem ignorant stupid cunts who enjoy being fucked over
@bobchewie I couldn’t have put it better!
Campaign Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance:
@pardem then oxley stuck his head in a blender and later made a bit more sense but still not a lot..
The you gov survey is based on the replies from property owners with shares.
Labour are going to do exactly the same thing but with a bit more money going to the workfare draftees involved. However… considering just how many people will be affected, literally armies of people, how the heck the Tories or Labour parties will be able to find six months of pseudo-work for everybody that qualifies is beyond me.
[You] “can never be too rich or too thin” (or spend too much time working on creating ‘new’ and ‘improved’ versions of your CV …?)
I don’t believe the ‘voters’ are in favour of workfare by a 5-1 ratio. The daily hate are either lying or asking biased right wing readers. Who are they asking in this poll? Tories and the taxpayers alliance? What’s the point in having a minimum wage (which is £2 pound an hour too low anyway) if they are attempting to get millions working for a lot less than even that pittance. This government are scum.
I agree. Something is amiss here. For example the ‘voters’ questioned in respect to workfare also apparently thought that disabled and mentally ill people should not be exempted and should be forced to work for their ESA and such like. It really is difficult to believe that a majority of people in Great Britain believe in cruelty like that.
The article states 56% (something or other) and 12% (something or other) which still leaves 32% unaccounted for; besides saying a ‘ratio of 5 to 1’ when you are quoting percentages sounds jarring and is incongruous.
chewie
This is what they have been trying to achieve all along working for benefits or withdrawing benefits altogether. Benefit claimants should go on hunger strike if not already starving in protest at what they are trying to do and broadcast this to the whole world of how UK treats it’s citizens so has no right to lecture on the world stage. Countries like India that have no welfare state are now fighting to provide one while our representatives are undermining ours.( did I say our representatives? lol)
guy, I think if we went on hunger strike we would be doing their work for them (although I understand why you might have suggested it). More should/could be done to draw (international) attention to what’s going on – although I understand people are doing this who have the relevant information/contacts etc. – there’s just so much of the same (or worse) going on in other countries that I think people are having difficulties focussing on their own ‘survival tactics’ let alone those of the worst off in this country/others like it …
Your probably right Shirl about other countries being focused on their own survival tactics to bother with ours, but ours are falling to their level too.
Just how the hell to they intend to enforce this worfare lark anyway. My understanding is that wp returners were supposed to be doing it as early as June. But no employers will touch it. I mean do companies really want their own in-house wrecker as it were. Just think of the havoc just one person could wreak. One person could leave a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Think about it.
If I was forced to work full time unpaid doing some job I hated under threat of destitution, I’m sure I’d put plenty of effort into thinking of things I could do to cause havoc 😉
Who would want a saboteur who might pee in the food, put cockroaches in the kitchen, etc.? One reason why slavery was stopped in the UK is because paid workers don’t sabotage their companies.
And anyone put on workfare, don’t forget to report(anon) yourself and the company to the benefit cheats hotline.
it seems to me that the pex yougov survey ie “work for your benefits” is more about testing the effectiveness of their propaganda machine, than anything else..
If jobless people don’t have benefits, the crime rate will go up. I’m not saying we should have an enormous amount of money, just enough for basic stuff.
It is surely a human right to have enough to survive. After all they are quite keen to send aid to foreign countries which should not be at the expense of the people of their own country. I am not saying we shouldn’t assist others but find it very strange the treatment of the people they are there to serve and by that I mean the British people. Basic food and shelter is not a luxury but a human right and if they, present and former governments, have mismanaged the economy to such an extent that wealth has gone to the few and basic jobs have now become a rarity, then they have to provide people with sufficient funds/ housing to exist. The society deal is that it works for all but it doesn’t anymore yet those it doesn’t, who are left at the bottom of the heap for whatever reason, have every right to exist/belong in the country they were born. Not in luxury, but basic needs of food, water, shelter and heat. They have no right to deny people these things if they expect people to live within societal rules. And the basics are NOT negotiable or dependant on attending WP or Jobcentreplus or complying with their half-baked mandates. The basics are a human right full stop!
I’d quite happily opt out of this thing called “society” and build a home somewhere in the sticks and farm for a living. But I would not be allowed. Within no time, “Big Brother” i.e… Authority, would turn up with their societal rule book and tell me I can’t do it, I am breaking some law and that the land is private or..state owned. You get the picture. Effectively, we have no choice but to live within society and its onerous rules, but at the same time they deny us the basic means to do so. Doesn’t add up to me! This is a human rights issue that needs to be taken up by ECHR.
Or, they don’t want us to live, full stop.
@ALL have you noticed how the language has been re written in such a way as to blaim claimants..before it was ‘jobless’ ie unemployed now its ‘workless’ to imply laziness,, the same with social security now its ‘welfare’ let me guess they paid a lot of money to a think tank (funded by big business) to dream up that scam..
j d
absolutely correct…spot on…not wrong…but totally right…”the land is ours” http://www.tlio.org.uk/..+ reforesting scotland mag http://www.reforestingscotland.org/
Ingeus Exposed: Caught Lying to Welfare Rights Office!!!
Spooky!
That’s not a million miles from my own experience with ESA and the Salvation Army Employment Plus (plus a whole load of grief).
This whole thing is beyond belief. The way they change the subject “why wouldn’t you want to attend”, I had exactly the same thing. When they are caught out they try to paint you as the scrounger who can’t be arsed.
ghost whistler
yes spooky, as soon as my jcpa said she was referring me, i rung the providers to tell them not to bother, they didn’t, or they send appointments that, sets one up for further discussion with them, and all the running about that involves,…they try to guilt trip one, best nip it in the bud, last thing one wants is botheration, when sick or disabled, left in peace is best..
Well said, JD!
“…And number 2
You have the right to food money
Providing, of course, you don’t mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation
Know your rights
These are your rights
Number 3
You have the right to free speech
As long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it!…”
The Clash – “Know Your Rights”
“20 Ordinary Americans Take About Their Economic Despair”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-24/20-ordinary-americans-take-about-their-economic-despair
Pingback: The Work Programme Is Getting Worse Latest Figures Reveal! « this 'n that
“IF YOU READ THIS ANSWER FROM DWP REGARDING UPDATES OF HOW WELL UNIVERSAL CREDIT IS DOING, YOU WILL REALISE HOW DESPERATE THEY ARE TO CONCEAL THE TRUTH”
Dear Mr Zola,
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request received on 8 August 2013. We take our
responsibilities regarding Freedom of Information seriously and strive to respond within the
time limits set out in the Freedom of Information Act. I apologise that on this occasion we
failed to reply to your original request within the 20 working day time limit.
I have now considered your request and am able to provide the following response.
You asked for:-
Further to request VTR267
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/universal_jobmatch_implementatio#incoming-
371587
please email me all of your subsequent UJ ‘implementation updates’. As well as subsequent
correspondence with Ministers on UJ.
As your request would include the locating, retrieval and analysis of documents relating to all
correspondence with Ministers on UJ, the cost of complying with your request would exceed
the appropriate limit of £600. The appropriate limit has been specified in Freedom of
Information regulations and for central Government it is set at £600. This represents the
estimated cost of one person spending 3½ working days determining whether the Department
holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Under section 12
of the FOIA 2000 the DWP is not obliged to comply with your request and will not be
processing your request further.
If you were to make a new request for a narrower category of information, we may be able to
comply with that request within the appropriate limit, although I cannot guarantee that this will
be the case. For example, you could refine your request to cover a shorter period of time
and/or specific areas. In addition it is possible that exemptions may apply in relation to
information covered by a refined request meaning that DWP is not required to disclose the
information requested.
If you have any queries about this letter please contact me quoting the reference number
above.
Yours sincerely,
DWP Central FoI Team
Freedom of information and other fought for civil rights are the next to be withdrawn from the lower echelons of society, the rich and powerful have access to anything they want largely and are using quango’s and government agencies to dictate the data written about you which for some is a pack of lies and is one of the reasons they do not want you to have access to it and why the data information officials will not withdraw it even when faced with evidence that shows that it is based on lies.
I have been unemployed for three years (and at 59 will probably continue so unless someone waves a magic wand over age discrimination)and for the past three Augusts an attempt has been to sanction me for what I can only call ‘dodgy’ reasons. I have appealed and fought back knowing I was
right and they were wrong. I have won on all three occasions. Presumably
they do this with everyone at some point with the sole intention of demoralising jobseekers. And, I imagine, it keeps someon at the DWP in a job
A
Pingback: The Work Programme Is Getting Worse Latest Figu...
So you think a sanction for 1month is a hardship, try for 8 months like they did to me when Blair was in power and believe you me I fought tooth and nail, had my appeals thrown in the bin never to see the light of day, they discriminate against some more than others it seems.
g f
very true, in solidarity…
Looking for some advice. I had been on the Work Programme for a short while then was offered a job (short term until end of year). I had applied for the job a few weeks prior to starting Work Programme. I have refused to let my advisor know the details of my job/employer because, like I have already mentioned I got the job fair and square without the advisors help.
Why should Ingeus or the advisor try to claim a fee or whatever they get? It had eff all to do with them.
They have called me everyday this week trying to get the information. Do I have to supply the employment details?
Would appreciate any advice. Thank you,
@you just cant win NO ! DONT TELL THEM ANYTHING..TELL THEM TO FUCK OFF..its a constant trick ..its worth several hundred quid to them to claim credit for stuff they didnt do..
I agree with Bob not to tell them anything. After all why would you want to help the very people that are trading on your misery? You simply perpetuate the parasites existence.
Funnily though there are many stupid people about. I overheard one conversation when at a meeting with my advisor. One of their former ‘clients’ who had gained some sort of menial job and had actually dropped in of their own will to update them, all smiles as though they were best of friends. The second the fool left the room, the advisors face simply turned to stone. It was an incredible sight to observe from afar.
They are only interested in the bottom line…how much they can make out of our misfortune. They are parasites and care nothing for their host.
@JD there were so many reports saying that workfare had little or no effect on employment in fact it drove employment down..but of course tories chose to ignore it..
@bobchewie .. Okay I’ll keep them in the dark. I’m sure they’ll hassle me like hell when I return onto the programme next year (unless I find another job of course) but until then they can sod off.
Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
Beginning with a photo of Royston Vesey’s domineering Job Centre head from The League of Gentlemen, The Void here shows how the DWP’s own statistics has shown that the Work Programme is actually getting worse. The number of people, who have found work through it, is actually lower than those, who have been able to find a job without it. The proportion of disabled or sick people on Employment Support Allowance on the Work Programme, who have got a job is only 4 per cent. The DWP claims that the number of people on Unemployment Benefit, who have got a job through the Work Programme, is gradually increasing, but admit that it actually went down in the last quarter. They claim that 37,000 former unemployed people managed to find a job through the Programme, but admit that 1.14 million had been unemployed for over a year, a period sufficiently long for them to have found a job anyway. As Mr. Void points out, that’s about a million people to whom the Work Programme has made no difference whatsoever. This means that the Work Programme, for all its claims, is a waste of public money. Helping the unemployed find work is not, however, the Programme’s true function. Its real function is to allow the Coalition to cut benefits and maintain a low wage, low-tax economy – but only for the rich – to provide a desperate and demoralised workforce ready to be exploited by the big multinationals now funding the Tories and Libdems. The Work Programme provides a fig leaf for this policy by apparently showing that the government is genuinely concerned and actively helping the unemployed, while maintaining that the policy’s failures are due to the unemployed themselves, not for an inefficient and exploitative system the Tories themselves have erected.
Beastrabban
Although your comments are true, labour exploited the workforce in exactly the same way although they usually provide much needed infrastructure spending on roads, social house building etc., but even this became a thing of the past from Blair who was stealing council housing land and knocking down social housing and building houses for sale in their place and the road resurfacing saw cones and holes everywhere obstructing traffic with not much work activity going on only disruption.
Pingback: The Tragic Statistic That Reveals Welfare Reform To Be A Sham | the void
Pingback: The Tragic Statistic That Reveals Welfare Reform To Be A Sham | SMILING CARCASS'S TWO-PENNETH
Pingback: Expendable people: the truth about US workfare. And some interviews with long-unemployed people. | Kate Belgrave
Pingback: Why George Osborne’s Workfare Plans Won’t Work | the void
Pingback: Bare-faced Lies, Bluff and Bullshit Are All Iain Duncan Smith Has Left As Millions Suffer | the void
If you are really fed up on the work programme then revoke your permission for the provider to contact any employers on your behalf and also to evidence your job start. The welcome pack you receive from a provider initially contains consent forms so they can:
1. Send your CV out to employers on your behalf
2. Enable the provider to confirm you are in work at day 1, 13 & 26 weeks, the provider receive payments at those trigger points
If you don’t sign or revoke your permission if you have signed already, then the provider can’t evidence the job or get paid. Getting you into a job will have no financial benefit to the provider. This may take the pressure off as advisors have targets to meet and they wont hassle you if their not going to get any money or points for getting you into work.
Advisors are targeted to get roughly 10 people into work per month and are also targeted to keep you in work for 13 & 26 weeks. They will say and do anything to keep you in work for at least 26 weeks so targets are met and they get their money.
Not signing their paperwork giving them permission to contact employers means they don’t get paid and will really hit a nerve. YOU DON’T HAVE TO SIGN AND CAN REVOKE YOUR PERMISSION AT ANY TIME!! If they contact your employer when you do get a job then they have broken the data protection act and they will have to face the music once you make an official complaint.
Good luck
It’s very easy to judge people when you can’t see things from their angle.
This is just one of many reasons why this Tory ‘government’ is so out of touch, socially biased and pure evil. Ask yourself if the Bedroom tax is fair, when a Mansion tax is ignored, anyone? How is targeting the poorest fair, when the rich constantly get let off?
The truth, the Tories policies have been made not to affect them, but to affect others.
While I can understand the opinions of hard working people on claimants ‘playing the system’, the point I’m making is the vast majority don’t want to be on benefits, they are stuck on them.
It’s very easy for tax players to take the pretentious, moral high ground when they don’t face the same level of uncertainty, emotional stress and daily personal harassment from agencies and media.
I myself have been unemployed for a longer period of time than I would’ve liked, to the point I’m embarrassed and ashamed. I can now no longer even see a way out and it’s destroying every facet of my life.
Struggling with severe mental health problems hasn’t made things easy, but I’ve been to several interviews and at times tried ludicrously hard.
The rejections are beyond difficult to take, especially when the desperation gets more and more prominent and your confidence turns to dust.
Another thing people cannot understand is, that when you have certain health problems, mental or physical, you have to be selective with jobs you pick to apply for, as you are UNABLE to do certain ones.
I have not once claimed ESA but will be now forced to now seek out my options due to the high anxiety levels the Work Programme harassment is causing me.
The most angering thing of all is my crippling health issues would actually improve, would I be able to actually get a damn job!
But I just take this as one of life’s ‘funny’ ironies.
I’ve experienced and am currently on the ‘Work’ Programme as it’s called and it’s a degrading, soul destroying experience. All the impetus is on you get the work you need, but isn’t that what THEY are employed to help with?
If many claimants were doing such a great job and were fortunate enough they wouldn’t be at these agencies in the first damn place.
And I’m sorry, but it’s clearly obvious people love the black and white stereotypes.
Not every claimant is a ‘scrounger’ in the same way that not every ‘hard working person’ is that very thing. We’ve become a sickening society of demonizing, judgemental, loud mouthed, crowd following, idiots, unable to make our own decisions without being force fed them first.
If I was in any position of power, I would force employers to pay people an apprentice type wage wage of 2-3 pounds an hour to placement workers.
This would give a bit of dignity and pride back to people who are regularly getting stripped of it and being screwed over well and truly by these predatory employers and a clueless, classless ‘government’.
Employers get a free ride with placement workers and they save TONS, when the vast majority of these people work hard for absolutely NOTHING.
For many and myself being aware in my current position, we could be doing placement jobs and free or voluntary jobs in reality ‘forever’, so why not make it at least a bit more dignified?
If you are not going to guarantee us all work, do you expect us to work for free and help out predatory employers forever?
Finally, if life on benefits is so great, then why do I consider taking my own life, every single day?
Pingback: The Tragic Statistic That Reveals Welfare Reform To Be A Sham | Dorset Eye