Thursday 13 August 2009

What would the work be like?

What would the work be like?


A variation on "New Deal" up till now

So far, it seems that Flexible New Deal is a watered-down version of the old New Deal, involving placements lasting 4 weeks instead of 13. That scheme mostly involved low-grade manual jobs, many of which the government encourage charities to set up for the express purpose of keeping unemployed people busy while providing extra income for the charities.

Despite there appearing so far to be little difference between Flexible New Deal and its predecessor, this might change. There was much talk about what would happen to people who had been out of work for two years, as I have been. One idea was that Flexible New Deal was that it would involve continuous placements, so that people would be kept on the scheme until they find a real job, become disabled (perhaps as a result of the forced work scheme), go to prison, die or are pensioned off. Thus far, I haven't had to sweep the streets (though I have had to sweep shed floors) but since the headlines were all about sweeping streets, let's start with that. I can see how it would work.

Street cleaners

In Leicester, I see street-cleaners doing their job. Professional street-cleaners each drive a buggy, equipped to suck up the waste while they drive. Sometimes, the driver steps out of the buggy with a scoop to pick up waste that the buggy cannot reach (under a bench, for example). If unemployed people were made to do this job, they wouldn't be trained to drive a buggy. No, they would be given brooms, shovels, scoops, bin-bags and bins, then told to get on with it. A driver in a buggy can pick up waste far more efficiently than a whole squad of people armed only with brooms, shovels, scoops, bin-bags and bins, but that's not the government's concern. They just want to keep people busy. Also, equipment costs money. In the BBC debate Should benefits be linked to community service?, one person commented as follows.

When I applied for a job as a street-cleaner a few years ago, I was told I was not suitable for the job, because I did not have the qualifications or experience required for the position. Two weeks ago I saw a similar job advert asking for qualifications and experience. The jobcentre even accused me of telling lies about requiring experience, until they looked for themselves. Under these new proposals, I will be perfect for this job. Is that because they won't have to pay me a proper wage???

After reading that, I found a street-cleaning job advertised in my local jobcentre. It was only a temporary position but it confirmed what I thought, because it required a full driving license. I found it online but it's now been deleted, presumably because somebody has been appointed. It reinforces what I said in another page - that in this day and age, there are No truly unskilled jobs .

In the summer of 2009, I saw vacancies advertised for street cleaners of a more traditional type, but I wonder why. Perhaps it is part of some kind of experiment to see how effective it is.

Apart from street cleaning

In practice, I'm not sure that the work would predominately involve sweeping the streets, but the same principles are likely to apply to whatever work the scheme involves. It will be highly labour-intensive with a bare minimum of equipment. While employers often use equipment of all types to reduce the number of real people they employ, thereby cutting costs and improving efficiency, any scheme primarily designed to keep people occupied necessarily replaces equipment with people. As such, the experience gained will be of limited value (or no value to all) to potential employers, since people won't learn how to use the equipment that they would use in a real job. As one person pointed out in the BBC debate Should benefits be linked to community service?,

Forcing the unemployed to do voluntary work in return for their benefits will do nothing to get them back into paid employment. It will undercut companies contracting to do this work and the system will be unwieldy and costly to administer.

Somebody else naively suggested

I understand there are many unemployed people out there who want to work, and such people will not see this as a burden I am sure.

That person is correct that there are many unemployed people out there who want to work, but only partly right that all such people will not see this as a burden. If people are given suitable work, then they may not see it as a burden; indeed, some of them are happy with their New Deal experiences. Sadly, I don't believe that the government's first priority will be to assign people work to which they are suited, nor do I believe that they will allow people enough time to look for jobs. New Deal has not worked for me and I see no reason why any other scheme should work any better for me. Of course, if my pessimism about the way the scheme will operate is completely unjustified, then I won't see it as a burden. Like I said, I hope that the scheme works differently from the way I've described, but I can only go on my experience of New Deal.

Another person in that debate said that unemployed accountants shouldn't be expected to sweep the streets, but could be sent to a charity to do their book-keeping. Nice theory, but the accountant, like the computer programmer, the engineer and all the other skilled people who fall victim to redundancy, gets exactly the same treatment as everybody else on New Deal so until and unless the politicians provide evidence that any new scheme will work differently, I'll assume the worst. In any case, it's possible that the accountant lost his or her previous job because of malpractice and in such a case, no other organization would trust the accountant.

I've been told that I'm not a computer programmer any more because I'm unemployed. Of course, that's nonsense, but it shows the way that some (but not all) jobcentre and placement agency staff think. In contrast, employers do still think of me as a computer programmer although my programming skills are out of date. As long as there is such a divergence, it is impossible for any of them to understand my situation.

Employers worried

One employer expressed alarm at the prospect of being forced to accept unemployed people. This won't happen if the new scheme works anything like New Deal, in which employers are paid by the government to accept people but are under no obligation to do so. Actually, that's why most New Deal projects are run by charities. Conventional employers just aren't interested despite the inducements offered. Everybody has their price and if the government raises the value of the inducements sufficiently, some employers may be tempted although it would raise the cost of the scheme considerably. You'd think the public sector might run New Deal projects, but I don't think they do. That's another reason why I think it unlikely that any new scheme would predominately involve sweeping the streets.

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