Workplace battleground: Labour and Tories at war over employment

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banker, benefit, benefit tourism, bonus, compulsory, Conservative, David Cameron, employment, English, general election, guarantee, I'm not racist but, Iain Duncan Smith, immigrant, improve, Institute, IPPR, job, Jobseeker's Allowance, Labour, Liam Fox, literacy, long term, Lynton Crosby, math, Michael Gove, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, national debt, numeracy, pension, Pensions, policy, politics, public, Rachel Reeves, relief, repress, Research, school, secretary, service, shadow, skill, social security, tax, Tories, Tory, translation, unemploy, unemployment, Vox Political, wage, welfare, work, workplace, xenophobe, xenophobic, young

Labour is forging forward with new plans to improve work prospects and the skills of those seeking employment, while the Conservatives are plunging backward with proposals to penalise people who lack the ability to speak basic English.

Already right-wingers in the media have been trying to undermine the policies announced by Rachel Reeves in a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research. They say Labour is planning to strip people of their benefits if they don’t take classes to improve their English and Maths skills, if necessary.

This talk of punishment for people who need help is completely wrong-headed. If someone can’t get a job because they can’t read, write or do their sums, then they should get help. Of course they should.

One has to wonder what has gone wrong in our schools, to lead to this situation. Perhaps Michael Gove would like to take responsibility? No, didn’t think so.

In fact, the plans announced by the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary are perfectly reasonable – especially in contrast with the latest Tory madness, but we’ll come to that soon enough.

We already know that the centrepiece of Labour’s economic plan is a compulsory jobs guarantee for young people and the long-term unemployed.

This means anyone over 25 who has been receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance for two years or more, and anyone under that age who has been receiving the same benefit for one year or more would get a guaranteed job, paying at least the minimum wage, for 25 hours a week – coupled with training for at least a further 10 hours a week.

This is perfectly reasonable. If you have been looking for work for more than a year, and couldn’t get it yourself, then the extra income provided by such a placement (especially coming in line with Labour’s plan to increase wages, in order to really make work pay, rather than depressing benefits and putting everyone in poverty, which is Conservative policy) will be welcome.

It doesn’t mean that people will have to put their own ambitions on hold. The best advice I ever received was to get a paying job during the day, in order to put food on the table and clothes on my back, and work on what I really wanted to do in the evenings. Eventually, with perseverance, it should be possible to replace the day job with what you really want to do.

Most of the jobs are likely to be in small firms where, once a company has invested six months in a new recruit, the chances are they will want to keep them on after the subsidy has ended.

The jobs guarantee would be fully funded by repeating the tax on bankers bonuses – they were in the news recently, when it was announced that these people would be receiving unearned bonuses worth twice as much as their salary so they’ve definitely got the cash to spare – and a restriction on pension tax relief for those on the very highest incomes.

But – of course – putting people into a job isn’t much good if they don’t have the knowledge of English and Maths that most of us use without thinking in our everyday lives.

In her speech, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary said: “The shocking levels of English and maths among too many jobseekers are holding them back from getting work, and trapping them in a vicious cycle between low paid work and benefits.

“Nearly one in 10 people claiming JSA don’t have basic English skills, and over one in ten don’t have basic maths. IT skills among jobseekers are even worse; nearly half don’t have the basic email skills which are now essential for almost any job application.

“And we know that this keeps people out of jobs: those out of work are twice as likely than those in work to lack basic English and Maths,” she said, proving that her own lack in that area hasn’t held her back. Twice as likely as those in work, Rachel.

She said research has shown that, when people who lack these skills do get jobs, they too often find themselves in short term or temporary work, with a swift return to benefits. Nearly one in five of those who have made multiple claims for unemployment benefits have problems with reading or numeracy.

The response: “A new requirement [will be] for jobseekers to take training if they do not meet basic standards of maths, English and IT – training they will be required to take up alongside their jobsearch, or lose their benefits.

“[We] will ensure that people’s skills needs are assessed, and basic skills gaps addressed, from the start of a Jobseeker’s Allowance Claim, not after months and years of neglect.”

Contrast this with the Conservative Party’s latest plan to hammer immigrants and people on benefits – announcing a new policy of repression every week ahead of the election in 2015, according to politics.co.uk

It seems right-wing Australian election chief, and tobacco lobbyist, Lynton Crosby thinks this kind of bully-boy behaviour will make the Tories more popular! Don’t laugh.

This comes after satirical radio comedy The Now Show featured a sketch in which people tried to justify xenophobic attitudes without saying the words “I’m not racist, but…”

Let’s try the reverse – putting those words into the new policies announced on politics.co.uk:

“I’m not racist, but we should strip benefits from anyone who can’t speak English!” (Does this include the English people who can’t speak their own language properly, who Labour plan to help?)

“I’m not racist, but we should axe the service telling people about benefits in foreign languages!”

“I’m not racist, but we should end translation services in benefits offices!” (According to politics.co.uk, David Cameron is very keen on that one).

The site said “Iain Duncan Smith is understood to already be working on them”. (He’s not racist, but…)

Tory backbencher and former scandal Liam Fox tried to justify this lunacy by saying: “The ability to speak English is one of the most empowering tools in the labour market and we should be encouraging as many people as possible to learn it.” By cutting off their income? How does that work?

Plans to focus on the government’s increasingly racist tough anti-immigrant message come despite warnings that a reduction in immigration would make it harder for Britain to pay back its national debt.

The site said that, last week, a long-awaited report into benefit tourism had to be shelved in secret, after failing to find any evidence of it.

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A tale of two plans

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'Pre-distribution', benefit, benefits, borrow, borrowing, cabinet, Coalition, Conservative, conservatories, conservatory, credit crisis, debt, economic, economy, Ed Miliband, employee, employer, extension, fiscal austerity, government, inflation, Jacob Hacker, Labour, living wage, loan shark, low-wage, make work pay, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minimum wage, Parliament, people, planning permission, politics, poverty, productivity, redistribute, reshuffle, skill, skills, staff, tax, tax credits, taxes, Tories, Tory, VAT, Vox Political, wages, wealth, workforce

This person is building a conservatory. Are the Tories seriously suggesting that he is helping solve the financial crisis?

Both the Labour Party and the Conservatives have unveiled new plans to revive the UK economy, in the wake of last week’s deeply unimpressive Cabinet reshuffle. Let’s take a look at them.

Labour is offering us the impressively-titled ‘Pre-distribution’ – a system which asks employers to pay their staff more money in wages, in order to eliminate the need for the government to take higher taxes and then redistribute the wealth, thereby lessening the huge differences between the benefits enjoyed by the very wealthy and the privations suffered by the very poor.

Labour leader Ed Miliband, announcing the policy, called for firms to be responsible in their attitude to wages, and to focus on the long-term.

He said it would require a major shift in philosophy for the Labour Party, as many redistribution options – for example, increasing tax credits – will not be possible when Labour next returns to power, although redistribution of tax wealth will always be necessary.

He said pre-distribution – a term he has taken from US economist Jacob Hacker – is about lifting the UK away from being a low-wage economy, because this has made us unable to pay our way in the world. We must have higher wages – and therefore our workforce needs higher skills.

In fact, this is just an impressive title for something Labour has already spent a considerable period supporting – the ‘Living Wage’. The idea is that, while the minimum wage went some way towards lifting people out of poverty, it did not finish the job.

Consider workers who do 29 hours a week on minimum wage. They do not qualify for tax credits and the amount they earn may not cover their outgoings. How do they survive?

Under the current government, the only choice is to borrow, if they don’t have savings. So they go to richer family members and ask for a handout (a humiliating experience, made worse if a person is working full-time) or, much worse, they go to loan sharks.

Recent reports have indicated that people working full-time – 37 or more hours a week – are still not earning enough to cover their overheads and are having to do the same.

The current system therefore makes it possible for people to get into phenomenal amounts of debt, and we know that debt is what caused the global credit crisis of 2008. As more and more people go overdrawn, banks will fall into trouble. The amounts might not be as much – individually – but cumulatively they become a problem.

Also, consider the working atmosphere created by the current attitude to wages. Employers have enjoyed wage increases that have multiplied their earnings by – what is it – eight and a half times over the last 30 years. Employees have seen theirs rise by something like 27 per cent – less than the rate of inflation. Therefore their earnings have dropped in real terms, and that’s why we see the problems I have outlined above.

As a result of this, workers become demoralised. What’s the point of going to work for a business where the bosses make out like bandits and the people who actually create the wealth are treated like dirt? As a result, productivity slumps. Of course it does. Where’s the incentive to produce high-quality work at high speed? This leads to a drop in sales as orders fall off due to dissatisfaction. If the trend continues, the company fails. I have seen this happen to a major employer in the town where I live. It has been forced to remodel itself, cutting back and back, but still fell into receivership and may now be under its second new owner within 10 years. The problem for managers is they never decide to cut back on the source of the problem – poor managers who take too much of the profit; they always cut down the workforce, reducing their chance of profitability still further.

This is also what happened with my last employer – a newspaper company that is struggling because it is top-heavy. I left because bosses ignore my advice and went ahead with a plan that I knew would harm sales of the edition where I worked. Sure enough, within a few months it had merged with another edition. The solution from management? Cut down on anything other than management. Ridiculous.

And, by the way, British industrialists: A saving is not a profit. If you cut back one year in order to keep your head above water, what do you do when it doesn’t carry over into the next?

Labour’s alternative would pay workers enough money to have something left over, after they have covered their costs. They will have spending power. This means they will be able to buy more, invest more – they will have breathing space, and a sense of personal worth. From that will come a sense of pride in their work and a feeling that they are valued by their bosses. Productivity improves, as does the quality of the product. Orders increase. The company flourishes and is able to employ more workers. The cycle of growth then repeats itself.

Isn’t that better?

The plan also shows up the Conservatives’ lie that cutting benefits will ‘make work pay’. Forcing people off of a benefit system that doesn’t pay their costs and into a job that doesn’t pay their costs is no solution at all and any Tory who spouts this nonsense in the media is to be mocked and targeted for unseating at the next election (in my opinion).

In contrast, the Conservatives have announced that home owners will be allowed to build large conservatories and extensions without needing planning permission. The Tories hope a home improvements boom will stimulate the economy.

Don’t laugh; they’re serious.

They haven’t realised that this will only benefit those who, firstly, own their houses; secondly, have enough spare cash to pay for what has been described as a “large” extension to their dwelling and; thirdly, want one. Apparently there are around 200,000 applications a year – that’s a drop in the ocean when you live in a country of more than 60 million.

The relaxation of planning rules will only last until 2015, because the Tories want to persuade homeowners to get on and build these extensions as soon as possible – again, failing to realise that we are in the middle of a time of fiscal austerity, which they are enforcing, and we simply don’t have the cash.

Therefore, the solution proposed by the government is for private individuals to borrow more, in order to fund the scheme and pay the builders. Isn’t that what the Tories have been mocking Labour for proposing on a national level – even though Labour isn’t currently proposing that?

Also, what about the 20 per cent VAT that goes on home improvements?

And what about the increased aggro between neighbours, as our quiet leafy suburbs get turned back into construction sites?

So the choice seems to be: Pay workers more, see increased long-term productivity and less concern over debt; or get homeowners to put themselves in debt by borrowing to pay for home improvements they probably don’t need and create a short-term boost in the construction industry.

Which one gets your vote?