Sanctions Hypocrisy

A culture of sanctions has developed in jobcentres and work programme providers. There have been reports of staff being pushed by managers to meet sanctions quotas, stopping benefits for weeks regardless of whether or not claimants have been meeting their obligation to look for work. The personal impact of benefits being stopped can be devastating but the government wants to save money and if that means some of the poorest people in the country being pushed from a bad position into a dire one then so be it. They only care about their own.

The hypocrisy of attacking the poorest people in the country while giving tax cuts to millionaires is obvious but there is another hypocrisy facing benefits claimants every day.

Letters from Work Programme providers warn against missing appoinments or not carrying out tasks you are required to by the provider. The following is an extract from a standard letter issued by one provider (Ingeus):

“If you do not undertake the activities required in this notification your benefits could be affected.

“If you do fail to take part and DWP decide that your Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) should be sanctioned, your benefit will be stopped and you will lose National Insurance credits for:

– Two weeks, for a first failure

– Four weeks, if DWP have previously decided that your JSA should be sanctioned because you failed without good reason to take part in the Work Programme or any other scheme set up under the Jobseeker’s Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme) Regulations 2011, and that sanctioned started within the last 12 months; or

– 26 weeks, if DWP decided on two or more previous occasions that your JSA should be sanctioned because you failed without good reason to take part in the Work Programme or any other scheme set up under those Regulations, and the most recent sanction started within the last 12 months.”

Benefits are paid from the public purse so it’s only right that people in receipt of a benefit like JSA should be doing their best to look for work. However, there is another side to that.

The above letter says nothing about sanctions levied against Work Programme providers or the DWP when they fail to live up to their responsibilities.When a claimant turns up more than 10 minutes late for an appointment they may find their appoinment cancelled and they may, given the sanctions quotas, find themselves in real trouble. Go to a jobcentre or a Work Programme provider any day, monday to friday, and you will find people who have been kept waiting for much longer than 10 minutes. I have been kept waiting for appoinments at my Work Programme provider for well over an hour. I have had appointments cancelled when I was en route. As another claimant told me “as far as they’re concerned I’m unemployed so I must have nothing better to do with my day than sit here”.

Claimants are warned, threatened or sanctioned if they are late for or cancel appointments (“without good reason”) but the DWP and Work Programme providers are free to keep people waiting or cancel appointments whenever they wish. We face the threat of sanctions when we fail to live up to our responsibilties but they are not similarly obligated.

This is just one more example of the victims of the economic depression being blamed and punished while those who caused it walk between the rain drops. It is also a good reason for unemployed workers to join the upcoming demonstrations by the TUC and STUC against austerity. The STUC march starts at 11am, George Sq, Glasgow on 20th October and the TUC march begins on the same day at 11am, Victoria Embankment, London.