Down with gReed BABC Fringe
Meeting for PCS conference Kennedy Palace Hotel, 24 November 1998...retour
Down with gReed
BABC Fringe Meeting for PCS conference
Kennedy Palace Hotel, 24 November 1998
I'd like to start off by briefly describing the history
of our campaign group, Brighton Against Benefit Cuts, before offering our
analysis of the present situation and the possible way forward in our struggle
against the privatization of the Employment Service.
Brighton Against Benefit Cuts was formed in response
to the New Deal, but its forerunner, Brighton Against the JSA, goes back
to the start of this wave of attacks on benefits. Brighton Against the
JSA was set up as an umbrella group, uniting both the local Claimants Action
Group and organized workers, particularly those working in the Jobcentres
and Benefits Agency.
The shared concern of those who set the group up was
that the policing aspect of benefit provision was overtaking the benefit-
and advice-providing aspect itself. We all felt that the JSA, if unopposed,
would increase the pressure on the unemployed, pushing more people into
low-paid jobs, and hence creating downward pressure on wages in many sectors.
We all shared the analysis, in other words, that the JSA was an attack
on the working class which had to be resisted.
If the JSA was an attack on the working class, then it
was more than an attack on claimants. It was an attack on all workers.
It also had particular consequences for those who work in the Jobcentres
and Benefits Agency.
The view of those of us involved in Brighton Against
Benefit Cuts is that claimants and workers in the ES and BA are in many
ways the same people. Public sector pay and conditions have been driven
down to such an extent that those who work in the ES and BA are themselves
on some form of benefits. And with the increased use of short-term contracts,
many of those in work in these agencies will know at least the threat if
not the actuality of life on the dole. Likewise, many claimants are often
in and out of unemployment and work.
But we saw the need for an umbrella group spanning both
claimants and dole-workers not only because of a basic shared identity.
We also believed it would be the most effective way to fight the attacks
on us all. In fact, we believe that any success we have had over the years
has been due in large part to the fact that we have been a campaign group
that links both sides of the counter.
Our first opportunity for developing practical, concrete
links came during the Jobcentre workers' strike in the winter of 1995-6.
Here in Brighton, the offices were out on indefinite strike, and claimants
in the group regularly joined workers on the picket-line to explain to
other claimants why they should support the strike: because a victory for
the Jobcentre workers would strengthen their hand against management; and
it was management, obviously, who had most interest in implementing the
JSA in full.
We like to think that our action and analysis have been
vindicated. The strike wasn't won, but workers made contacts with claimants
and felt encouraged to organize. Even with the JSA in force, Brighton remains
one of the best places to sign on in the country. The jobs and pay locally
are absolute crap, but you get a lot less hassle signing on here than in
most other towns.
With the same kind of arguments in mind, Brighton Against
the JSA gave support to the strike by Benefits Agency workers a year or
so later over the issue of screens in the Jobcentres. Although, like many
activists on both sides of the counter, we had criticisms of the strike
pretext, we again felt that any victory could strengthen organized workers
and undermine the smooth implementation of the JSA.
Brighton Against the JSA had a number of successes
in its final months, when it took on the ‘Project Work’ workfare scheme,
which was piloted here last year. As everyone here will know, the scheme
didn't even pretend to offer any training. And its elements of compulsion,
the shoddy quality of placement provision and all the petty punishments
meted out revealed the scheme as just another attempt to intimidate the
unemployed. Brighton Against the JSA picketed those employers - mostly
so-called charity shops - to which claimants had been sent to work for
their dole. We forced a number of them into humiliating climbdowns, most
notably a local church, the Brighthelm Centre, which was employing forced
labour in its kitchens and grounds. The Brighthelm Centre dismissed our
protests at first, and argued that the unemployed were lazy and couldn't
get out of bed in the morning. We couldn't persuade them with rational
arguments, but only by pushing our way into their premises en masse when
our local MP, David Lepper, held his surgery there. We only left the premises
when police drew their batons in panic.
Our local MP is Labour and won his seat at the last election,
at which the government promised to move away from the punitive approach
to benefits administration so favoured by the last government. But an early
indication of the emptiness of this promise was the decision to go ahead
with the Project Work scheme, which Gillian Shepherd had already admitted
was basically just a way of flushing out those working on the side.
But we were told that the New Deal for 18-24 year olds
would be different.
From the start, however, we saw a clear continuity rather
than a break with the approach to benefits taking place over the last few
years.
In the first place, and crucially, the JSA and its mechanisms
of sanction were not abolished. In fact, the JSA is the very bedrock of
the New Deal for young people. Those who refuse placements or interviews
are liable to the sanctions which the Job Seekers Act made possible. Already
over 1,300 young people have suffered such cuts. And now employment spokesman
Andrew Smith echoes Tory employment minister Gillian Shepherd by claiming
this as a success because those supposedly working on the side have been
flushed out.
Leaving aside for the moment the not insignificant question
of whether most work on the side provides a living wage - because the dole
itself certainly doesn't provide enough to live on - there is still the
issue of why the sanctions are needed. We have still not had an answer
to the question of why sanctions are necessary if the New Deal is so wonderful.
But there is an answer to this question, of course. If
the New Deal is based upon the mechanisms of the JSA, it is also entirely
consistent with the economic imperatives of the JSA. We all know that the
talk of ‘opportunity’, ‘choice’ and ‘options’ is complete guff because
the government itself concedes that the New Deal is not a job creation
programme. What is it then?
Its basic aim is to make the economy run at a higher
speed. The problem for British capital is that there has been something
of a dual labour market. The youth labour market collapsed in the early
eighties and large numbers of people got used to long-term unemployment,
but wage levels remained relatively high, still leaving large sectors of
British capital uncompetitive. The problem for capital was that those outside
work were perceived by the bosses as being unemployable. So rather than
this reserve army of labour creating competition and pressure on wages,
in many sectors existing workers were simply poached across enterprises
and were able to command relatively high wages.
The JSA, workfare schemes and the New Deal are not simply
about saving money on the benefits system. They are about making the unemployable
‘employable’ again.
For the individual claimant, this might initially appear
attractive. If you want a job, becoming more employable through work-experience
or training may make employment and so a decent income more possible.
But for the working class as a whole, without increasing
the jobs available, enhanced employability across previously recalcitrant
sectors of the labour-market is a huge attack. Increased competition will
drive down wages and conditions: that is the iron law of the labour-market.
We have seen this process begin locally. The local Council
boast that they are participating in the New Deal by offering some of their
vacancies to New Deal trainees. Of course, they are not creating new jobs.
They are merely displacing them. The person who would have ordinarily applied
for the post is not considered, but instead finds herself facing stiffer
competition for similar posts.
And what impacts on the working class as a whole will
impact upon the individual claimant seeking work. She may have welcomed
the promises of the New Deal initially, and she may now be more employable.
But the jobs available to her have become increasingly unattractive and
less well paid.
It's also apparent, of course, that, like previous make-work
and workfare schemes, the New Deal won't provide anything more useful on
the labour-market than the ability to get in to work on time. Most claimants
probably won’t get the high quality training or work-experience they really
want.
However, for the bosses, of course, the inculcation of
work-discipline - the ability to get out of bed in the morning, as the
Brighthelm Centre put it - is essential. And that is why the government,
acting on behalf of British capital, believe it is worth investing in the
New Deal. Look in any Jobcentre and you will see that many of the jobs
available, particularly the lowest-paying ones, require reliability more
than skills. The New Deal must be understood as part of a huge ideological
offensive according to which the work ethic is instilled in everyone, and
those groups who have taken a life on benefits for granted come to be ‘included’
in the world of wage-labour. This is why JSA sanctions are at the heart
of it.
However, to paraphrase the New Labour theme tune, things
might even get worse. Some years ago, the transformation of the Jobcentre
wing of the Department of Employment and the benefits wing of the DSS into
quasi-independent agencies made possible their privatization.
The rationale for such a move is essentially the
same as that for the attack on benefits: to make certain entrenched sectors
of the labour-market more flexible. And Jobcentre workers have a proud
record of entrenchment. The evidence of this is the incursion of Reed into
the area normally monopolised by the Employment Service. Reed workers get
lower wages and aren't unionized. As a private sector company, Reed has
a direct financial interest in pushing people into crappy, low paid work.
In the Jobcentres, on the other hand, the aims of the
government in shoving people into crap jobs are always mediated by the
interests of Jobcentre workers, both through organized resistance to management
and through individual acts of solidarity and discretion at the counter.
In short, it is obvious that the privatization of Jobcentres
through the involvement of Reed in the New Deal is part of the same trend
that began with the JSA. It is another structural change designed to push
more people into the labour market, particularly the crappy end, so legitimizing
poverty pay and the worst kind of working conditions and insecurity. Both
claimants and dole-workers are under attack, and we need to develop strategies
together to resist the incursion of Reed and the process of which they
are part.
So fighting back against Reed is a necessity. But it
is also an opportunity. Not since the strikes has there been such an obvious
chance for organized claimants and dole-workers to come together and achieve
a concrete aim. We in Brighton Against Benefit Cuts are looking forward
to working further with others who wish to fight back. We're open to suggestions
of how we might do so, and we also have some suggestions of our own.
In the first place, we need to share information. We
need to get propaganda out that effectively exposes and denounces Reed
and the strategy behind their involvement in the New Deal. One of the things
we hope comes out of this meeting is a greater degree of contact between
our group and militant dole-workers across the country, so we can share
more useful information.
Second, we can have pickets outside Reed's high
street offices to give concrete form to any propaganda we produce. High
street shops really hate groups of people at their door handing out leaflets.
They know it puts people off coming in their shops and so loses them money
and gives them a bad name.
Third, we can occupy Reed offices, as we did here in
Brighton yesterday, disrupting their work, and letting them know that they
will not be able to carry on unhindered.
Obviously, at the moment, the only Reed office actually
involved in the privatization of Jobcentre functions is the one in Hackney.
But all their other offices around the country are legitimate targets.
Word will get back to the head office about trouble, controversy, disruption
of their work, loss of business and so on. These high street offices are
vulnerable and we should exploit that vulnerability.
In conclusion, then, I would like to see this meeting
produce some suggestions on how we take forward a shared campaign against
Reed, and I look forward to our shared resistance to Reed and indeed the
whole market for making money from our unemployment.