I remember during the last depression in the British economy in the 1980s when redundancy became commonplace, even for people in what had previously seemed ‘jobs for life’ that there remained an attitude ingrained from the 1950s and 1960s that people were made redundant as a result of something they had done wrong. I guess in middle class professions the attitude was perhaps even older because in the 1930s when mass unemployment first really hit national consciousness it was often very regionally and sectorally focused on heavy industries in northern England, Scotland and South Wales, whereas much of the Midlands and the South and new more technological and service sector industries did not suffer nearly so much. My father was only made redundant once in a career which lasted about 43 years and that was at an age when he was entitled to early retirement. My mother was never laid off, but that was because she was a nurse and it has only been in recent years that nurses have been unable to find work very easily.
Going back to the 1980s, my father had a friend he had known since childhood, who worked in the construction industry. I still remember the sticker he had in the back of his car which said ‘Don’t Nationalise Building’ and had a picture of a pair of hands one holding a brick and one a mortar trowel, locked together with handcuffs. The whole campaign these days somehow seems as alien as something that might have been run in East Germany at the time. Anyway, he was made redundant as happened to millions of middle aged family men in the 1980s alongside all sorts of people. I remember being told that his mother was so ashamed that he had been made redundant that she would not talk about it. She could no disassociate being laid off because the company had closed down or was ‘downsizing’ from being sacked for improper behaviour or laziness. Though it was her son, she could not shake the sense that he had done something wrong to be without work. I never found out if she changed her attitudes. My father advised his friend to train in computers which were just coming in on a large scale at the time. The friend took the advice and in his next job avoided further redundancy because of the skills he had and was able to continue working to a profitable retirement.
In my career which has spanned 20 years this year, I have been made redundant three times. In addition, for much of the time I have been on fixed term contracts, which whilst being set up that way have pretty much the same effect when they come to an end, especially if you are uncertain if the contract is going to be renewed or not, something you are usually only told late on. The similarity of the end of such contracts to redundancy is why in the UK since 2002 companies have had to pay redundancy pay if they do not renew the contract of a worker on a contract of 2 years or more. In addition, if the person has been on contracts for 4 years they have to be moved to a permanent contract. This was because previously there were cases of workers on contracts for 12 years with no security. While it might seem the same in terms of pay and condition, that threat of your job coming to an end through no fault of your own does prey on your mind and reduces your productivity.
Anyway, redundancy has been a fact of working life for at least thirty years and in certain industries it has been incredibly common. Now, always on the lookout for a new job, especially as I always seem to end up with the most appalling managers and working far from home, I subscribe to online services such as Monster and LinkedIn. As well as the job searching, CV listing and networking facilities these sites often send you articles about work. Many of these seem to be influenced by US tendencies, which Americans appear to believe are universal, at least for their English-speaking cousins. However, some of them appear to be quite comic to British readers especially when it comes to the precision about matters of clothing for the workplace. For a start we do not have Labor Day and no self-respecting businesswoman would ever wear white shoes to work anyway; for men black suits without a stripe have no such negative connotations that they seem to have in the USA. Setting such cultural differences aside, reading US workplace attitudes can be useful as British employers have a common tendency to follow their American counterparts sooner or later.
The interesting trend I have picked up on at a time when we are facing high unemployment and redundancies, is how ‘redundancy’ is once again a dirty word as if we were back in the early 1980s. I received an article from LinkedIn about networking which advised you when speaking to people you should never mention you have been made redundant and should find some euphemism for the period that you were without work as if it was some kind of dirty secret rather than a fact of working life for people at all levels.
My view of why this attitude has reappeared is that it stems from other recent trends in business. I have heard from employers in my sector and others that two of the key things they value from employees are not their ICT skills or their ability to manage projects or speak a foreign language but ‘deference’ and ‘gratitude’. Employers, or rather managers at all levels, are leveraging the fact that jobs are scarce in order to compel a forelock-tugging attitude towards them from among their staff. They expect workers not only to be grateful for their jobs but to actually say this repeatedly. Of course, because there are recruitment processes in place, often the job is not a gift of your manager but once in post you have to behave as if it is and as a result, regularly thank your manager and support their view no matter how hare-brained or unethical it might be. To even propose a different approach is to be ‘disloyal’, not with a view to the company as a whole but to the individual who wields power over you. I have noted before that even commentators on business have observed that this attitude is unhealthy for a company that wants to survive let alone prosper in the current economic climate: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-dont-want-to-hear-that-censoring-in.html
It is interesting that the Coalition government is seeking to reduce the opportunity for industrial tribunals and even remove the chance to protest unfair dismissal. Clearly their view is that all dismissal is ‘fair’. The government is aiming to reinforce this attitude that all workers, whether professionally qualified or not should simply keep their mouths shut and accept whatever they are told by their bosses and similarly to accept the prejudiced treatment which is once again increasingly common.
How does this connect to mentioning redundancy in your career history? Well, managers never like you hear you criticising your previous employers even if they are competitors. They assume that if you are critical of the previous companies you have worked for you can easily be critical of them, something we know they now have no tolerance for. Mentioning redundancy in a single word seems to be critical of the planning of that company and of their treatment of their workers. In addition, you are exhibiting ingratitude for not expressing how grateful you were that the company actually employed you in the first place and kept you there for as many years and months as they did. I soon noticed this three jobs back when I, along with 200 others (the first phase in a lay-off of 500 staff), were told we were being made redundant. I was criticised for any mention of the fact and my email account was shut down because my ‘Out-of-Office’ statement mentioned it. Despite that 10% of the staff were in line to be made redundant gave us no right to discuss it. Consequently it became impossible to even hand over work to the staff who were remaining and projects very close to completion were simply dropped, unfinished with the funds that had gone into them wasted as I was not allowed to talk with people who could have picked them up and finished them off as it would have meant me saying why I would not be around to do it myself.
In such circumstances reality begins to become distorted. Simply because of the criticism-phobia which is now permitted among managers, money is allowed to be wasted and no proper follow on from a period of large-scale redundancy can be implemented, further damaging the company. We have to face up to what is being balanced up here. On one side it is that some managers for a few weeks will be irritated that staff being made redundant talk about it, on the other side thousands of pounds is wasted and projects left unfinished damaging the funds and reputation of the company. Yet, in our distorted world it is the managers’ unease which wins out.
There is an additional way in which the person being made redundant suffers if they cannot mention that they have been made redundant and this is when you apply for other jobs. You have to come up with a range of more or less feasible excuses for why you left your previous employment. With fragmented careers it becomes increasingly difficult to produce good ones and interviewers become suspicious, assuming that you must be hiding something. Of course, it would be easy if you could simply state the reason as ‘redundancy’ but to do so would clearly damage your chances for the new job, yet often the alternatives are little better. Saying you left because you no longer fitted in, for family reasons, for better pay or conditions, to work nearer to home and so on all seem to provide reasons not to employ you in another post. It would be better if you could say I was made redundant, it had nothing to do with my abilities it was simply the company could not afford to employ me and 499 other people any longer.
The default assumption by interviewers that you are seeking to hide something just accentuates this problem. Too often interviews are coming to resemble police interrogations. Rather than trying to gauge what skills you have and whether you could apply them in a new post they cross-examine you to find any flaws in your story. Having read advice about writing a CV I had begun only listing jobs going back over the past 10-12 years. This was a big mistake at one interview. They spent the whole time asking me about my work in the 1990s and in the post-interview feedback said it was because they believed I had been serving a prison term at that time, not realising that at their company the form declaring that I had no criminal record was sent to their human resources department. It seems that other excuses used to conceal redundancy could open you up to a similar risk.
By making redundancy once again a taboo subject the myth that we have total control over our careers is promoted and the view that we are to blame if they are at all disrupted. In turn the view is perpetuated that companies are blameless for the hardships they impose on the ordinary worker even if, as if often the case in the UK, it is the result of bad planning, inertia or not being alert to changing conditions. It is particularly galling when your redundancy comes as the result of some development you tried to alert the company to but were choked off by the ‘I don’t want to hear that’ mentality which is so prevalent.
In the 21st century redundancy is going to be a factor for every worker no matter how illustrious a career path they take. Even members of the boards of multi-nationals lose their jobs. What we need is not to somehow brush it under the carpet but acknowledge it is a fact of working life and not make the person made redundant feel guilty for something that is imposed on them simply because it makes some managers feel a little uncomfortable for a short time. Compared to the worry and financial pressures the person losing their job faces, such unease is nothing and should not become the prime driver for workplace expectations of behaviour.
Showing posts with label temporary employment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label temporary employment. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Saturday, 5 March 2011
How Inflexible The System Is When You Get Temporary Work
As I have often noted on this blog, I have now been out of work for nine months. I have had a little work, adding up to a total of 7 weeks and 3 days, which I suppose means that I have only been unemployed for six months and twenty-seven days. However, that ephemeral work hardly felt like a proper job and certainly my career is no less derailed than when I was made redundant last June. I have been signing on at the Job Centre Plus and fulfilling all their requirements very carefully. After six months, the contribution-based Jobseeker's Allowance ran out, but I could not get the Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, because I happened to live in a house with a woman who ran her own business that meant she worke more than 24 hours per week. It did not matter that in a good year she earnt £12,000 (€14,280; US$18,120) per year and due to the recession was making a loss, so she was not in much position to contribute to the household income. The fact that she worked more than 24 hours meant I got no unemployment benefit or mortgage interest benefit; I did get National Insurance credits, but of course never see them, they just go to another part of the civil service. Hence the rush to dispose of the house before it was repossessed. This is one reason why there is a difference between the number of people who are unemployed and the number of people receiving benefit for being unemployed. David Cameron notes very proudly when the latter figure goes down as if it was a benefit to the entire country rather than just the Treasury. In fact, all it marks is that another set of people have fallen foul of the tricksy regulations around such benefits. They do nothing to encourage people to try even harder to find work, they simply cut off even the meagre benefits they are receiving.
The requirements of signing on, even if you are not actually receiving benefits, mean that you have to be 'actively looking for work', this entails carrying out three activities (e.g. going to the Job Centre, reading a newspaper, calling an employment agency) each week. I was also compelled to apply for two jobs each week and after six months to apply for any job that I was deemed to be suitable for. This latter condition was quite laughable, because even in my own industry I got such negative (even hostile at times) feedback from some interviews that it seemed that even trying to get back into work I had done before, I was no longer seen as 'suitable'.
I was also encouraged to find temporary and part-time work. I am not averse to that, as proven by my two periods of temporary work. I am signed up with three employment agencies, but they seem unable to find anything for me. In a depression as we are currently experiencing, unemployment figures are kept lower by people who previously had full-time jobs taking part-time and temporary work. This is why female unemployment tends to rise slower and fall quicker, because a lot of such jobs, for example, in caring and retail, tend to appoint women rather than men. In the UK we consider someone going even on to say 18 hours per week, to no longer be unemployed, even though previously they had always worked 37.5 hours per week.
So, as in the 1980s, with a weak economy, temporary work is back in flavour. Do the government and local authorities then make it easy for someone to go in and out of temporary work so as to encourage people to take it up? Of course not. If the work is anything over a week you have to sign off from the Job Centre. Even if you just do 6 days' part-time work you have to start all over again with the application form and having the interviews and stating what you will do to find work. The cost of doing this for people who have found one or two weeks' work must be phenomenal. I turned up after my week's work and had to write and say everything that had precisely been on my file less than a fortnight earlier. Of course, having a new claim means there is a delay in getting benefits. If you have worked for a week or a fortnight, you are unlikely to be paid until the end of that month, in my case and many others, not until the end of the following month, so taking on work, in the short term, leaves you short of funds whilst the benefits are processed once again. This is hardly an incentive to take on temporary work, especially when your housing benefit is dependent on you receiving Jobseeker's Allowance.
There is a further complication which does nothing to reduce unemployment in the longer term. After six months of signing on for Jobseeker's Allowance you begin to become eligible for training courses. These can vary between a short course on a particular package to the Department of Work & Pensions allowing you to attend a college a certain number of days per week to entirely retrain without them stopping your benefits. The trouble is, even if you take a week's temporary work, your 'clock' is reset to zero. So after my one week's work in November I returned to sign on as if I had not been unemployed for the preceding five months. Once I finish my current work I will again start as if I had not been unemployed for half of last year and part of this year. I have been in work for only 7 weeks out of 30 but when I sign on again the 23 weeks of unemployment are disregarded and I have to start again being unemployed for six months before I can go on training.
It seems apparent after applying for seventy positions and attending 22 interviews that my sector is in trouble. Many sectors are, but I might widen my chances by retraining. However, nine fragmented months of unemployment does not count, it has to be six months unbroken. I have been encouraged to take temporary work and certainly welcome the little bits of money it has brought in. However, in terms of getting me into a permanent job or even one that lasts six months rather than just six weeks, I have done myself, and thus the state, a disfavour. Again, very short-sighted policies make it harder not easier to get off benefits for the long term.
Dealing with the Department of Work & Pensions, time after time, saying the same thing again and again just because you have got bits of work. Dealing with the local authorities is far harder. In the UK local councils pay out the benefits to help with your council tax payments (effectively giving you a discount on that) and housing benefit (which is currently being constrained far more by central government). Now every council has different rules and procedures for applying for such benefit. The town I am currently in, sends print outs covering four sheets of A4 paper every time there is even a minimal change to your circumstances.
When our student lodger left one week earlier than planned we had four pages of calculations to tell us we would receive £3.95 (€4.70; US$5.96) more in council tax benefit than previously advised. When I first signed on they sent me a council tax refund which I felt was short-sighted of them, and it has proven to be the case. Taking my first week's temporary work before Christmas led them to send me a form to complete again, this covered 16 pages, though fortunately most of it was irrelevant.
The woman in my house was again sent an even longer form which requested all details of her business. It contained patronising advice about how she should run her business and wanted all the details of her private and business accounts and three months' worth of income, though of course, they had had this data just a few weeks before. She was angry at this request, because as she pointed out, it was me, not her who was claiming the benefit.
Now, I have had six weeks' work and my Jobseeker's Allowance stopped when I started the work. Within days of me doing that, I receive a demand from the council for the outstanding council tax, which is £280 (€333; US$422), which is just £27 more than the refund they gave me last summer. Of course, again I was not paid until the end of February, but the demand was to be paid on 6th February. How is it that the council assumes that the moment you start work, you suddenly have money? I wish it was the case, but in fact, again I had to wait until 28th February to get any pay for the work I did in January and will have to wait to the very end of this month for the work I did in February.
When you have been out of work as long as me, you do not have a slush fund to suddenly pay off new demands. In addition after this later, six weeks of employment, we have to start all over again, as if the council never knew anything about me. There is a good chance that they will have to refund some of the money I paid out at the start of February (having had to borrow more to cover it until I got paid). Is this efficient? No. I have a file full of paper about this, with money going back and forth between me and the council on the basis of some very complex formula which must be using up council funds to administer, if this is how much work, just my single case generates.
Temporary work is by definition a temporary solution, it is not a permanent job. Even so-called permanent jobs these days are only 1 or 2-year contracts, not really enough time to become established. We are in a context in which in a desire to see the unemployment figures fall even a little, civil servants will encourage you to take short-term temporary work. However, given that mass unemployment is going to be a characteristic of the next few years, probably the rest of this decade, we need to move to a benefit system that actually encourages you not only to take temporary work, but to be honest about it when you do. Making you jump through tiresome administrative hoops due to a few weeks' or even just days' work is wasteful and encourages people simply to conceal their temporary work. The attitude of my local council, which I accept is probably not universal, but is likely to be occurring in quite a few towns, is ridiculous, with no appreciation of how people are paid in the 21st century or how just because you have a job does not mean suddenly you have lots of money. In fact, for the initial days and weeks, you are liable to be worse off, having to pay for transport costs, clean clothes, food for lunches, etc.
My suggestion is that claims should simply be suspended for 4 weeks (perhaps 8 weeks would be better) when you get temporary work. Your 'clock' for eligibility for free training should be frozen, not reset. If you go back unemployed within that time you should not be compelled to make a new claim, simply pick up where you left off. Councils should levy no charges on people until they have been at work for at least a month if not six weeks. In this way you will encourage people to take temporary work knowing they are not suddenly going to get demands for money the day they start it.
A little realism will make life a great deal easier for people, and in fact, save the central and local governments money by reducing all this duplicated paperwork they insist you do.When I got the one week's work, even before I had done the job I had a demand from the council that I provide two consecutive pay slips (which was never going to happen for a job lasting a week). I pointed out that I had not actually received any pay for the job yet and would not do so until the end of the following month. They did not seem to understand that these days most people are paid a month in arrears. They seem to think all temporary work is cash in hand. However, then, why do they think you would get two pay slips? In most jobs you get one per month. Ultimately I was compelled to send a certificate of earnings to be completed by my employer. The council demanded that this was completed before the month I had worked in was up, even though I did not actually receive any pay for a further four weeks. When I pointed this out, I was told I had to apply for a delay on the demand, generating yet more paper. Why cannot the council simply come into the 21st century and see how people work and are paid these days?
Since the 1980s, many employers in the public, as well as the private, sector have liked having part-time and temporary workers because they have fewer rights. This gap has been narrowed a great deal, but a relative of mine was laid off after 12 months in her job with the employer explicitly saying that it was so that she did not qualify for the rights that come after a year in employment, such as being able to take an employer to a tribunal (this is being extended to 2 years at the moment). There is an assumption by employers and the current government, that if you give people rights at work, somehow they will instantly use them and burden the company 'unnecessarily'. This shows the enduring arrogance of too many employers and their supporters in government. There is apparently no recognition that the constant 'churn' of workers on this basis actually costs companies money, not least in regular training of new staff and the inefficiency of people who have no experience in the company. However, flexibility is king and these benefits are dismissed.
The requirements of signing on, even if you are not actually receiving benefits, mean that you have to be 'actively looking for work', this entails carrying out three activities (e.g. going to the Job Centre, reading a newspaper, calling an employment agency) each week. I was also compelled to apply for two jobs each week and after six months to apply for any job that I was deemed to be suitable for. This latter condition was quite laughable, because even in my own industry I got such negative (even hostile at times) feedback from some interviews that it seemed that even trying to get back into work I had done before, I was no longer seen as 'suitable'.
I was also encouraged to find temporary and part-time work. I am not averse to that, as proven by my two periods of temporary work. I am signed up with three employment agencies, but they seem unable to find anything for me. In a depression as we are currently experiencing, unemployment figures are kept lower by people who previously had full-time jobs taking part-time and temporary work. This is why female unemployment tends to rise slower and fall quicker, because a lot of such jobs, for example, in caring and retail, tend to appoint women rather than men. In the UK we consider someone going even on to say 18 hours per week, to no longer be unemployed, even though previously they had always worked 37.5 hours per week.
So, as in the 1980s, with a weak economy, temporary work is back in flavour. Do the government and local authorities then make it easy for someone to go in and out of temporary work so as to encourage people to take it up? Of course not. If the work is anything over a week you have to sign off from the Job Centre. Even if you just do 6 days' part-time work you have to start all over again with the application form and having the interviews and stating what you will do to find work. The cost of doing this for people who have found one or two weeks' work must be phenomenal. I turned up after my week's work and had to write and say everything that had precisely been on my file less than a fortnight earlier. Of course, having a new claim means there is a delay in getting benefits. If you have worked for a week or a fortnight, you are unlikely to be paid until the end of that month, in my case and many others, not until the end of the following month, so taking on work, in the short term, leaves you short of funds whilst the benefits are processed once again. This is hardly an incentive to take on temporary work, especially when your housing benefit is dependent on you receiving Jobseeker's Allowance.
There is a further complication which does nothing to reduce unemployment in the longer term. After six months of signing on for Jobseeker's Allowance you begin to become eligible for training courses. These can vary between a short course on a particular package to the Department of Work & Pensions allowing you to attend a college a certain number of days per week to entirely retrain without them stopping your benefits. The trouble is, even if you take a week's temporary work, your 'clock' is reset to zero. So after my one week's work in November I returned to sign on as if I had not been unemployed for the preceding five months. Once I finish my current work I will again start as if I had not been unemployed for half of last year and part of this year. I have been in work for only 7 weeks out of 30 but when I sign on again the 23 weeks of unemployment are disregarded and I have to start again being unemployed for six months before I can go on training.
It seems apparent after applying for seventy positions and attending 22 interviews that my sector is in trouble. Many sectors are, but I might widen my chances by retraining. However, nine fragmented months of unemployment does not count, it has to be six months unbroken. I have been encouraged to take temporary work and certainly welcome the little bits of money it has brought in. However, in terms of getting me into a permanent job or even one that lasts six months rather than just six weeks, I have done myself, and thus the state, a disfavour. Again, very short-sighted policies make it harder not easier to get off benefits for the long term.
Dealing with the Department of Work & Pensions, time after time, saying the same thing again and again just because you have got bits of work. Dealing with the local authorities is far harder. In the UK local councils pay out the benefits to help with your council tax payments (effectively giving you a discount on that) and housing benefit (which is currently being constrained far more by central government). Now every council has different rules and procedures for applying for such benefit. The town I am currently in, sends print outs covering four sheets of A4 paper every time there is even a minimal change to your circumstances.
When our student lodger left one week earlier than planned we had four pages of calculations to tell us we would receive £3.95 (€4.70; US$5.96) more in council tax benefit than previously advised. When I first signed on they sent me a council tax refund which I felt was short-sighted of them, and it has proven to be the case. Taking my first week's temporary work before Christmas led them to send me a form to complete again, this covered 16 pages, though fortunately most of it was irrelevant.
The woman in my house was again sent an even longer form which requested all details of her business. It contained patronising advice about how she should run her business and wanted all the details of her private and business accounts and three months' worth of income, though of course, they had had this data just a few weeks before. She was angry at this request, because as she pointed out, it was me, not her who was claiming the benefit.
Now, I have had six weeks' work and my Jobseeker's Allowance stopped when I started the work. Within days of me doing that, I receive a demand from the council for the outstanding council tax, which is £280 (€333; US$422), which is just £27 more than the refund they gave me last summer. Of course, again I was not paid until the end of February, but the demand was to be paid on 6th February. How is it that the council assumes that the moment you start work, you suddenly have money? I wish it was the case, but in fact, again I had to wait until 28th February to get any pay for the work I did in January and will have to wait to the very end of this month for the work I did in February.
When you have been out of work as long as me, you do not have a slush fund to suddenly pay off new demands. In addition after this later, six weeks of employment, we have to start all over again, as if the council never knew anything about me. There is a good chance that they will have to refund some of the money I paid out at the start of February (having had to borrow more to cover it until I got paid). Is this efficient? No. I have a file full of paper about this, with money going back and forth between me and the council on the basis of some very complex formula which must be using up council funds to administer, if this is how much work, just my single case generates.
Temporary work is by definition a temporary solution, it is not a permanent job. Even so-called permanent jobs these days are only 1 or 2-year contracts, not really enough time to become established. We are in a context in which in a desire to see the unemployment figures fall even a little, civil servants will encourage you to take short-term temporary work. However, given that mass unemployment is going to be a characteristic of the next few years, probably the rest of this decade, we need to move to a benefit system that actually encourages you not only to take temporary work, but to be honest about it when you do. Making you jump through tiresome administrative hoops due to a few weeks' or even just days' work is wasteful and encourages people simply to conceal their temporary work. The attitude of my local council, which I accept is probably not universal, but is likely to be occurring in quite a few towns, is ridiculous, with no appreciation of how people are paid in the 21st century or how just because you have a job does not mean suddenly you have lots of money. In fact, for the initial days and weeks, you are liable to be worse off, having to pay for transport costs, clean clothes, food for lunches, etc.
My suggestion is that claims should simply be suspended for 4 weeks (perhaps 8 weeks would be better) when you get temporary work. Your 'clock' for eligibility for free training should be frozen, not reset. If you go back unemployed within that time you should not be compelled to make a new claim, simply pick up where you left off. Councils should levy no charges on people until they have been at work for at least a month if not six weeks. In this way you will encourage people to take temporary work knowing they are not suddenly going to get demands for money the day they start it.
A little realism will make life a great deal easier for people, and in fact, save the central and local governments money by reducing all this duplicated paperwork they insist you do.When I got the one week's work, even before I had done the job I had a demand from the council that I provide two consecutive pay slips (which was never going to happen for a job lasting a week). I pointed out that I had not actually received any pay for the job yet and would not do so until the end of the following month. They did not seem to understand that these days most people are paid a month in arrears. They seem to think all temporary work is cash in hand. However, then, why do they think you would get two pay slips? In most jobs you get one per month. Ultimately I was compelled to send a certificate of earnings to be completed by my employer. The council demanded that this was completed before the month I had worked in was up, even though I did not actually receive any pay for a further four weeks. When I pointed this out, I was told I had to apply for a delay on the demand, generating yet more paper. Why cannot the council simply come into the 21st century and see how people work and are paid these days?
Since the 1980s, many employers in the public, as well as the private, sector have liked having part-time and temporary workers because they have fewer rights. This gap has been narrowed a great deal, but a relative of mine was laid off after 12 months in her job with the employer explicitly saying that it was so that she did not qualify for the rights that come after a year in employment, such as being able to take an employer to a tribunal (this is being extended to 2 years at the moment). There is an assumption by employers and the current government, that if you give people rights at work, somehow they will instantly use them and burden the company 'unnecessarily'. This shows the enduring arrogance of too many employers and their supporters in government. There is apparently no recognition that the constant 'churn' of workers on this basis actually costs companies money, not least in regular training of new staff and the inefficiency of people who have no experience in the company. However, flexibility is king and these benefits are dismissed.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Cracking the Whip of Unemployment
Well, as I had feared, just as has been the case, unemployment has completely sapped my inspiration. Despite having more time to blog, the spirit has gone out of me. Unemployment is terribly insidious it saps the will to do anything much. I suppose this is because most of us are people of routine. When you are unemployed, you can make yourself a routine: I rise at the same time each day (7.30am) and look for jobs in set locations on set days of the week, but I know it is false and it is only because I am compelling myself to do it that I do not let the apathy of unemployment completely swallow me. Of course, I have only been unemployed for two months, so it might be tougher in the future to overcome this. I have heard that women find it easier to cope with unemployment than men do, because their lives change much more than men's; every month their period throws them off track to a greater or lesser extent and they learn how to overcome feeling tense or tired or washed out and yet continue with the daily chores much better than men do. Perhaps this is why men are becoming obsolete in modern society, but that is a topic that I have already tackled.
One thing which is not the case is that I have not lost the desire to work. To some extent the more unemployment saps me the more I want to escape the effect it is having on me and I know that will only come from having a job. Consequently, when I do have a focus, i.e. a particular job to apply for I put lots of work into it. I have an interview tomorrow and I have spent a day reading all I can about the company and the people who are going to interview me, so that even if they are not well prepared for the interview and like many interviewers even uncertain about what they actually want, I can hopefully demonstrate that I am the person they need to employ. Of course the job is temporary, not permanent and pays £9000 per year less than I earned in my last job, but that is what happens when unemployment rises. It provides an excellent opportunity for employers, especially in the UK, to force down salaries (though prices are not falling as fast, of course) and to reduce job security.
British employers always feel their workers are lazy and over-paid. It may have been proven that when compared to workers in eastern Europe, British workers do not work the longest hours, but certainly when compared to neighbouring states such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, post-industrial, western European economies which we should be on a par with, UK workers do work long hours. In terms of pay, well, we have the added burden that the price of housing, food and petrol exceeds the costs in neighbouring states and we receive only 12 salary payments per year compared to the 14 they get in Belgium and the 13 workers even get in South Africa. Despite this, the xenophobia and lack of language skills of the British, means most of us are ignorant of these facts so sit back while employers tell us we are lazy and greedy and should be grateful that they deign to give us any work while they take salaries and bonuses equivalent to the combined pay of large sections of their employees.
Last year, I wrote about how many employers felt that with the prosperity of the UK since the 1990s, they had lost the 'whip' of unemployment to frighten workers into being compliant and accepting poor pay and conditions without complaint. Ironically, even immigrant workers especially from elsewhere in Europe were unwilling to take what employers felt was 'fair'. People complain about migrant workers but forget they would not come if employers did not seek to bring them into the UK as a cheaper alternative to training British workers and skilling them. You notice that there is a sector of society which despite being right-wing, is pretty quiet on the immigration issue and these are employers who want the cheapest labour they can get. Now that Poles and other migrants are returning to their own countries now that the UK economy is in downturn, their only option is to pressurise British workers to take lower wages.
Radio news broadcasts today have reported that 'the economy is picking up' and that there are more jobs available. UK unemployment remains at 2.4 million, the highest level since 1996 and conflicting reports say it will worsen. Peaks in unemployment tend to lag behind the economic crises. The economy in the UK nosedived in 1981 but unemployment did not touch 4 million until 1983 (of course real levels were concealed by the Thatcher government's distorted methods of reporting the figures). Unemployment did not start falling until about 1987 and still remained around 2.2 million in the supposed boom of 1989. There was another peak in the recession of 1990-3 getting back to 3.5 million briefly before a steady decline through the remainer of the 1990s and into the 200s, returning below 1.5 million around 2004 for the first time since 1980; 24 years earlier.
Such broad figures conceal the fact that often the people in work were in part-time or temporary jobs rather than permanent ones and at lower salaries than they had been previously. Of course, such factors dent consumer confidence and slow down the economy so holding up recovery in other elements of the economic system outside employment. Ironically, I have not seen any figures on how many jobs the introduction of the minimum wage created. Right-wingers whined that it would wreck the economy, whereas in fact by increasing consumption it helped stimulate service-sector orientated Britain in the late 1990s and most of the 2000s.
To me it seems that employers do not feel that the recent recession has stung hard enough yet. I think most would love to get to a situation where they could say 'we could employ so many more people if there was no minimum wage in the way, it needs to be suspended or scrapped'. Though this is not in David Cameron's list of policies (assuming he actually has one; it is not visible) but I could imagine him being sympathetic to such arguments if he comes to power in 2010. British employers always think they pay too much tax even when it is at historic lows, far below what they paid in 1981. They always feel salaries are too high, even though if they fall further consumption in Britain will continue to be suppressed. I know of no country where business is so indignant about what it sees as its rights and the fabricated 'uppity' nature of its workers that it would cut its own throat in terms of sales to get back at employees. Greed in Britain blinds employers to the fact they are part of a complex economic machine and if they keep banging one part of the machine the rest of it will not work that well. Just look at the German government's policy of paying businesses to keep people in work compared to the slash-and-burn attitude with jobs in the UK.
Anyway, this brings me to my main point about today's 'news' about recovery. If everyone believes that there are more jobs available, then employers can whine 'anyway unemployed is not trying hard enough to find work; they are demanding too much in terms of salary/security'. This happens through individual behaviour already. I am applying for jobs that last only 2 years (so far I am ignoring maternity cover jobs as I know it will cost me more to move to the area than I could make back in 9 months) and at salaries two-thirds of my previous level. Thus, even if I get work, I am still going to be going on no holidays, not buying any clothes or DVDs or a new car. My contribution to the economic recovery is going to be minimal, it is just that I will not lose my house. I know we consume too much, but until you can work part-time locally and travel on wonderful public transport to reach your job and still afford to pay rent on even a small house, then I need to push for better terms. The bulk of us will never be self-sufficient and live in a yurt, so we have to make living in 3-bedroomed terraced houses with a 10-year old car out front at least feasible on an income which is 50% above the national average salary. Heaven forbid that some of us might want to take time to train as a teacher or a social worker! No way of doing that without becoming homeless. Saying this, as someone pointed out after training as a social worker (which the UK is desperately short of) you can earn £28, 000 (€31,640: US$46,200) per year and get attacked in the media at every turn whereas if you train as a manager of the discount supermarket Lidl you can earn £45,000 (€50,850; US$74,260) per year and get hassle only from the occasional irate customer not newspapers selling millions of copies.
We will all jump at the poorly paid, insecure jobs because the bulk of us want to work and any work is better than unemployment. However, again we will have allowed employers in their delusions about their own personal greatness and our supposed greed, to knock us back into living a life that is nerve-wracking and does not permit us to plan or save or experience life. The whip of unemployment is being cracked by this latest claim that there are jobs and the only people not taking them are the lazy or the too-demanding. It is a lie. Unemployment is high and rising and forcing people into temporary, low paid jobs is going to continue that situation for far longer than would be the case.
One thing which is not the case is that I have not lost the desire to work. To some extent the more unemployment saps me the more I want to escape the effect it is having on me and I know that will only come from having a job. Consequently, when I do have a focus, i.e. a particular job to apply for I put lots of work into it. I have an interview tomorrow and I have spent a day reading all I can about the company and the people who are going to interview me, so that even if they are not well prepared for the interview and like many interviewers even uncertain about what they actually want, I can hopefully demonstrate that I am the person they need to employ. Of course the job is temporary, not permanent and pays £9000 per year less than I earned in my last job, but that is what happens when unemployment rises. It provides an excellent opportunity for employers, especially in the UK, to force down salaries (though prices are not falling as fast, of course) and to reduce job security.
British employers always feel their workers are lazy and over-paid. It may have been proven that when compared to workers in eastern Europe, British workers do not work the longest hours, but certainly when compared to neighbouring states such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, post-industrial, western European economies which we should be on a par with, UK workers do work long hours. In terms of pay, well, we have the added burden that the price of housing, food and petrol exceeds the costs in neighbouring states and we receive only 12 salary payments per year compared to the 14 they get in Belgium and the 13 workers even get in South Africa. Despite this, the xenophobia and lack of language skills of the British, means most of us are ignorant of these facts so sit back while employers tell us we are lazy and greedy and should be grateful that they deign to give us any work while they take salaries and bonuses equivalent to the combined pay of large sections of their employees.
Last year, I wrote about how many employers felt that with the prosperity of the UK since the 1990s, they had lost the 'whip' of unemployment to frighten workers into being compliant and accepting poor pay and conditions without complaint. Ironically, even immigrant workers especially from elsewhere in Europe were unwilling to take what employers felt was 'fair'. People complain about migrant workers but forget they would not come if employers did not seek to bring them into the UK as a cheaper alternative to training British workers and skilling them. You notice that there is a sector of society which despite being right-wing, is pretty quiet on the immigration issue and these are employers who want the cheapest labour they can get. Now that Poles and other migrants are returning to their own countries now that the UK economy is in downturn, their only option is to pressurise British workers to take lower wages.
Radio news broadcasts today have reported that 'the economy is picking up' and that there are more jobs available. UK unemployment remains at 2.4 million, the highest level since 1996 and conflicting reports say it will worsen. Peaks in unemployment tend to lag behind the economic crises. The economy in the UK nosedived in 1981 but unemployment did not touch 4 million until 1983 (of course real levels were concealed by the Thatcher government's distorted methods of reporting the figures). Unemployment did not start falling until about 1987 and still remained around 2.2 million in the supposed boom of 1989. There was another peak in the recession of 1990-3 getting back to 3.5 million briefly before a steady decline through the remainer of the 1990s and into the 200s, returning below 1.5 million around 2004 for the first time since 1980; 24 years earlier.
Such broad figures conceal the fact that often the people in work were in part-time or temporary jobs rather than permanent ones and at lower salaries than they had been previously. Of course, such factors dent consumer confidence and slow down the economy so holding up recovery in other elements of the economic system outside employment. Ironically, I have not seen any figures on how many jobs the introduction of the minimum wage created. Right-wingers whined that it would wreck the economy, whereas in fact by increasing consumption it helped stimulate service-sector orientated Britain in the late 1990s and most of the 2000s.
To me it seems that employers do not feel that the recent recession has stung hard enough yet. I think most would love to get to a situation where they could say 'we could employ so many more people if there was no minimum wage in the way, it needs to be suspended or scrapped'. Though this is not in David Cameron's list of policies (assuming he actually has one; it is not visible) but I could imagine him being sympathetic to such arguments if he comes to power in 2010. British employers always think they pay too much tax even when it is at historic lows, far below what they paid in 1981. They always feel salaries are too high, even though if they fall further consumption in Britain will continue to be suppressed. I know of no country where business is so indignant about what it sees as its rights and the fabricated 'uppity' nature of its workers that it would cut its own throat in terms of sales to get back at employees. Greed in Britain blinds employers to the fact they are part of a complex economic machine and if they keep banging one part of the machine the rest of it will not work that well. Just look at the German government's policy of paying businesses to keep people in work compared to the slash-and-burn attitude with jobs in the UK.
Anyway, this brings me to my main point about today's 'news' about recovery. If everyone believes that there are more jobs available, then employers can whine 'anyway unemployed is not trying hard enough to find work; they are demanding too much in terms of salary/security'. This happens through individual behaviour already. I am applying for jobs that last only 2 years (so far I am ignoring maternity cover jobs as I know it will cost me more to move to the area than I could make back in 9 months) and at salaries two-thirds of my previous level. Thus, even if I get work, I am still going to be going on no holidays, not buying any clothes or DVDs or a new car. My contribution to the economic recovery is going to be minimal, it is just that I will not lose my house. I know we consume too much, but until you can work part-time locally and travel on wonderful public transport to reach your job and still afford to pay rent on even a small house, then I need to push for better terms. The bulk of us will never be self-sufficient and live in a yurt, so we have to make living in 3-bedroomed terraced houses with a 10-year old car out front at least feasible on an income which is 50% above the national average salary. Heaven forbid that some of us might want to take time to train as a teacher or a social worker! No way of doing that without becoming homeless. Saying this, as someone pointed out after training as a social worker (which the UK is desperately short of) you can earn £28, 000 (€31,640: US$46,200) per year and get attacked in the media at every turn whereas if you train as a manager of the discount supermarket Lidl you can earn £45,000 (€50,850; US$74,260) per year and get hassle only from the occasional irate customer not newspapers selling millions of copies.
We will all jump at the poorly paid, insecure jobs because the bulk of us want to work and any work is better than unemployment. However, again we will have allowed employers in their delusions about their own personal greatness and our supposed greed, to knock us back into living a life that is nerve-wracking and does not permit us to plan or save or experience life. The whip of unemployment is being cracked by this latest claim that there are jobs and the only people not taking them are the lazy or the too-demanding. It is a lie. Unemployment is high and rising and forcing people into temporary, low paid jobs is going to continue that situation for far longer than would be the case.
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