The IDS-Cait Reilly spat has been both amusing and illuminating, but it poses big questions for Labour, as well as the government. The government has to answer why its flagship policy – the work programme – is going so badly. Before the programme started, the Treasury estimated that around 5 percent of ‘clients’ would get jobs anyway. One year in, and only 3.2 per cent of Waltham Forest residents who have started on the work programme have ended up in work. Billions of pounds have achieved a result worse than doing nothing.
But Labour has to answer its own question. IDS hit out at people ‘who think they’re too good’ to stack shelves on back-to-work schemes, suggesting that this was all part of a ‘something for nothing’ culture. Let’s bypass the hypocrisy of asking someone to do a paid job for free and then criticising them as being part of a ‘something for nothing’ culture. And let’s just accept that such a culture isn’t half as prevalent as the Tories seem to think it is. Regardless of this, we have to be as vehemently against such a culture as anyone – where that culture does exist.
Central and local government have a duty to provide work, but everyone who can work has a duty to work. We should have no problems in signing up to that. And we should have no problems in agreeing that it is fine to expect people on benefits to do something for them. That may include relevant work experience in preparation for paid work, or it may include suitable training in preparation for paid work. We wouldn’t expect people to break rocks for their dole, but Cait Reilly’s argument was that she was taken from relevant work experience to be made to do irrelevant work experience. That cannot be right – just as something-for-nothing isn’t right.
But where the Tories are silent, and we should not be, is that nothing-for-something is equally wrong. Two groups feel that they get a particularly raw deal from Jobcentre Plus – graduates and people who have worked for decades and now find themselves out of work because of the recession. Back-to-work schemes often suffer from the perception that they support those who didn’t pay into the system, and don’t support those who did. We need to make it clear that we agree with neither something-for-nothing, nor nothing-for-something.
Our approach to welfare, work and welfare-to-work has to be based on something-for-something. In Waltham Forest, we’re developing a scheme which creates an earned route into work. Volunteering will get you free courses in our local college and adult learning service. A few more hours and you’ll get a guaranteed interview with a local employer or developer. More still, and we will get you a job. You’ve done your bit, so now we will do ours.
This is a genuinely Labour approach – something-for-something. It recognises that the value of work lies in more than the pounds in your pocket. It recognises that, just as we should help those who can’t help themselves, we should also help those who can and do help themselves. And it recognises that, if you invest your time and energies in our borough, then we will invest our time and energies in you. The scheme is something-something and win-win.
This isn’t about people being too stuck-up to stack shelves – it is about the rights and responsibilities that we owe to each other, and that government owes to us. It is about being clear that Labour does not see something-for-nothing as acceptable – but neither do we agree with a back-to-work scheme which makes no attempt to prepare people for the work that they are able to do. We believe that all who can work have a duty to work, but we also believe that the government has a duty to prepare people for that work – a duty that was failed in this case. We don’t see nothing-for-something as acceptable either. If you invested in the system through paying taxes or improving yourself through education or training, you shouldn’t be let down when you need that system to help you.
The Cait Reilly case is about who broke their side of the bargain – the government or Cait? We do ourselves no favours if we deny that there is a bargain – that each side has rights and responsibilities. When the government does its bit, we should do ours. And when we do our bit, local and central government should do theirs. It’s not about something-for-nothing, or nothing-for-something. When we adopt something-for-something, we all win.
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Mark Rusling is a Labour and Cooperative councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest and writes the Changing to Survive column
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As I read the Cait Riley case, she refused to take the unpaid job because she already had an unpaid job at a museum, which she hoped would lead to a real job. Had she been from a wealthy family she could have done this unpaid ‘internship’ but because she is not, the government wanted to punish her for taking the wrong sort of unpaid job and refusing to work as part of the slave army supporting the ‘something for nothing’ culture of big business. Labour needs to take on this ‘us and them’ approach to young people entering the jobs market.
You may wish to read my bursary application for the political weekend.
‘… but Cait Reilly’s argument was that she was taken from relevant work
experience to be made to do irrelevant work experience. That cannot be
right …’
I’m not sure why her argument here is so unacceptable.
The YTS scheme operated under a trade union veto. I don’t know if this was a national thing or something negotiated by Nalgo (Now part of Unison) at the time. As a workplace steward I was able to make sure that YTS placings had proper training, meaningful work and did not just replace workers who would have been paid the full rate. I suggest that the Party should propose something similar in the future.
Both Conservative and Labour MPs have missed the point. In the week that a report suggested that Britain could have circa $50 Bn. of fuel reserves awaiting the technological know-how needed to get it out of the ground, what is the point of a fully trained geologist being sent to stack shelves? If this is the sum total of political thinking then what exactly is the point of further education?
For 35 years from 1945 Governments of both colours pursued policies of full employment and people showed no great disinclination to work. Unfortunately, this policy lead to increasing Trade Union and working class power (and inflation) which was unacceptable to the ruling elite. Since about 1980, unemployment has been used as a policy tool to restrain Union power, wage inflation and a more equal society. It’s deliberate, people! So to blame the unemployed for a situation deliberately created by politicians of both parties seems the crassest hypocrisy. But what do we expect from those who claim the welfare bill caused the financial crash, rather than the other way round? Cause and effect confused for political ends or what!