The New Deal is part of the same Labour anti working class policy as the maintenance of Tory anti strike and anti worker legislation and the continuation of Tory attacks on public services.
The New Deal does not help the unemployed. It is compulsory cheap labour. It is an extension of Tory schemes like Project Work. It attacks the unemployed and workers. It is a major step towards the introduction of USA-style workfare.
18-24 year olds unemployed over 6 months are forced to attend interviews, to pressure them into any old crap job. Those who don't get a "normal" job are then forced into one of 5 "options": 1) a job - probably low paid - where the employer gets £60 per week subsidy for 6 months, but is under no obligation to keep on the "New Dealer" after the 6 months. 2) A limited range of courses, getting £39.85 benefits per week. 3) & 4) Working full-time for benefits plus £15 per week, for 6 months for a voluntary organisation or the environmental task force. 5) Self employment.
Claimants who refuse the "options" or who leave early, could have their benefit cut completely for 2 weeks (4 weeks for a 2nd 'offence", and this cut can be imposed repeatedly)
¥ The spectre of homelessness and destitution for those who can't or won't take up one of the compulsory "options" - as has happened with the denial of benefits to 16 and 17 year olds
¥ Over 60% of "New Deal" participants remaining in dire poverty on either £54.85 (Voluntary sector / Task Force) or £39.85 (education) per week. (The government estimate only 40% will get a subsidised job.)
¥ Most who get a subsidised job being chucked back on the dole after 6 months.
¥ Extending "casualisation" - more low paid temporary work, undermining everyone's wages and conditions. Employers can use the 6 month temporary subsidised jobs to "filter out" people who stand up for themselves.
¥ The likliehood of "job substitution", eg Environmental Task Force slave labour replacing certain Council jobs
¥ Social control - "work for a boss or starve".
¥ More privatisation, with companies like Reed running the New Deal in Hackney, London.
¥ A massive step towards USA-type workfare. That means compulsory work for a boss for benefits for most unemployed and single parents and for many disabled people. New York City uses 75,000 workfare workers, intended to grow to over half its employees. Already they have cut over 20,000 unionised jobs.
Independent claimants groups, run by claimants and based on solidarity and direct action, are vital. Direct action demos can assert that there is opposition to the New Deal and encourage resistance to spread to workers. The recent unemployed struggles in France show the potential. If conscripted into workplaces the conscripts can still organise, both to oppose the whole scheme and for better wages and conditions.
The Liverpool dockers, Post Office workers and others have long been battling against the casualisation of their workforce. The New Deal is a huge step towards casualisation. To protect their own conditions, and to show solidarity with the unemployed, workers need to oppose the New Deal. A rank and file group of Employment Service benefit office workers, Socialist Caucus, have already come out against the New Deal.
Workers could insist that all New Deal jobs pay the going rate, and be permanent (not for 6 months). While this would be something, it still leaves unchallenged the compulsory nature of the scheme. Enforcing a boycott of all New Deal options should be the aim, until compulsion is dropped and the jobs created are permanent and equal pay with existing workers. This will mean defying the Trade Union hierarchy who totally back the scheme. The need for workers organisation independent of Union control is greater than ever.
In November 70-80 people attended an Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council meeting to discuss how the local voluntary sector could participate in the New Deal.. But people working for Womens Aid, the Stafford Centre, WHALE, Lothian Anti Poverty Alliance, Pilton Partnership, Edinburgh Claimants etc. all argued against any participation by the Voluntary Sector, until at least compulsion had been removed and the rate for the job was guaranteed. Voluntary organisations should boycott the New Deal, Participation in a compulsory forced labour scheme contradicts avowed voluntary sector values.
Some people from various voluntary organisations, Edinburgh Claimants, and others are planning a meeting in Edinburgh to organise broad-based opposition to the New Deal. If interested, please get in touch at the address below.
Contact Edinburgh Claimants c/o Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh
Labour justify the New Deal by claiming that fulfillment and satisfaction comes from employment. But most jobs exist to either make money for an employer or to maintain the power of the state. Most jobs are alienating drudgery.
Work should be satisfying creative activity to meet people's needs - for this to happen we need to control what work we do and how we do it. Such fundamental change cannot be ushered in through parliament, but only by escalating class struggle until social revolution is possible.