Is Coffey’s plan to get 114,000 UC claimants into jobs a bid to break coming strikes?

Therese Coffey: is her latest attack on UC claimants an attempt to break forthcoming industrial disputes?

I spotted this on David Hencke’s Westminster Confidential site, which you really should be reading.

Let’s set the scene:

The Department of Work and Pensions is to tighten the rules significantly to force 114,000 existing Universal Credit claimants into work as job vacancies soar across Britain.

She is changing the rules so far more people will have to go on what is known as an intensive work search regime where they will be monitored continually by work coaches on how many jobs they have applied for and why they didn’t get them.

The [Social Security Advisory] committee approved the idea on February 4 but agreed to keep the decision secret until last week when it published the minutes of a meeting between DWP officials and the committee.

To make the change the government is using a regulation to uprate what is known as the Administrative Earnings Threshold – a device which sets the level of benefit and earnings dividing those who only receive ” a light touch” regime – ie occasional checks whether they are seeking work – from their local job centre and those put on intensive work search programmes. Those who refuse or don’t co-operate properly with face benefit cuts as a sanction.

It will move the level from £355 to £494 a month for a single claimant and from £567 to £782 a month for a couple. At present some 250,000 people covered by the intensive work search programme are in work – this will increase the number by 50 percent. The government justify it by saying the new level brings it into line with recent rises in the national minimum wage for those in work.

Some of us already knew the above. I’ve reported it already.

But here’s the really nasty part:

Questioned about the current job vacancies level encouraging this move officials said: “the vacancies position the labour market is considered by some to be hot which could be driving inflation.”

In other words by getting more of the unemployed into work, employers would have a bigger pool of labour and would not have to offer higher wages or even compensate people for the rising cost of living.

There may now be an even more compelling reason as Therese Coffey wants this to be law from September 26, since the government plans to use agency workers to break the coming strike wave. What would suit ministers would be if the unemployed could be drafted in as agency workers leading to confrontation with striking workers on trains, buses, schools, the NHS, and the post office with shouts of ” scab” and bringing the police in to make mass arrests of strikers.

How vindictive. How very Tory.

Source: Coffey sneaks through tough plan to push 114,000 Universal Credit claimants into jobs while Parliament is in recess | Westminster Confidential

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One Comment

  1. nivekd August 15, 2022 at 11:56 am - Reply

    The answer is yes! Perfect bosses’ solution – force claimants to become scabs. Time to revisit Marx and Engels! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour

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