Ipswich Unemployed Action

Aims of Ipswich Unemployed Action

• We want to raise benefits to a living level:
  
  Benefits used to be 21% of average minimum earnings - since being renamed Jobseekers Allowance it has halfed to 10.5% although new taxes etc. have pushed prices up more than they would have done by inflation.
  
  
• We want compulsory "voluntary work" to be paid at minimum wage:
  
  We can't say fairer then that. If we are to work to the same standard as a paid employee (or do all their work for them) then we should get the same amount as specified under the National Minimum Wage legislation.
  
  
• An independent appeal and monitoring system:
  
  At current a New Deal Prime Contractor may dismiss a participant at any time for any reason.  Jobcentre Plus has no discretion to reject a request and they don't review the paperwork.  This means exited participants are typically dismissed for trivial or false incriminating reasons and have their benefits stopped pending a 26 week (6 months) sanction.
  
  During the Flexible New Deal scheme an independent appeal and monitoring system should be incorporated where this impartial body gets to judge whether the Training Provider or participant is to blame and whether the participant therefore deserves to lose their benefit entitlement and get sanctioned - or perhaps a fine for Training Providers who abuse the system
  
  
• Real Training and Work Experience opportunities:
  
  It may be a shock of the number of unemployed people and more so the number of long term unemployed people. It is not until you go on a New Deal course until you discover why.
  
  Dencora House in Ipswich for example, participants do 30 hours a week job search in an under resourced environment on an industrial estate on the outskirts of the town - when they should be gaining experience in a work environment 4 days a week and be giving training and qualification opportunities.
  
  YMCA Training (who do offer training opportunities to businesses) who run the Suffolk and Cambridgeshire New Deal contract doesn't even offer training to participants nor do they even allocate work placements, therefore, it is pointless for a so-called Training organisation to deliver such a course other than they receive around £6 million from DWP every year for overcrowding people into rooms.
  
  
• Treatment as Human Beings:
  
  Money brings great power so an unemployed person living on the border of poverty can't expect to be treated like royalty, however this said, living in one of the world's richest countries where both the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights is presumed applicable you would think treatment of the unemployed would be better.
  
  For example, not being confined to a tin shed, on an industrial estate with high air pollution for 30 hours a week stuck in an overcrowded room with constant threat of dismissal sharing a few computers, toilets and telephones, no clean air and not allowed to get a cup of water or go toilet outside of breaks constantly under harassment from staff who are typically understaffed so over stressed which makes it worse, typically having to pinch a chair to get a seat in the room however not having a table so job search become difficult - blocking the escape route in the process but refusing to would get you dismissed. I could go on...
  
  
• Close the detention centre:
  
  Dencora House needs to be stopped in addition to all the other counterparts around the country. Give the unemployed what they were promised or don't send them on the courses - most people start induction week very keen then towards the end if they don't have depression, they are demotivated and take a while to recover  from the course.