Benefits

Jobcentres in the pandemic

The coronavirus crisis has radically changed the job roles and working environment in Jobcentres. Department for Work and Pensions policy on self-isolation for permanent staff is relatively good, sending anyone with a relevant underlying health condition home for 12 weeks on full pay, although there are arguments with management about staff who live with vulnerable people still being asked to come in. G4S staff are on full pay, despite significantly reduced hours because almost no security is needed now jobcentres have been closed to the public, and would be paid if they needed to self-isolate...

Work or full pay!

As of 1 April, 950,000 new people had applied for Universal Credit in just two weeks. Usually new applications run at about 100,000 a week. Hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people have lost their jobs because they were on casual contracts, and because they worked for businesses which have laid them off or simply shut down. Many small employers have laid off workers, but also big ones, like universities. Many who are self-employed — really self-employed, or formally self-employed while really being wage-workers — are not able to use the government’s scheme for aid to the self-employed, or...

Covid-19: public health, and workers' rights too!

1. Requisition (in other words, take into emergency public ownership): • private hospitals, so that all their resources are directly available to the NHS • the pharmaceutical and medical-supplies industries, so that production can be ramped up in a coordinated way to meet the crisis • manufacturing facilities which can be adapted to produce ventilators and other medical equipment • hotels and empty houses, to use them for the NHS, for the homeless, and for domestic violence victims • transport and logistics, so that essential deliveries and travel can be coordinated and planned • the big...

Covid-19: the case for public spending and public ownership

Covid-19 is spreading. Spreading even faster, in the last week of February, was financial panic. The Dow Jones share-price index in the USA went down 12% in the week ending 27 February, its biggest drop since 2008. The first economic effects from a pandemic are in some ways the opposite of the usual beginning of a capitalist slump. That usually begins with "overproduction" - when capitalists, vying each to outstrip the other in a boom, find they've increased capacity way beyond available market demand, and suddenly cut back on new investment. With a pandemic there is instead a "supply shock"...

Other motions not passed - AWL conference 2019

Motions on left antisemitism, the Hijab in schools, and social security and Labour's policy, were all submitted to AWL conference 2019. The conference decided that the first of these motions - on left antisemitism - should not be voted on, after a debate; the second, on the Hijab in schools, fell; the third - on social security - were not voted on, as decided before any debate.

Tories: prepare the fightback!

Boris Johnson has talked of ending austerity, bolstering public services and appealing to the working class, but on all the evidence so far that is a threadbare velvet glove on an iron hand. NHS spending is set to increase, but by nothing anywhere near what is needed to fill the shortfall from its 2010-20 cuts. The tide of privatisation will continue to roll forward. The NHS is probably the best protected part of the public sector. The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates that by 2024, non-NHS spending will be 14% lower than in 2010. The provisional local government funding settlement...

Replacing Universal Credit

Fourteen million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. “Four million of these are more than 50% below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials...” That was Philip Alston, the United Nation “Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights”, reporting on Britain a year ago. He added: “Various sources predict child poverty rates of as high as 40% by 2022... “Homelessness is up 60% since 2010, rough sleeping is up 134%.... Food bank use is up almost four-fold since 2012, and there are now about 2,000 food banks in the UK, up from just...

Universal Credit debate 2018/19

Below are the articles so far in a debate in Solidarity on Universal Credit between Luke Hardy and Will Sefton, in 2018/19. We are to discuss it in Workers' Liberty's annual conference in December 2019, and have some discussion documents in addition to those below. For the moment at least, these are internal. Click the links below, in date order, to see the articles: "Labour should scrap Universal Credit" - Luke Hardy's initial article ( Solidarity 482, 30 October 2018) "Universal Credit: a way forward" - Will Sefton's first reply ( Solidarity 486, 13 November 2018) "Scrap, not pause...

Labour plans Universal Credit change

For articles in the debate in Solidarity and in Workers' Liberty on Universal Credit, see here. On 27 September, just after Labour conference, the Labour Party announced that a Labour government will “scrap” Universal Credit and revise its current position of halting the roll-out. The detail of the new policy is a series of important reforms. “Reduce the five-week waiting period by introducing an interim payment after two weeks; Scrap the two-child limit; Scrap the benefit cap; Immediately suspend sanctions and the claimant agreement; Make split payments, payments direct to landlords, and...

How Labour should end austerity

Since 2010 austerity has ground down working-class living standards for the benefit of the ultra-rich. Life has been made meaner and more insecure. Boris Johnson now says he will end austerity. But that is all a matter of previously-budgeted money being “recycled” and called expansion, and random promises to try to win a general election after which he will be free to do his right-wing worst for five years. The NHS and social care have been squeezed so that waiting lists expand and A&E wait times explode. Hospitals routinely run at the upper limit of capacity, so that an epidemic, or an...

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