One tale from the dole queue

Britain has a youth unemployment problem that threatens to crush a generation, leaving them to rot on the dole for the rest of their lives. Britain doesn’t tolerate young people not in employment education or training, we even have a Neet acronym to shame them with.

Britain also doesn’t like young people getting dole money for nothing. In April the government launched the billion pound ‘youth contract’, part of which offers employers the chance to offer a young unemployed person an opportunity for work experience, costing them nothing in wages because the young person will continue to receive benefits.

The policy states, ‘We want you to be innovative and offer placements that provide a real insight into a working environment… placements which are hands on, provide opportunities for skills development and expose participants to the routines of the working environment’.

David Cameron is concerned: ‘Sitting at home with nothing to do when you’re so young can knock the stuffing out of you for years. It is a tragedy for the young people involved – a ticking time bomb for the economy and our society as a whole.’

Britain likes entrepreneurs; we need new businesses and people with an eye for opportunity and the get up and go to make something from nothing.  Britain doesn’t like empty units on our local high streets because nothing signifies a neighbourhood in decline more than boarded up shop fronts and wilting ‘to let’ signs flapping about in the summer hurricanes.

A couple of friends recently opened a posh café in an empty high street shop. Two people running a seven-day-a-week café is a tall order, calling for dedication and a determination to succeed at great personal cost. One of the two has an unemployed teenage son (a Neet!) who offered to help out for nothing so his mum wouldn’t be run ragged trying to make a living to keep a roof over his head.

The beginnings of a new business start-up are a steep learning curve for all involved, especially when there are only a few of you keeping all the tea-plates spinning. So what a brilliant opportunity for a young man to learn customer service, food hygiene, stock control, balancing the books, catering, marketing and promotions, and also experience the hard graft and discipline needed to succeed in a time of recession.

Being an upstanding young citizen he was truthful when he next visited the job centre and told them he was volunteering in a new business and had done approximately 20 hours that week.  Of course the jobseekers allowance advisor was delighted that he’d shown willingness to work and was getting good hands-on experience. She was also over the moon at not having to trick him into ‘volunteering’ for a full-time unpaid work experience placement stacking  shelves at Poundland, Tesco, or Argos,  where he’d be exploited as free labour, taking the paid job of another unemployed person or taking overtime from low-paid employees (the real outcomes of the ‘youth contract’).

Of course, I’m kidding.  What really happened was that his JSA was stopped with immediate effect because the advisor regarded him as no longer available for work.

The advice from the Department of Work and Pensions to unemployed people who wish to volunteer is ‘volunteering shouldn’t affect your right to benefits. There are no limits on the amount of time you can volunteer for, nor any restrictions on the types of organisation you can volunteer for. The only requirement is that you continue to meet the conditions of the benefit or tax credit you are receiving’.

If the advisor thought his volunteering was inappropriate why not advise him thus and enable him to adjust accordingly without being penalised? Because the reality is that the purpose of Jobcentre Plus is to stop benefit payments, not to advise on how to remain on them. This advisor had an opportunity to improve the prospects of both the young person and the entrepreneurs; instead she imposed a sanction that kicked a bit more stuffing out of the young man and did nothing to help our floundering economy.

Just one tiny tale from the dole queue, but depressingly indicative of this government’s short-sighted obsession with cutting benefits and hammering the poorest as the way out of recession.