Pulp Fiction - DWP at Work

So what we always knew is now admitted. The Department of Work & Pensions tells lies.

Picture - Philip Absolon

 In this case, it is in their propaganda. They have made up quotes and used actors for stories of people supposedly put back on "the right track" by having their benefits sanctioned. Odd, isn't it, how the Tories (and previously their Lib Dem orcs) claim to oppose the so-called "nanny state", yet they more than anyone patronise our citizens over the need to be corrected, disciplined into being the deserving poor.

One "story" is particularly appalling because, although the person on the leaflet is not real, the tale almost certainly illustrates the experience of many. "Sarah" was advised by the benevolently guiding hand of her kindly work coach to produce a curriculum vitae (c.v.) to aid her search for employment. Although she didn't think it would help, Sarah agreed to produce a cv. But she didn't do it quickly enough and missed a meeting with Obi Wan Worksearchi, so she got a letter cutting her benefit for two weeks. Now however it is back to normal and Sarah is really pleased to have a good cv. "It's going to help me when I am ready to go back to work."

Except perhaps the last sentence is the cruelest of all. Worse than the sanctions almost. Because in terms of gaining employment, cvs are only of marginal help in gaining employment and the lack of one is certainly not a valid reason to sanction someone's benefits. C.V.s are eclectic in layout and content, rarely geared to the job being applied for and in the majority of cases if you use one to apply to any medium or larger employer, often as not they are likely to be consigned to the shredder.

Indeed, the Government's own advisory employment body, ACAS, guides employers to use their own application forms NOT cvs.

"Application forms can help the recruitment process by providing necessary and relevant information about the applicant and their skills....CVs can be time-consuming and may not provide the information required." (ACAS Recruitment & Induction Guidance Booklet, page 15)

The DWP has had to withdraw these "illustrative" fables, but what are they up to? Are they really trying to provide unemployed people with a hand up? Or are they simply piling agony on vulnerable people to grind them down?

The truth is, if Sarah was real, she would be one of the people who, to keep their benefits, are required to "contract" to apply for dozens of jobs each week simply to keep their benefits. Quantity is how it is counted and what matters; not chances of success or actual outcomes. And their cvs are the means to do so - scattered ed from Job Clubs like confetti in every direction, applying for work the applicants often know little to nothing about, are not qualified to do and have no chance of getting. But proof to their patronising gauleiters that they are complying and obeying their orders. Even if it is near pointless and at best cruelly misleading to jobseekers.

Our society is rotten and sick to the core - 50% of sanctions appealed against are overturned. While on the one hand it shows the system can be challenged successfully, that very statistic shows its sheer inhumanity. So many do not appeal because they either don't understand how to or fear rocking the boat further. But more than this it shows the appalling nonchalance with which they are doled out by DWP staff who are now known to be working to targets to impose sanctions. So, even if everyone complied, many would still be sanctioned nevertheless.

 With ever more punitive measures being introduced to force people into low paid jobs and even unpaid "experience",  the depths to which freeloading Ministers like Ian Duncan Smith are prepared to sink in their war on the poor seem to scoop ever lower. And the doublespeak and doublethink drilled into the skulls of DWP staff carrying out their directives become ever more twisted until the outsourced wretches who day by day impose sanctions come to view their clients not as fellow humans needing help but as targets.

This may be some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, some means of psychologically getting by, who knows, but it manifests itself not only in ever more bizarre decisions, but in their behaviour. A while ago we saw the official working for DWP contractor ATOS who blogged about clients as "parasitic wankers". A DWP worker left and reported that she "got brownie points for cruelty", including phoning a man in hospital to sanction him at her manager's insistence. Meanwhile, a number of terminally ill benefits claimants have been asked to estimate how soon it will be before they are dead.

All this is done in our name - and if not already then one day, whoever we are, however arrogantly we may think it never will be, however impervious to the unforeseen we feel, it could be any one of us being sanctioned.

So IDS becomes Kafka. Josef K should have done that c.v.

Having a Heart Attack? You Shirker...

The Daily Mirror carried a story today with what must be the most twisted and sickening tale yet of the Government's "fixing" of the benefits system. We heard a few weeks ago about ATOS writing to a woman to penalise her for not attending her disability benefits assessment - the fact that she was in hospital in a coma had apparently been lost on their thick skulls (even although they had been notified).

But today, somehow, feels worse. A man was attending a work capability assessment in Oldham when he had a heart attack and even the nurse conducting the interview decided she should terminate it (I say "even" because there have been many bizarre instances of distinctly uncaring assessments by medical staff employed by ATOS).

Two weeks later, he had his benefits stopped because the Department of Work & Pensions decided he had "withdrawn" from the assessment. Twisted beyond all measure of belief, this decision goes to the heart of this pernicious process, the signature policy of Ian Duncan Smith, who is allegedly a deep thinker.

Well, maybe he is and this is all part of his plan. While he sits in front of TV cameras trotting out platitudes of how the reassessments are designed to support people in genuine need and " not leave them unseen for years", the truth is somewhat different - hundreds of terminally ill people denied benefits in their final weeks, other people put through processes where meetings can be (and are) procedurally deemed to have happened even when they have not taken place, and then really spiteful decisions like this one - you withdrew from the assessment because of a heart attack? Man up and get back in there!

The system is dreadful and its effects sick. But that is almost certainly what its architects, the rightwing Tories and their Lib Dem Orcs, have intended.

Yet complicit in this too are the staff who take jobs with ATOS and the DWP and who then reach decisions like this one penalising a heart attack victim and then producing a letter like the one sent to him. It may be argued they need a job, but at what cost? Ian Duncan Smith did not phone up the issuing Job Centre and tell them to send out the letter to the sick man - someone on site did that.

Over two years ago, there was an instance of an ATOS employee referring online to people attending capability assessments as "parasitic wankers". He was roundly condemned. It is to be hoped that his attitude is not the default culture of DWP staff as well now - there is evidence to the contrary, but the Oldham instance begs the question and with much DWP work contracted-out to profit seeking companies, it is not at all surprising if the attitudes they engender are somewhat less supportive and humane than was the case under the old public service.

It seems that the default position, as part of the official, government-set process, is to be as harsh as possible. Otherwise caring staff appear to be being forced into dreadfully twisted decisions and positions. It is obviously down to individual conscience, but ultimately, there is a difficult choice for staff instructed to implement this vicious policy to make, one which it would be easy to trivialise or portray as simple if you don't work there for your own livelihood but a question they really need to ask themselves nevertheless: should you stay or should you go?