On Friday 4th March 2016, campaigners from the Psychological Well being Resistance Community and DPAC protested outdoors Metropolis Highway Surgical procedure the place Remploy/Maximus job coaches will “create jobs by prescription.” They are saying disabled folks can be bullied into unsuitable work and lose advantages by way of sanctions in the event that they refuse – and protest ‘No Job Coaches in GP Surgical procedures‘.
Significantly because the Tories got here into energy in 2010, disabled folks have been systematically attacked with cuts in advantages and unfair exams of health for work which have led to many suicides.
What must be a supportive system of Job Centres encouraging and serving to folks discover work has more and more turn into a vindictive system lowering the advantages to many for occasionally ridiculous, trivial and arbitrary causes and trying to power folks into unsuitable jobs. Profit sanctions can depart folks with out the mandatory means to remain alive for months and even years at a time.
In January 2022, folks on Common Credit score, both unemployed or on low paid jobs have been instructed they’d solely 4 weeks earlier than they needed to search for jobs outdoors the sectors they’d beforehand labored in, and if job centre employees really feel they’d not tried onerous sufficient or had turned down jobs, nevertheless unsuitable, they’d have their advantages reduce.
And some days in the past, the federal government introduced an incentive scheme awarding £250 month-to-month prizes to the employees whose Job Centre forces probably the most claimants into work and forcing claimants who’ve been on the profit for 13 weeks a to attend a job centre each weekday for a fortnight for “intensive assist”.
The federal government clearly consider that the one incentive is money, whereas most of us need jobs that we really feel are value doing and have some curiosity in addition to pay sufficient to stay on. Even Job Centre employees are poorly paid and their union dismissed the prize scheme, calling as a substitute for his or her poverty pay to be elevated. However these employees are typically not evil folks, and being made by the federal government to bully folks slightly than assist them should be painful for a lot of of them in addition to their purchasers.
The protest was a artistic and vibrant piece of avenue theatre, if typically chaotic, with a person dressed as a health care provider carrying an Iain Duncan Smith masks and a reputation label ‘Dr Iain Duncan Smith, Dept of Eugenics‘ handing out prescription varieties for a ‘Mr A Scrounger, 17 Lazy Home, Sink Property, Tory Britain‘.
The varieties prescribed ‘Infinite Job Teaching in Surgical procedure, Main advantages discount and PRN (‘professional re nata’ – as wanted) Common Sanctions‘ on the premise ‘Proceed till full treatment or demise‘ from ‘Dr A Lackey, DWP Surgical procedure, c/o Nudge Unit, Tory Headquarters‘.
Then Maximus ‘Job Coaches’ pounced on the sufferers to problem G4S or Ingeus Deloitte Ltd ‘work cures’ and crimson ‘Sanctioned’ notices. Maybe appropriately a kind of job coaches was in costume as a squirrel and had a placard studying ‘Nuts to IDS – Squirrels Struggle Again’.
There have been additionally some severe speeches, together with from a neighborhood GP, Roy Bard of MHRN, Paula Peters of DPAC, and Petros Elia, Normal Secretary of the United Voices of the World commerce union who had include a banner, drummers and plastic horns so as to add some noise to the protest.
On the finish of the protest DPAC led a march down Metropolis Highway, with police vainly making an attempt to maneuver them onto the pavement.
The march stopped on the busy Outdated Road roundabout the place they held a loud protest letting throughout know why they have been protesting for round 20 minutes blocking all site visitors whereas police tried to maneuver them away. Ultimately after police started significantly to threaten arrests they determined it was time to finish the protest and slowly moved off the road.
Far more on My London Diary at No Job Coaches in GP Surgical procedures. It’s also possible to see some footage I took later that day on the launch of the re-born Worldwide Occasions at London is on Fireplace – IT is again.
Tags: profit sanctions, advantages, Metropolis Highway, cuts, Disabled Individuals In opposition to Cuts, DPAC, DWP, monetary incentives, Iain Duncan Smith, IDS, intensive assist, Worldwide Occasions, Islington, IT re-born, London, march, Psychological Well being Resistance Community, MHRN, Nuts to IDS, Outdated Road rounabout, Paula Peters, peter Marshall, police, prescription varieties, protest, relaunch, Roy Bard, sanctions, tarffic block, common credit score
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