Why have the Tories delayed the mainstreaming of UC yet again?
The Tory Government announced a further delay to the mainstreaming of Universal Credit (UC) on the day of the first episode of a 3-part documentary on the subject, on BBC2. This episode charted the impoverishment of a former nurse and a former publican/manual worker, neither of whom had enough money from UC to cover living expenses and food. Thus illustrating the Poor Law principles enshrined in UC – that benefits have to be lower than the worst wages/conditions in the gig economy.
The programme also featured a DWP employee who works ‘front of house’ in a Job Centre. She revealed that her wages were not sufficient to cover her living expenses. The cameras followed her to her second job, stacking supermarket shelves after doing an eight-hour shift for the civil service. This is no surprise, as after mainstreaming, 40% of the DWP workforce will themselves be subject to Universal Credit because of low wages.
Other reasons for the delay may be:
· Revolt amongst Tory backbenchers confronted with a line of UC claimants in their surgeries every week
· It’s cheaper/saving them money continuing with the rollout as people lose their legacy benefits
· The suicide crisis revealed in the National Audit Office (NAO) report also released this week.
It is clear is that the delay has nothing to do with the suicide, homelessness, hunger, debt and poverty crisis caused by UC. The Government are determined to implement UC and managed migration is going ahead. However, following significant workforce cuts they have enormous capacity issues and the system is at breaking point, caseloads are huge and they haven’t the staff or systems to deliver. There have also been strikes in the UC call centres in the Midlands which are contributing to the further delays.
What we do know is that UC is a pernicious means for the state to monitor and control benefits claimants and large parts of the atomised cheap labour workforce created through the free market economy. This can be seen through the experiences of the Thomas Cook employees and their experiences of trying to claim after the collapse of the company:
“Universal Credit is a shambles of a system – having to constantly battle to get what you’re entitled to, and when you go to a job centre you’re made to feel like a criminal. It’s degrading. I was relying on friends and family – it was so embarrassing. It was a struggle every day, and I just had to keep going for my son’s sake.”
Or the Greggs workers, on low wages and zero hours contracts, who had a large proportion of their bonuses taken by the DWP highlighted by this report in the Guardian newspaper:
“Greggs announced last week that its 25,000 workers would receive a windfall of up to £300 under a £7m reward scheme linked in part to the success of the company’s vegan sausage rolls. However, benefits experts have pointed out that some staff who are on universal credit will keep as little as £75 after tax and national insurance (NI) are paid and bonus earnings clawed back by the government at a rate of 63p in the pound.”
Many in our movement and beyond bought the lie that UC was a way of streamlining the benefits system by combining six benefits into one and making ‘work pay’. UC architect and recently knighted Iain Duncan Smith had no such benign intentions. His focus was on the values of the Poor Laws and Thatcherite notions which would deliver a fearful and compliant workforce to capitalist enterprises paying below subsistence wages. The gig economy relies on zero hours contract, non-unionised workers who have few rights or protections and will work as demanded by unscrupulous employers under fear of sanction. The passionate desire by the right wing of the Tory Party to crash out of the EU with no deal is partly so they can rip up the basic but minimal protections afforded to workers in the European Union. The Tory think tanks are already targeting the scrapping of maternity leave, bank holidays and raising the pension age further in a post Brexit Britain.
UC is also an attack on the organised trade union movement as it is designed to control and sanction millions of workers and claimants. It is designed to facilitate low pay and insecure work. It is designed to leave people indebted and fearful. They will then be forced to work on zero hours contracts for minimum or below minimum wage for employers that are often the same companies who are evading and avoiding paying their taxes.
Blair and Brown set up the system of working tax credits to support those in work but in low pay sectors. This was to ensure a sufficient level income to support them and their families. Effectively this was a subsidy on low wages and drove incomes and wage levels down. The minimum wage (now misnamed the living wage) is exactly that, although some employers continue to find ways to avoid paying even this amount. This is especially true in the gig economy and in sectors such as social care where travel time between appointments in the community is not paid. Interestingly in large parts of our economy the minimum wage has become the maximum wage!
Essentially UC is restructuring the labour market and forcing workers to be monitored and controlled by DWP work coaches. Job Centre’s are now acting as ‘pimps’ for the private sector by forcing people as part of their claimant commitment to work in companies which offer 3 hour a week contracts and don’t pay minimum wage. They are also coercing people to become self-employed even when they are working exclusively for one company who are determining when they work, for how long and where. As UC goes mainstream all low paid workers who are in receipt of working and child tax credits will be forced onto UC putting them at risk of losing their benefits through sanctioning.
The Labour Party adoption of the policy to scrap UC was an important decision following a long campaign by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) to stop and scrap Universal Credit often in the face of opposition of others in the labour and trade union movement who proposed a policy of fix and reform. The Conference motion committed to scrapping UC and to replace it with a progressive benefit system, abolishing the hated work capability assessments and punitive sanctions.
With the election of a Johnson Government the task for claimants, low paid workers and the Labour movement is, over the next 5 years, to conceptualise a system of support that is socialist and puts the needs of people before the profits of business. This means removing conditionality from the benefits system. This is essential because large parts of the country do not have employment opportunities for people to ‘compete’ for. The creation of a reserve army of labour punishes people for the failings in the capitalist economy which cannot sustain a healthy and prosperous community. In the areas of the country where traditional industries have closed and not been replaced with an alternative, people are increasingly living below minimal levels of existence as exemplified by the explosion of food bank use. The new system must also take into account the complex relationship between work and disability/ill health. This requires a radical shift in our approach to welfare and benefits so that it is based on 21st century socialist values.
But we can’t wait for a future Labour Government - all the low paid workers, unemployed and trade unionists caught up in the UC vortex can’t wait. That’s why it is essential for us to build a grassroots movement that unites benefits claimants and low paid workers – resisting the traditional divide and rule tactics of driving a wedge between the employed and the unemployed. Capitalism will exploit the ‘reserve army of labour’ to beat down wages and conditions. The Tories proposals to create freeports and their intention to crash out of the EU with no deal signals their intention to further erode the rights and living standards of working people. It is urgent the trade unions and the TUC take this issue seriously and start to educate shop stewards and workplace representatives so they can effectively support and defend their members who are subject to the UC regime. It is also necessary they agitate and organise against Universal Credit. We must build a social movement in every community, town and city across the UK to stop and scrap UC. Join Scrap Universal Credit Alliance today! www.suca.org.uk
Mark Harrison
Chair, Norfolk Against Universal Credit
