35 hours a week for Jobsearch, not possible?

dktreesea

makeyourdaddyproud wrote: »

Just looked at John Galt's bio and I would consider him iconic.

I certainly wouldn't consider him "rubbish".

This reminds me of the get rich mantra espoused by Herbalife, where many dolies made a fortune from nothing so it can be done.

But having said that, wealthy people DO have advantages that are not easily overcome by the underprivileged many.

Yes, one thing wealthy people tend to have is contacts. People that can ensure, for example, their son or daughter gets an internship at whatever law or accounting firm they are targeting. In days gone past, when jobs were more plentiful than today, even having someone you knew employed at the local foundry could count for something if you wanted a job there for a family member.

We seemed to have turned into a society where, for the masses, including the middle class, it is becoming hard to survive. No one seems to have time anymore to take an interest in each other and develop good contacts. Nor help each other, with a job, or passing on a contact, when someone they know is in need.

If the government want to limit the time benefits are available to the unemployed, or the eligibility for those benefits (e.g. restricted to people who have previously paid into the system) then they should get on with it and do just that, instead of imposing arbitrary sanctions on people just because 915,000 of us have the "cheek" to be out of work for more than a year.

Denning.

fruitedeli wrote: »

He's already called you stupid with much consideration. Seems like there's many people on these forums who think you're by definition, stupid, and abusive. Is there a reason for that?

He hasn't called me stupid, he called another poster stupid. I was calling him stupid for calling someone stupid who was saying that no one is stupid enough to the point they can't make a living for themselves. So you are saying you agree with the poster who is calling people too stupid to be self employed, go you.

There are many on here who would like to think I'm stupid, the reason is pretty clear, they don't like people who disagree with their 'GOVERNMENT IS EVIL' rubbish. You will find the real world very much agrees with me, even if a loud minority of this forum doesn't.

makeyourdaddyproud

Denning. wrote: »

He hasn't called me stupid, he called another poster stupid. I was calling him stupid for calling someone stupid who was saying that no one is stupid enough to the point they can't make a living for themselves. So you are saying you agree with the poster who is calling people too stupid to be self employed, go you.

There are many on here who would like to think I'm stupid, the reason is pretty clear, they don't like people who disagree with their 'GOVERNMENT IS EVIL' rubbish. You will find the real world very much agrees with me, even if a loud minority of this forum doesn't.

You do have some fair points, but many here read between the lines too much and are affected by articulation and tone, rather than content. IMO, you don't need to change anything.

DJman

Let's accept that there are more unemployed adults of working age than there are job vacancies. Notwithstanding those (few) claimants who genuinely don’t want to work, it follows, therefore, that unemployment is caused by a shortage of work and not because the unemployed don’t want to work.

Then let's consider these questions in relation to looking for work for 35 hours a week.

Firstly, looking for work is nothing like a full time job for the obvious reason that claimants are not allowed 4 or 5 weeks' paid holiday off from their jobsearch or signing-on commitments. As far as I am aware, no paid employee works 52 weeks a year, with no paid holidays whatsoever.

Moreover, how many full-time employees actually work from the moment they arrive at work until the moment they leave? Excluding unpaid lunch breaks, how many employees have paid coffee or cigarette breaks? Moreover, how many employees talk to their colleagues about non-work related matters, such as the television, sport, holidays or their latest romantic escapades? Full-time employees are not paid to gossip with their colleagues in works' time and yet millions do. Moreover, how many take longer than necessary to perform a particular task, whether by accident or design? Although I acknowledge that some types of jobs, such as call centre customer service advisors or production line workers, lend themselves to non-stop work, I suspect that millions of full-time paid employees do not actually work for the entirety of the hours they are paid.

Looking for work is also unlike full-time employment because people in work are given duties to perform. These are ad-hoc things and/or a regular series oftasks which depend on factors well outside the control of the employee. Employees do not, therefore, make up their own workloads. And for those jobs where thereare periods of downtime - when there is nothing to do because of the normal ebb and flow of the week – employees still get paid.

Secondly, is the process or the result of a job search the important issue? In other words, is it the length of time spent looking for work or the number of job applications made? Although these are, of course, related, they are not inextricably linked. It is quicker to email out CVs than it is to fill in application forms, for example, and it ismore time consuming to print out and post applications than it is the email them. Let us imagine that somebody spent the three hours from 9am till 12noon on a Monday looking on the Internet, and found 10 jobs which they were suited for. Let us also assume that these jobs all required application forms. To fill in an application form quickly is to fill it in badly, so let us say that it takes 2 hours to do one properly. That is 20 hours to complete 10 application forms. Yet the claimant only spent 3 hours looking for them. Which is more important?

Thirdly, when Universal Credit is introduced, part-time or low paid employeeswho claim tax credits will be made to look for full-time / better paid work or else lose their benefits. It is unclear to me how somebody who is already working can be described as a scrounger. Moreover, these workers will be competing for the same jobs that unemployed people are applying for so where isthe value in that?

Finally, if spending 35 hours a week looking for work has any tangible benefit, it is because it gives you an advantage over those who don’t spend 35 hours a week looking for work. If everybody is forced to spend the same amount of time doing it, that advantage disappears. As there are more unemployed, working age adults than vacancies, claimants would still be chasing the same number of jobs. In which case, they may as well all search for work for 5 hours a week, say, as the same number of jobs will still be filled each week. The actual act of searching will not magically create employment and so a universal mandate of 35 hours a week will achieve nothing. Anybody who claims to spend this amount of time looking for work, but who is still unemployed after a few weeks, is evidence of this.

Affynity

This is why I'd never make a popular Secretary for Work & Pensions because if I saw the numbers of unemployed and underemployed versus the number of known vacancies in the labour market, I wouldn't do anything to get people into work.
Given that non-intervention guarantees people will find work without any support, why would you waste any of the tax payer's money trying to defy simple maths?
Even if there were enough jobs for half of the unemployed, I'd be very disinclined to spend much on it.

I think it's a political thing to brag about low-efficacy as if it were an achievement.

If your department has 100s of millions of pounds to invest in employment, transform some of those JSA bills into salaries and pay people a decent wage for community work, not this inhumane working for your benefits nonsense.

"You have to work for your out-of work benefit".
Get the tax-payer's money away from these people now before we end up with some magic beans...

sniggings

martinsurrey wrote: »

so an hour researching each company you are applying to, and then an hour tailoring your CV to match what they are looking for, thats 14 hours "work". Do that for 3 days a week and you've got your 35 hours.

of course if you just send a generic CV to every company, it will take 30 mins, and will lead to no jobs.

fine if you are skilled, not so sure how you can tailor a CV that only has low/no skill jobs on it and you are applying for a min wage job.

sniggings

honestly when I read threads like this I think that I'm living in a cult, most of you have fallen for the tories plan of turning each social group against the other to stop them from seeing the real problems in this world.

Out of all those unemployed how many are sleeping behind drawn curtains all day as Osbourne says...10% 20%. 40%..lets say 80% which is still less than the tories would have us believe, so lets now stop paying benefits to those 80% heck lets make it 100%, what will the saving be? less than £5 billion, which is a huge amount but still less than half of the money we give away to over sea, to fund the Indian spice girls and the Indian question time show, just for them two things, this government has paid £10 million of the £10 billion a year they give away, it makes the £5 billion on unemployment not seem that big after all, if they can give twice that amount away each year, I know if I were skint I wouldn't be giving £10 billion away! also this year they have given £1.4 billion away on free school meals for some kids that can well afford it, and a marrige allowance that will see at most £200 for a couple...yeah that will keep a marriage together!

My point, if you happened already worked it out, is yes it's a lot of money but it's a faction of the welfare spending, stop paying all unemployment benefit tomorrow and you save £5billion from a budget of over 200billion, so why are the government making so much of those on the dole? because it's a vote winner, people falsely believe that if you slove the unemplyment problem you will solve all of our problems, yet we will still be paying out 23 billion in housing benefit, 50 bilion in in work benefits and over a 100 billion in pensions, yet what do the tories do? beat on the unemployed hoping that the public fall for it and don't notice that the big problems of low wages, high housing costs just keep making the situation worse.

donnajunkie

gay_guy wrote: »

I read on Consumer action Group that a poster posted that she/he needs to do 35 hours Jobsearch a week, how is that possible?

There are hardly any Jobs, some jobs need driving licence (but what if people don't have any licence, do their still need to apply for that positon to avoid a sanction?)

Also what if jobs state need experience and some people haven't? do their need to apply for that position as well?

This goverment really is rubbish, also another poster state that if you can't provide 35 hours a week for jobsearch then you could loose JSA :mad:

How is this fair on true JSA claimants who are trying very hard to get into work?

The goverment should tackle cheats then true and honest claimants, and David Cameron said we are in this together, yeah right :mad:

if i was subject to this the first thing i would say is can you give me an idea of what is expected of me each day so that i can be seen as reaching the 35 hours requirement. secondly yes it may mean applying for jobs that arent 100% suitable to make up the numbers. this means within reason of course. for example if you are a bricklayer and see a bricklaying job that requires a driving licence that you dont have still apply for it. however dont go daft and apply for something obviously unsuitable like a scientist.
lastly to make up 35 hours it may be a good idea to think of jobsearch activities that arent easy to check. for example say you travelled to a town 30 miles away and spent all day handing out cvs.

ArtoDeeto

gay_guy wrote: »

I read on Consumer action Group that a poster posted that she/he needs to do 35 hours Jobsearch a week, how is that possible?
There are hardly any Jobs
Also what if jobs state need experience and some people haven't?
This goverment really is rubbish, also another poster state that if you can't provide 35 hours a week for jobsearch then you could loose JSA

gay_guy wrote: »

There are hardly any Jobs

Really? Where do you live?

szam_

ArtoDeeto wrote: »

Really? Where do you live?

He lives in Burnley, which has pretty good links to Rochdale, Greater Manchester, Accrington, Blackburn, Rossendale, amongst other locations if you really, really want a job (i.e. train to Preston not that far away (30 mins), Leeds, which I think it goes through Huddersfield if you're desperate, Halifax is possible too)