35 hours a week for Jobsearch, not possible?

DJman

I read a post on another forum which is worth considering here. The poster said that those who are employed but unsympathetic towards the plight of the unemployed, believing that Jobcentre Plus is right in everything it does to claimants, are living in a state of denial. That these employed individuals believe themselves to be too street smart, in control, hardworking and determined ever to be in the same situation as claimants. To imagine that they could be laid off, and need to claim benefits or experience poverty, and not be able to find another job, is too much to contemplate. Thus, it is easier to blame the unemployed for being unemployed. To face the fact that the fickle finger of fate can point at all but the wealthy is too painful to consider.

I cannot see into the minds of those who are critical of claimants, and so I am unable to say how true this is, but it is intriguingly plausible. What I can say with much more certainty is that misdirection is the classic art of the stage magician. Distract the audience's attention and you can get away with things. As a government, if you can find a group to misdirect the electorate's attention to, you can get away with things. Unemployed claimants are a perfect group. Making them look for work for 35 hours a week, as well as providing a built in reason to impose sanctions, creates a THEM and US ethos in some full-time employed people's minds. Once there is a THEM, you can do all sorts to them as they are the OTHER.

Conrad_Hart

nearlyrich wrote: »

What else are they doing whilst the rest of us are working? If you are taking state benefits your part of the bargain is to spend your time actively looking for work not making excuses and blaming the government.

Would you work 35 hours for around £70?

I can have a guess at the answer................

Morlock

The 35 hour a week job search requirement does not apply to JSA claimants, only to Universal Credit claimants. And if a UC claimant has taken all reasonable actions to obtain work, a sanction referral should not be made if that takes fewer than 35 hours.

"Under Universal Credit, which is currently operating in a limited number of Jobcentres, a claimant is required to spend a pre-determined amount of time looking for work, unless they can show that they have done all reasonable action to obtain paid work."

"Outside of Universal Credit, there is no legislative basis for raising sanctions against the number of hours spent on job search activities."

"Outside of Universal Credit, Jobcentre Plus staff should not be raising a benefit entitlement doubt simply on the basis of someone not demonstrating they have spent a specific amount of time actively seeking work."

FOI Request

Advisers may wrongly tell JSA claimants otherwise, but there is no legislative requirement to prove 35 hours of job searching per week.

sniggings

Morlock wrote: »

The 35 hour a week job search requirement does not apply to JSA claimants, only to Universal Credit claimants. And if a UC claimant has taken all reasonable actions to obtain work, a sanction referral should not be made if that takes fewer than 35 hours.

"Under Universal Credit, which is currently operating in a limited number of Jobcentres, a claimant is required to spend a pre-determined amount of time looking for work, unless they can show that they have done all reasonable action to obtain paid work."

"Outside of Universal Credit, there is no legislative basis for raising sanctions against the number of hours spent on job search activities."

"Outside of Universal Credit, Jobcentre Plus staff should not be raising a benefit entitlement doubt simply on the basis of someone not demonstrating they have spent a specific amount of time actively seeking work."

FOI Request

Advisers may wrongly tell JSA claimants otherwise, but there is no legislative requirement to prove 35 hours of job searching per week.

that may all be true but again once they include a condition in your "agreement" then it does become sanctionable, many of us have a min amount of time a week we have to search and a min number of jobs a week with have to apply for, in our agreement.
try and quote the rules to a JC adviser and they would soon have you on a sanction, and it's very easy to do, all they have to do is find one job out of all the sites on the internet you have not applied for and they can sanction you, as one of the rules that is not in the agreement but is a basic rule of claiming JSA is that you have to apply for ALL jobs you are able to do, so god forbid you should miss applying for one.

goonarmy

Conrad_Hart wrote: »

Would you work 35 hours for around £70?

I can have a guess at the answer................

If the "work" resulted in me finding full time work id be willing to "work" 100 hours a week.

stix62

goonarmy wrote: »

If the "work" resulted in me finding full time work id be willing to "work" 100 hours a week.

If?
So this is conditional, you're looking for a guaranteed outcome. It doesn't work like that. How long would you be prepared to look? Days, weeks, months?

goonarmy

stix62 wrote: »

If?
So this is conditional, you're looking for a guaranteed outcome. It doesn't work like that. How long would you be prepared to look? Days, weeks, months?

Id be willing to work like that until it did have that outcome.;)
it does work like that.

stix62

goonarmy wrote: »

Id be willing to work like that until it did have that outcome.;)
it does work like that.

Don't get me wrong, I can see the good intention but you have no idea how soul destroying job searching can be. It's mind numbing and spending that amount of time jobsearching would be very detrimental to one's state of mind

Dunroamin

Affynity wrote: »

No, because speculative applications are the most dramatically inefficient way of applying for jobs.
They're a wonderful scapegoat for people like the JCP and the work programme because they can pretend the labour market is stronger by whatever arbitrary amount they choose.

Try to remember that when we all paid our taxes to fund universal jobmatch, it was meant to effectively eliminate fallacies like hidden jobs, because there was no cost to the employer, regardless of how small their operation.

Speculative applications do have a low success rate but people can get jobs from them and they are very little effort to do, so why not?

red_devil

Sanctions should be abandoned, they are unclear and the amount of different things you are told by various people is misleading.

i got in touch with my mp and they dont agree with my advisor there is no hope is there.