Nickel-and-Dime-Land

[steepholm]

Iain Duncan-Smith, writing in The Sun about the Cait Reilly case:

Nobody works for free on these placements because the Government continues to pay their benefits. So nobody is working for nothing, are they?

Cait Reilly is of course the young unemployed woman who was forced to give up volunteering at the local museum - and seeking employment - so that she could work for nothing at Poundland. The Government seems very confused about whether this workfare scheme is "giving something back to society" (in which case I'd have thought working for a public museum would qualify better than stacking shelves for a private company), or "training" - in which case, ditto, especially given Reilly's qualifications (she is a geography graduate).

So far, so familiar, so hypocritical. But the quotation above, in which Duncan-Smith suggests that Reilly's Job Seeker's Allowance should be regarded as wages, is new - certainly to me - and seems on the face of it to be a gross violation of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage in this country is currently £6.19 an hour. Reilly was working full-time at Poundland: I'm not sure what this amounts to in hours, but let's be conservative and say 30 hours per week. On the minimum wage, she would have been receiving £187.70 per week for that amount of work. Not a king's ransom.

She was actually being paid £53.45 per week (or £1.78 per hour).

Comments

[cmcmck]

I've always considered Duncan Smith a fascist and a thick fascist at that and here's the proof positive!

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Iain Duncan Smith is a nasty vicious ideologue. But he also seems not to be very bright at all. The legal judgment in Cait Reilly's case was not that it was necessarily illegal to oblige her to work for Poundland for benefits to which her past and future NI contributions have and will entitle her, it was that she was misinformed as to the terms of the jobseeker's agreement which would oblige her to do this. It would surely make more political sense to stress that the agreements themselves, however iniquitous, have not been ruled unlawful, simply that JobCentre misinformation (which is rife and I believe mandated by the DWP, but of course how can you prove that?) was at fault in this case. Sadly, I don't think the judgment will change much; this case looks particularly gross because she was already doing voluntary work relevant to her degree, but I think many people are still prepared to be convinced (until they end up on them!) that benefits are free money, not a form of insurance for which NI and other contributions pay.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

All true, alas. And I don't suppose his reference to benefits as wages in The Sun will really come back to haunt him, either - but it ought to.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Well, as a Tory is is obliged to try and undermine the minimum wage at all turns: think of the poor starving CEOS! They need their profitses.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

That's how welfare was destroyed in the US. Recipients were required to work at the minimum wage rate mopping floors etc. in government buildings. They had to leave college classes to do so. No childcare was provided. And then, coincidentally, when union cleaning staff who earned $12 an hour (minimum wage was around half that, give or take) retired, they were replaced with welfare recipients. Isn't that nice?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm certain that this is the intention here as well.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Without knowing anything specific about this case, I note that IDS's argument reminds me of the 19C factory owners and robber barons who justified paying their employees nothing on the grounds that they were paying their room and board. (Which made them no better off than slaves were, except that they could quit, assuming they could afford to do so, which, with no wage savings, they couldn't.) Or, even more nastily - George Pullman was the great US pioneer of this one - paying them what looked like good wages and then claiming it all back for inflated mandatory room and board.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Iain Duncan-Smith (who married into millions himself) is very much in that mould, but without the initiative.