Right toWork Right toWelfare
NEWSLETTER MARCH 2013
The Human Cost of Austerity Over the summer of 2012 PPR began working with the Golden Thread Art Gallery in Belfast to harness the experience and ideas of unemployed people at the DHSS office in Great Patrick Street. With over 5000 unemployed in north Belfast alone, Executive plans to create only 5000 jobs a year across NI are falling far short of what is needed to deal with an ever growing unemployment crisis. Local elected representatives at the Assembly have also passed the ‘Welfare Reform Bill’ through its first stage - designed to cut at least £18 Bn from the UK welfare budget at a time of fewer jobs and critical economic recessions. It is unclear exactly how the Bill will impact on people when it is introduced in 2013; however, it is clear that those worst off at present will be hit hardest yet again and in many different ways. Families, young people, the elderly and disabled are already struggling and can now expect massive changes to housing benefit, child benefit, employment support allowance, incapacity benefit, job seekers and much more in the new year. Since the summer, a Right to Work: Right to Welfare campaign has been developing led by people affected by unemployment and cuts in the welfare
system. The group has been using PPR’s human rights based approach to identify issues faced by unemployed people and gather evidence to help develop solutions to the problems of long term underinvestment in areas of high unemployment. Over 200 people looking for work or living with illnesses and disabilities have taken part in interviews, workshops and actions in recent months, each with a different story, each affected by cuts, job loss, and the failure by government to target resources into areas of obvious and proven need. Their experiences - sick people being declared fit for work, thousands
applying for the same job, back to work schemes that equate to little more than free labour, training schemes which are irrelevant in today’s labour market and continuous attacks on human dignity are in sharp contrast to the developing narrative amongst many decision makers of people who are ‘workless’, ‘work-shy’ and ‘addicted to benefits’. The Right to Work: Right to Welfare group have gathered evidence as to how government is failing to uphold international human rights obligations and how unemployed people are suffering as a consequence.
25th March 2013 12-2pm CAMPAIGN LAUNCH
Golden Thread Gallery, Great Patrick Street Belfast www.pprproject.orgFor more information contact sean@pprproject.org 028 90313315
What people have to say Ruairi
James
Bobby
“No jobs at all. The only jobs I go for, there's maybe 400-500 people going for the same job... Nothing there for me... There's no jobs out there for anyone.”
“They sent me on a course doing web design which was pretty much
James “I've just went and got a crisis loan there now: £22. I've no heating, no gas... so it looks like I'm going to have to starve and keep warm or freeze and eat...”
a disaster . I've got a degree in Art and they sent me to do a course which was the equivalent of about two GCSEs where you were given a workload that was supposed to take a full day. Each morning they give you this and you pretty much had it done in half an hour and twiddled your thumbs for the rest of the day. There was nothing to do only sit in an empty room.”
Josef “I enjoy this life, not this life but Belfast life - it's good for me, and I hope I can find a job... and after I can find a girl and I can get married and have maybe two children... and I can have a family.”
Marie
Bertie “They seem to always attack the poor... they're always getting at the poor. The rich are never touched. When anything goes wrong, it's always the poor that always has to fall for it. Them bankers, they
“The cuts that are coming in... it's going to affect everybody. In the part of the city that I'm from - East Belfast, eight people have taken their own lives within the last two/three weeks. These cuts are going to add to more social deprivation within the whole country and social deprivation's going to lead to more suicides, more people taking to drink and drugs, and stress... it's going to add more problems and add more stress to the health service. It's just a rebound effect and the resources are just going to get backlogged and people are just going to have to suffer because of it”.
Mary
“I had a heart attack in the first of April 2007. I suffer with diabetes, high blood pressure, angina, arthritis and I take 43 tablets a day. I've only been unemployed for the past six weeks. I was on Incapacity Benefit and Income Support..... I was sent to see a big doctor, when I got there it was a nurse, asked me a
bankrupted everything, it's all
few questions. Next thing, I got a
landed on us as if it was our fault,
phone call about three days later to
that we did this.”
say that I was put off Incapacity and onto Jobseeker's Allowance.”
“Something that will pay a good wage, you know... a bad wage is three quarters of a good wage. You have to earn X to assure a certain quality of life and maintain some acceptable, decent standard and preserve what you have.”
Government Watch “What are they doing for us?” “The primary objective of these efforts remains the effective targeting of resources towards those in greatest objective need” The NI Executive Programme for Government 2011-2015
The Department for Social Development has spent over £15m in building and improvement works in and around the Lower Shankill estate over the past decade. This has involved loads of work including labourers, bricklaying, tiling, stone masons, administrative workers, welders, plasterers, painters and decorators, and many more. The Lower Shankill community is one of the areas worse affected by unemployment. Yet the Department for Social Development have failed, time and again, to use the law provided for in the Good Friday Agreement to ring fence jobs and apprenticeships for the long-term unemployed. Invest NI is the body responsible for attracting private companies to Northern Ireland. They also provide financial assistance to some companies. In 2011, there were 630 longterm unemployed people in East Belfast, and almost double that – 1,250 – in West Belfast. So how did Invest NI work to address this? In 2010/2011 Invest NI created 926 jobs in East Belfast, and only 5 in West Belfast. According to the NI Audit office at least £60m of public money was spent on Titanic Quarter in East
Belfast. According to the post project evaluation of the Gasworks regeneration project in south Belfast nearly £10m of public money was spent. Despite the large amount of tax payers money invested in both the Gasworks and Titanic projects there were no fully paid jobs or apprenticeships ring fenced for the long-term unemployed. The University of Ulster plans to spend £250m, including a large amount of public money, on building a new campus in North Belfast. The Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof. Richard Barnett, promised that he would have an ‘open, honest and realistic dialogue’ about how the University would bring benefits to the local community. However, when asked to provide information on how the £250m would be used to create jobs and apprenticeships for the long term unemployed, the University refused to give any information whatsoever – saying that their ‘commercial interests’ were more important than the public’s right to know how their £250m will bring jobs to those in most need. The Department for Employment and Learning in
Northern Ireland is responsible for monitoring how successful government back to work schemes are. The signs do not look good. In a damning recent assessment, the Westminster Public Accounts Committee in London said the £5 Bn programme had made an ‘extremely poor’ start since its launch in the summer of 2011. During its first 14 months less than four in every hundred people across the UK got a job at the end of the scheme. Spending on the programme during the same period was over £435m. What can be done? The Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure is funding a £15m redevelopment of the Ravenhill Rugby stadium. Working with PPR, the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure intends to ring-fence 7 full time and fully paid jobs, and 4 fully paid apprenticeships, for the long term unemployed. It’s clear that government departments can use their money to create fully paid jobs and apprenticeships for unemployed people. So why is it not being done everywhere?
MythBuster ‘People are workshy and lazy’
There are over 125,000 people out of work and only 5000 jobs being created every year by the Executive.
Stuart’s Story
Our survey found that 47% of people applied for 20+ jobs in the last 6 months. 64% didn’t get a single interview
survey at Corporation Street So‘People on Our cial Security office showed that on benefits are average people are living on £137 a living the high fortnight. Barnardos children’s charity a family with two adults and two life’ say children needs to have £349 a week in order to be above the poverty line.
‘Foreign people are taking all the jobs, benefits and houses’
Less than 1 in 20 workers here are migrants - 5% of NI workforce. Over half are working in our struggling health social care and agricultural services. Less than 7% of migrants live in social housing.
Campaign Launch 25th March 2013 12-2pm
Golden Thread Gallery, Great Patrick Street Belfast www.pprproject.org For more information contact sean@pprproject.org 028 90313315
“I've seen firsthand, delivering round areas that people are finding it very hard to survive. I would know people, especially older people, that would tell me that they can only afford to run their electricity or heating for so long a day, or only be able to afford one meal a day. I lost my job in April 2012. I was paid off from the Post Office and since that I had no help from the government until November 2012. I worked for 23 years and I've basically always worked all my life. This is the longest I've ever been on assistance and it's making me feel like the first time I need help, that I'm actually going down on my hands and knees and saying "Would you please help me? It's making me feel like "What are you down here for? There's plenty of jobs out there, go and get one."