Week of Action Against Workfare in Liverpool

A week of action against workfare in Liverpool, including pickets, communications blockades and other actions will begin on the 15th April.

Those dastardly f*&ks at the Department for Work & Pensions are still clinging on to the notion that unpaid work is somehow the medicine that the unemployed need to make them employed. We reject that notion.

It is a punitive, Dickensian rehash of the Victorian workhouse ethic and needs stamping out...forever.

Boycott Workfare have worked tirelessly to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare and we'll be doing our bit in Liverpool to put pressure on the architects and profiteers of workfare.

If you're in Liverpool or Merseyside then join us from Monday, 15th April to send out our message loud and clear:

IF YOU EXPLOIT US, WE WILL SHUT YOU DOWN!

Week of Action Against Workfare in Liverpool Facebook event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/309556732505241/

Follow @boycottworkfare & @claimantnetwork on twitter

Workfare hammered in the high court

From Boycott Workfare:

Media enquiries: Please contact info@boycottworkfare.org or call 07840 381195. We are happy to provide information, comment and interviews.

Media release – Tuesday 12th February 2013

Back to work schemes quashed in huge victory for ordinary people

Today, the Court of Appeal quashed the government’s workfare schemes, which have seen tens of thousands of people put to work without pay and many more put at risk of destitution through sanctions.
Of the numerous workfare schemes introduced by this government, only Mandatory Work Activity remains lawful. From today, those on the controversial Work Programme, Sector Based Work Academies, Community Action Programme or other workfare schemes may leave without risk of sanction. Sanctions currently in place must immediately be brought to an end.

The viability of the remaining workfare scheme, MWA, is under question due to campaigners’ success in persuading charities and companies to withdraw. A DWP evaluation [4] of Mandatory Work Activity in December 2012 noted that “The high profile withdrawal of placements from a number of larger charities meant a sharp reduction in placements.”
Joanna Long, a member of Boycott Workfare, has said:

“Today’s ruling is a victory of the people against a government which thought it could compel unemployed and sick people to work without pay, backed by a vicious regime of sanctions which made the poorest far poorer.

“We are confident this spells the end for workfare in the UK. The only remaining scheme is wobbling due to public pressure on the charities profiting from free labour. If Iain Duncan Smith attempts to legislate for workfare in future, he should know that we will not allow it. Tens of businesses and charities are already boycotting his schemes, and today’s ruling shows that workfare is not only wrong, it is also unlawful.”

Boycott Workfare’s UK-wide week of action on 18th-24th March will go ahead with the aim of bringing Mandatory Work Activity to an end. The campaign will do all it can to ensure those sanctioned are repaid in the coming weeks.
[Ends]

Notes to editor

Boycott Workfare Media Liaison 07840 381195
[1] See Public Interest Lawyers’ press release here: http://publicinterestlawyers.co.uk/news_details.php?id=298
[2] Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign network to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare. Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage. We are a grassroots campaign, formed in 2010 by people with experience of workfare and those concerned about its impact. We expose and take action against companies and organisations profiting from workfare; encourage organisations to pledge to boycott it; and actively inform people of their rights. We are not affiliated to any political party and are open to all who share our aims. More info: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/
[3] DWP evaluation of Mandatory Work Activity, December 2012: http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/report_abstracts/rr_abstracts/rra_823.asp
[4] Workfare doesn’t work: DWP research has repeatedly found that workfare has no impact on job outcomes. In June 2012, peer-reviewed research by the DWP concluded that Mandatory Work Activity had “no impact on the likelihood of being employed compared to non-referrals”: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/13/mandatory-work-scheme-government-research
2008 DWP research concluded “it can even reduce job outcomes”: http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2007-2008/rrep533.pdf
[5] For more information on workfare schemes and links to key documents, see the Boycott Workfare “The Facts” page: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?page_id=663
[6] This photo of the Boycott Workfare support action at the court on 26 June 2012 is available for use (please credit Boycott Workfare): http://www.boycottworkfare.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/forfacebook.jpg

Sunday People newspaper launches ‘crusade’ to keep bedroom tax

Dingbat

Trinity Mirror's The Sunday People have decided to launch a ‘crusade’ against the Bedroom Tax…by keeping it. Not only do they recycle the cross-party falsity that the “housing benefit bill must be reduced”, but their political hack, Nigel Nelson, thinks he’s got the solution to the Bedroom Tax after proclaiming it “wrong, wrong, wrong”. His solution? “[L]et local authorities determine individual claims case-by-case.”

Yeah, Nigel, that will make it right. (add shed loads of dry sarcasm).

Case-by-case would involve costly, invasive assessments, similar to the humiliating ATOS assessments, by local authorities to determine whether you are or whether you aint subject to the Bedroom Tax.

In Liverpool, the Housing Associations' Welfare Reform Group set up a database last year to swap information on tenants affected by the bedroom tax and who were likely to go into arrears, so they already know specific details.

Even if particular cases were made exempt from the Bedroom Tax via case-by-case, that would still leave 100’s of 1000’s of tenants not exempt and still liable to pay the shortfall.

Clearly, the tabloid hasn’t thought this through (or has --->) and decided to jump on what it probably foresees as a paper-selling opp.

The Bedroom Tax needs to be smashed outright, and that will only be achieved by tenant solidarity and direct action --not by devolving it to local authorities. That’s the only way we’ll combat the Bedroom Tax.

combatbedroomtax@gmail.com

The Localis Document: Blueprint for the Destruction of Social Housing

The image above is the title page of the Localis Principles for Social Housing Reform document. It was published in 2009 by think-tank Localis and authored by Stephen Greenhalgh and John Moss. Stephen Greenhalgh is a Tory dirtbag who’s currently under investigation by the IPCC for offering preferential treatment to tenants on new housing if they OK’d the demolition of their existing homes. John Moss is another Tory, who ran for election in 2005 and has worked under Lord Heseltine.

The document set out the trajectory-of-attack on social housing —and as soon as the Conservatives got into power they set the fucking thing in motion. It’s a horrible piece of ideology that will make your fingernails explode, but the truly stomach churning bit is Appendix 1, in which Greenhalgh and Moss set out the necessary amendments and repeals to legislation that would bring the social housing sector close to total privatisation.

Alterations to legislation involved recommending repealing all sections of Local Government Acts “limiting the ability of councils to operate commercially”; and abolish all sections of the 1989 Local Government and Housing Act to allow “controlled and influenced companies” to operate on a par with private companies. Most insiders will say here that this is standard stuff, common knowledge. But it’s not if you don’t know. Tenants are still working out how the Bedroom Tax will affect them personally, never mind think-tank policy that’s been worked on for years, decades even, by squads of Tory professionals.

Regarding the Bedroom Tax, it is disturbing to now see it in its true form: a mechanism to enable the reconfiguration of social housing into private housing at market rents; and even more disturbing to see human lives cast aside for daring to live in homes the government now sees as profitable units for the taking. Those monitoring Universal Credit will be interested to see the proposal to “abolish the Housing Benefits scheme” and “enable a new means-tested unified benefit to provide for a single housing and income support benefit.” Ring any bells?

The Localis document is also punctuated with myths about “inter-generational dependency”, worklessness, and the deserving/undeserving rhetoric picked up by suits throughout parliament to score votes and block solidarity amongst the working class. Localis even go as far as enabling “councils to discharge their homelessness duties” to free up housing for more “economically active households.”

The clincher, though, is the “[o]ther areas needing examination/amendment” section of Appendix 1, which calls for the removal of “anything which limits the powers of housing associations, Trusts, or similar bodies to trade commercially for community benefit, including the creation of for-market dwellings” and “amend any clauses which prohibit housing associations, Trusts, or similar bodies from operating for profit, and paying dividends of more than £1 to shareholders”. Says it all really.

Beneath DWP pretences of “growing housing benefit expenditure” and the housing ‘crisis’ glowers a renewed accumulation of our common resources by private interests, aided by the State. It amounts to an attack on the poor by the rich; and this document provided, and is providing, the pathway to destroying the remainder of our social housing.

Housing association to offer cash bribes to shift tenants out of their homes

Another contemptuous move by housing associations today as one ‘social’ landlord is considering the idea of offering bungs to shift tenants, hit by the Bedroom Tax, out of their homes. Aster group is offering to pay tenants the amount they would lose due to the Bedroom Tax if they move. 

From the 1st of April 2013, tenants of housing associations & social landlords will be hit by a possible 25% cut in their housing benefit if they under-occupy their home. This means: 1 spare room will see a 14% reduction in housing benefit; 2 spare rooms will see a 25% reduction in housing benefit. 660,000 tenants & their families will be affected nationwide.

In simple terms, it’s a bribe, a bung that underlines the contempt that housing associations have for tenants, to think that they might be tempted by the lump sum and give up their community, friends, support network, and crucially their home, in order to appease the forthcoming headache facing housing associations (HA’s). Here in Liverpool, one HA had the gall to consider getting tenants to work, unpaid, clearing litter, etc. to make up the shortfall in their rent. Let it be known, Housing Associations are no better than the bailiffs they’ll send round to collect the Bedroom Tax.

That’s why it’s important that we, as tenants, make a stand together and take action against the government, housing associations, collection officers, bailiffs, and the Bedroom Tax.

This should not be about 'move' or 'stay': it should be about refusing to pay the unjust tax full stop.

email combatbedroomtax@gmail.com for more info.

Combat the Bedroom Tax: Bootle, Liverpool Tenants Meeting - Wed, 13th Feb 2013

On Wednesday 13th February, Stand Up in Bootle! & Combat the Bedroom Tax will be holding a tenant-led meeting at Madigan's Lighthouse in Bootle, Liverpool. This is part of a series of tenants meeting happening across Liverpool to Combat The Bedroom Tax

From the 1st of April this year, the government will cut the housing benefit of over 600,000 social housing tenants, if they are considered to have a ‘spare room’. If you have 1 spare bedroom the cut is 14%, if you have 2 then 25%.

The Bedroom Tax affects nearly 12,000 people in Liverpool; many will be expected to uproot their families, move away from their communities, their support networks and downsize to properties that simply do not exist; those who decide to stay will be constantly battling to make up the shortfall in rent. This should not be a question of move or stay: it should be about refusing to pay the tax, full stop.

We argue that a stand now against the Bedroom Tax, based on Solidarity and Direct Action, will put down roots of resistance to allow us to better defend ourselves against a broader attack that extends well beyond 2013. If we do nothing now, the repercussions of the Bedroom Tax will cause greater hardship & increased evictions in the run-up to the implementation of Universal Credit.

By taking action together we can fight the Bedroom Tax!

Join the fight against the Bedroom Tax. Meet at:

Madigan's Lighthouse
206 Knowsley Rd
Bootle
Liverpool
L20 4NU
Time: 1pm

Bootle Tenants Meeting Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/events/565103480183766/

email combatbedroomtax@gmail.com for more info.

Combat the Bedroom Tax: Dingle/Toxteth Liverpool Tenants Meeting - Mon, 11th February 2013

Combat the Bedroom Tax is holding a series of tenant-led district meetings to organise resistance to the Bedroom Tax. On Monday 11th February a meeting will be held at The Florrie for Dingle/Toxteth tenants.

From the 1st of April this year, the government will cut the housing benefit of over 600,000 social housing tenants, if they are considered to have a ‘spare room’. If you have 1 spare bedroom the cut is 14%, if you have 2 then 25%.

The Bedroom Tax affects nearly 12,000 people in Liverpool; many will be expected to uproot their families, move away from their communities, their support networks and downsize to properties that simply do not exist; those who decide to stay will be constantly battling to make up the shortfall in rent. This should not be a question of move or stay: it should be about refusing to pay the tax, full stop.

We argue that a stand now against the Bedroom Tax, based on Solidarity and Direct Action, will put down roots of resistance to allow us to better defend ourselves against a broader attack that extends well beyond 2013. If we do nothing now, the repercussions of the Bedroom Tax will cause greater hardship & increased evictions in the run-up to the implementation of Universal Credit.

By taking action together we can fight the Bedroom Tax.

Join the fight against the Bedroom Tax. Meet at:

The Florrie
377 Mill St
Toxteth
Liverpool
L8 4RF
7pm-8.30pm

Disabled access throughout.

Any problems email: combatbedroomtax@gmail.com
Combat the Bedroom Tax Dingle/Toxteth Liverpool Tenants Meeting Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/497359270316025/