unemployment

claimants and unpaid

News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles among the unemployed, unpaid workers and house workers, pensioners and welfare claimants.

The Green Paper, No-One is Written Off: Reforming Welfare to Reward Responsibility was published in July. Its aim is to ensure everyone has to “fulfil their responsibilities to prepare for, look for, and take up work.”

By changing the system it plans to get more than a million on Incapacity Benefit into employment in the coming years, help 300,000 lone parents get jobs and to have a million older workers more. Future employment levels are targeted at 80% of the working-age population.

Lernia Correctional Facility: a story from a Swedish unemployment programme

A short 'militant investigation' about struggles at a Swedish unemployment programme. by Kim Müller, Kämpa tillsammans!

I have spent about two years in different unemployment programmes in a mid-size Swedish town and this is my story about that experience. For most of the time I was training to become a cook in the Lernia programme (nicknamed "Lernia Correctional Facility" by its inmates).

France: Areva strikers issued with summonses

31 striking workers have been issued with summonses for 'restricting the freedom to work'

80 of the 89 workers at the Montrouge site have been on strike since January 10th over plans to close the factory down. Workers have also occupied and blockaded the buildings in protest. There has been no explanation of why the 31 employees targetted were chosen.

France: organisation amongst the homeless

The treatment of the homeless, especially those who are immigrants the attitude of the French government, as does the resitance organised against it.

A familiar sight to many Parisians are the rows of people living in tents along the banks of the canal St Martin. They are homeless, mostly immigrants, mostly illegal. The tents are supplied by les enfants de Don Quichotte, an organisation that battles for the rights of homeless people.

After ten years of GEAR: COSATU, the Zuma trial and the dead end of alliance politics

An analysis from the ZACF journal Zabalaza #7 of the African National Congress (ANC)'s neo-liberal Growth Employment And Redistribution (GEAR) policy and its relation to the ANC-aligned Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

Lost in Transit

Unemployed recalcitrance and welfare restructuring in the UK today - Aufheben (UK)

1. Introduction

In recent years, unemployment and similar welfare benefits - the dole - have become a focus of struggle in the UK. The small group which produces Aufheben has been involved in this struggle.

Physiotherapy students protest against unemployment

Qualified Physiotherapists are struggling to find work

Hundreds of physiotherapy students and graduates have converged on Holyrood to lobby MSPs over their "limited chances" of finding employment.

A Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) poll found that four months after graduating, 81% of physiotherapists were still looking for their first job. The CSP claimed that 28,000 patients were currently on a waiting list to see a physiotherapist. The Scottish Executive said a number of recruitment initiatives were under way.

One in four youth unemployment figure disputed

Our interview with economist and European labour trends specialist Florence Lefresne about the CPE.

In the interview Lefresne, of the Institute of Economic and Social Research, questions the widely reported one in four youth unemployment figures that have been used repeatedly as a justification for the CPE.

Mining communities, unemployment and incapacity benefits

As the government prepares to slash incapacity benefits, Rob Ray looks at a report brought out last year which is amongst the starkest examples of how incapacity has been used in recent years to hide much of the country's unemployment problems.

'20 Years on: Has the economy of the coalfields recovered?' examined communities where over 10% of the population had been employed in the mines before the mass closures.

The report, brought out by the Centre for regional and social economic research at Sheffield Hallam university, said:

claimants and unpaid

Workfare comes to Britain