Aplicación práctica del Modelo (Caso Práctico)

As we have seen from the LMA estimates, declining levels of economic activity were the most significant labour market adjustment to the loss of industrial jobs in Northumberland. There were two components to this: those who retired early, and those who claimed inactive benefits, mostly Incapacity Benefit (Invalidity Benefit at the time). The decision by an individual to withdraw their labour was heavily influenced by their age, being concentrated among the older age groups, particularly 54-64, with a significant increase also among the 35-54 year-olds. As Figure 5.12 shows, the inactive proportion of the oldest cohort (54-64) of men rose by over 20 percentage points during the decade, compared with 6 percentage points for those aged 35-54. An often de facto early retirement was supplemented in some cases by claiming sickness

benefits to provide a replacement household income. Figure 5.14 shows the extent to which individuals were inactive due to ill-health, finding that some 26.0% of the oldest cohort, and 7.6% for the next oldest were permanently sick. Female inactivity by contrast declined across all age bands except those 55-59 (see Figure 5.13).

They almost took a view, ‘am I young enough to retire?’ ‘Am I happy enough to be on benefits?’ And after a while I think it’s a case of, if you’re in that situation you tend to get used to it…And after a while, they start to get,

‘I haven’t had a job in three months, I haven’t had a job in six months, and they start to get used to less money. There’s not a lot to spend it on, no cinemas, no big supermarkets. OK they get their cheap ‘backy from the

continent. The social club’s always existed. I suppose they might prop the bar a bit more than they done in the past, but most were likely quite reasonable drinkers to start with (Employment opportunities manager, Amble Development Trust, formerly redundancy counsellor with British Coal Enterprise).

192

Figure 5.12: Change in the male economic inactivity rate by age in the Northumberland coalfield, 1981-1991

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

16-24 25-34 35-54 55-64

Age band

Percent who were economically inactive

1981 1991

(Source: Census)

193

Figure 5.13: Change in the female economic inactivity rate by age in the Northumberland coalfield, 1981-1991

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

16-24 25-34 35-54 55-59

Age

Percent who were economically inactive

1981 1991

(Source: Census)

194

Figure 5.14: Economic position by age for the men in the Northumberland coalfield, 1991

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

16-24 25-34 35-54 55-64

Age

Economic position- %

Other economically inactive Perminently Sick

Retired

On a government scheme Unemployed

Employed

(Source: Census)

There may be several explanations for the rising numbers on sickness benefits. First, mining left a significant legacy of ill-health, particularly of respiratory and muscular-skeletal injuries. Workers often struggled on with such conditions while in employment, but once they were made redundant their conditions made competing for other work difficult.

The rational decision was therefore to get ‘signed off’ as sick.

The mining industry has created problems in these communities, with fingers, backs, heads, knees, accidents, and rather than claim

benefits if you’re bad but you can manage to get to work and work, then fine. But if your job’s taken away from you, but you’re still bad, your illness isn’t taken away so people would, I think rightly, say to the doctor, “look I’m injured here” or, “I’ve got a bad chest or whatever” (National Chairman and secretary- National Union of Mineworkers).

Individuals who had suffered sickness or injuries during work might also have been kept on in lighter duties above ground, and their health problem might also limit their ability to find subsequent alternative work.

If you were sick, if you were injured, this is another benefit of the old school, the old generation. If you were sick, or you were injured and you couldn’t do face work, you weren’t put on the scrap heap. You weren’t said “there’s your cards, bugger off”. They would find you a job where you could manage, and that’s how it progressed, and that’s what happened so they could find you another job you could do, maybes on the surface if you weren’t fit to do your job (Former miner [N2])

In addition, jobs were also provided in the pits for men who might otherwise struggle to find jobs in other private industries. Individuals with some degree of physical or mental disability would often be found above ground work or light duties.

I mean even people with special needs normally managed to get a job on bank or something on the top. You know, there was jobs just made to employ the community, but once you actually got out of there into the real world and you’ve got to earn your pay, you know we can’t carry anyone who’s not pulling their weight for whatever reason…unfortunately it’s harder to get work in civvy street, who really wants their pound of flesh (Employment opportunities manager, Amble Development Trust, formerly redundancy counsellor with British Coal Enterprise).

Secondly, increasing illness was associated with the stresses of losing employment, which can trigger further deterioration where substance, particularly alcohol, misuse becomes the means by which this stress is managed.

There were a lot more who were depressed, who managed get onto a doctor’s certificate and stay that way…a lot of them didn’t see a future for themselves; that was all they knew.

It was all they could see you know?

(Employment opportunities manager, Amble Development Trust, formerly redundancy counsellor with British Coal Enterprise).

Thirdly, a greater ‘awareness’ of the benefits system developed locally among individuals and institutions. This allowed some diversion from unemployment to sickness benefits.

[That was] the way it went with older guys.

They were just going on the sick rather than actively look for work (Former miner [N2]).

Finally, the dependency or paternal culture of the coalfield also

‘prevented’ some individuals from moving into other employment.

It was a whole lifestyle, the whole way of life;

the whole social activity just disappeared, as well as the money to play with. So I think people hit the ground much harder over here, to the extent that obviously dependency

culture sort of grew up from that, and people started to say, “well you’ve taken my job away what are you going to do for me?” (Assistant director – Northumberland Community Council).

A lot of them wrote themselves off straight away or they found themselves in a market place which they weren’t accustomed

to…because they’d been so, using this word,

‘institutionalised’. They found it extremely hard to adapt to what the marketplace was wanting in the way of transferable skills, or different shift patterns, or ‘you’ve got to travel here from A to B’ (Employment opportunities manager, Amble Development Trust, formerly redundancy counsellor with British Coal Enterprise).

These factors combined with the lack of appropriate local employment opportunities to swell the numbers of sickness claimants in the area which, as we shall see, had profound longer-term implications.

Mon Valley

In the Mon Valley there was a much less pronounced rise in levels of inactivity. The lower redundancy payouts associated with closures made early retirement less likely, and there was not the rise associated with sickness benefits, as in the UK. Generally, once workers had exhausted their Unemployment Insurance there was no other public income support on which they could draw.

There was, you know really, really nothing else.

Welfare was available but welfare paid you like 50 bucks a week right. So it’s like fuck that, the only way you’d survive on welfare is if you had no assets. And most of the workers, we had too much in cash assets, cashable assets, like they’d include your cemetery plot counted against it…so dislocated workers couldn’t make it into those categories, so there wasn’t any

healthcare for your kids right (Co-director, Mon

Valley Unemployed Committee, former mill worker).

We have seen that some older workers were able to take early retirement by accepting an early company lump sum buy-out of their pension, and use this until they were eligible for social

security. This was only realistic however for those with a relatively short period to retirement age.