The question of what causes long-term unemployment is too vast and contested an issue to review in the present work. However, when introducing the WP, the government had emphasised that a ‘generational underclass’ displaying socio- pathological norms was a primary cause of mass ‘worklessness’ (Grayling, 2011; Smith, 2011, 2012). This view drew theoretical support from theorists such as Murray (1984), Mead (1986) and Bartholomew (2006). In the following subsection I present a sample of staff and customer views pertaining to this claim.
Staff views:
141 There was strong support amongst staff for the idea that an ‘underclass’ existed, with 17/23 staff members mentioning it:
JDJ: Do you believe in the welfare reform process and agenda?
XANDRA: I believe that change was long overdue. I believe that the way things were set up allowed some problems to just fester and get worse, and no one did anything. I don’t think there’s any one simple set of things that you can do. Like I don’t think, yeah, just cut people’s benefits. That doesn’t solve… like… if you’ve got a family where a male subjects the rest of the family to violence. If you need to get the wife and kids safe, out of the picture, it won’t help if they’re going to find it impossible to get a place to live or money to live on. If we force them to stay because there’s a clampdown on benefits, yeah, it’s making the problem worse not better. But on the other hand I see it all the time where someone’s life has descended into chaos and the only intervention made by the authorities is to fund it. You know, give them benefits and pay the rent for twenty years. Cutting the benefits might not be the answer, but unlimited benefits is definitely part of the problem. But that’s why you’ve got to have caseworkers who intervene, coming up with tailored solutions. It’s not easy though.
‘Intergenerational worklessness’ – a major article of faith underpinning the government’s WP policy rationale (Smith, 2011) - was cited as a particularly acute problem by 6/23 staff:
JACQUI: Oh yeah, we see it [intergenerational worklessness] all the time. It’s a way of life. They’re brought up with it. They know no different. It’s really sad sometimes to see customers come in with their kids, and I think yeah, this is just how they learn to do it, isn’t it? You can see it happening in front of you. Then it’s so important to break that cycle. That’s why we’ve got to find the right balance. Yeah, we’ve got to hold hands, get customers confident, but they’ll never learn to look after themselves if you just keep doing that. That’s how we got here.
However, no staff member viewed ‘the underclass’ as the sole explanation for long- term unemployment. ‘Xandra’, for instance, explained that for some ‘complex’ families, a range of interconnected factors led to difficult life circumstances:
XANDRA: But like I say, it’s complex families. So kid a gets brought up in an abusive household, grows up, turns their life around, doesn’t repeat the cycle. Kid b, different again, grows up, abused, repeats the cycle. That’s why you’ve got to be careful about saying culture of poverty because it makes it like you’re just inevitably going to be like that. What I see is that things get done to people and people be people… they react in different ways. It’s just that children can be so impressionable. But there again, I see
142 some pretty tough kids. The problem there is that what makes a kid tough is very often a tough life. But no, nothing’s set. That’s the basis of what I do, you know… I can intervene.
One staff member was dismissive of the idea that ‘the underclass’ was a primary cause for long-term unemployment:
CHARLES: The Government’s response to that… the way they characterise the unemployed… Yes, some are right out of the underclass, but it’s not all like that.
Moreover, despite most staff providing strong support for the ‘underclass’ idea, nevertheless 8/23 agreed that the jobs market was difficult, and particularly for older workers. As one staff member put it:
X:62 Obviously I don’t make this opinion known because there’s a group belief that everyone’s expected to belong to, where you buy into the idea that this is all great, it’s all working. But they think that you can get a bunch of ex-brickies or long-term unemployed on a basic computer course and somehow they’re going to be transformed into wonderful, work-ready individuals. Never going to happen.
Another staff member, ‘Trisha’, stated that:
TRISHA: I don’t know what the government is doing with this [WP]. It’s a cruel programme. I’ve never been out of work but I know how it is to be getting on and thinking… well what value do I bring to society? These folks… it’s obvious that they’re never going back to decent work… wages like they used to get. So what’s the government’s thinking? Force them into the mines? One of the things that isn’t recognised here is that it’s an age prejudice issue. Older people are treated very badly. The labour market is fundamentally skewed to favour young people. No one wants duffers. But it’s not a moral economic policy to just force the old folks into pointless schemes.
Customer views:
No customers mentioned the terms ‘underclass’ or ‘intergenerational unemployment’. Nevertheless, customer views were by no means fully detached from the pro-workfare narrative. All of the 31 customers interviewed supported the general
143 necessity of a programme to help the unemployed; but this necessity was contextualised by reference to a variety of factors, which were in turn often intertwined with personal experiences. Customer ‘Marcus’ (40s, JSA) for instance, stated that “I even think yeah, if you want to make people do something for the dole then sure, I’m for it. It’s fair enough. But it’s got to be worth doing. Am I right?” Twelve customers mentioned that the programme was only one part of the solution to long-term unemployment, and that the other part – jobs – was missing from the equation:
FREDDY [60s, ESA]: The other thing is that you can’t force people to take jobs that don’t exist. I don’t like that. That’s a part of it where I do think, hold on, it’s all well and good having something like this but if this is like… the catapult to shoot people back out into the world of work then where are they going to land? There’s got to be jobs for them to land into or what’s the point of it all?