A major sociological view, associated particularly with ‘hysteresis theory’ is that the long-term unemployed withdraw from active job seeking, often due to low self- esteem (Layard et al. (1994). There was some support for this view from the staff interviews (6/23 staff). As staff member Erica put it:
JDJ: So unemployment affects mental health?
ERICA: I would say so. I mean some are nutters anyway. But yeah, for a lot of people, being unemployed is the vicious cycle, downward spiral. That’s what we’ve got to do, break them out of that.
Staff member ‘Oscar’ described what staff did to overcome the problem of depression and disengagement with the process of job seeking:
149 OSCAR: Giving them [customers] structure. A place to be, things to do. Don’t forget if you’ve not had to get up and go to work for years you do lose the habit. There’s no structure. And why do you do that anyway? It’s because the boss says you’ve got to be there, or don’t get paid. So you’re there, aren’t you? We give a bit of that back. Put it back into their lives. However, one staff member argued that the Programme itself damaged self-esteem:
CHARLES: […] well there’s all of this, you know it’s almost propaganda really, of how much your life is going to improve, how much you’re going to feel better about yourself when you get into work. Now that was true, when I was a young man, absolutely. Your work was part of your identity and if you lived on the dole… they would be a shame in your community. But if you’re just pushing these people into terrible jobs, where you’re still on the breadline even if you’re working, and then it’s just a few weeks’ work. Again, it has the opposite effect, it breaks down your self-esteem, it doesn’t build it up.
Customer views:
Respondents attending the WP offered no evidence that they were idle or disinclined to seek work. Twenty-three customer participants indicated that they wanted to work, and were actively looking for suitable roles. Customer ‘Annemarie’,69
for instance, stated that she was looking for retail or admin work, but also that:
You don’t get a lot of replies. But the thing with that, with Reed [recruitment website] is, it tells you how many people have gone for the job, yeah? And you can see there’s like 300 people go for some of those admin vacancies. And they’re not like massively well-paid, but the demand for them. It’s frightening.
‘Billy’, an 18-25 (JSA) category customer, noted that:
BILLY: […] I’m not the kind of person who would want to be doing that. You know, a Benefits Street person?
JDJ: Yeah.
BILLY: I don’t want that. I’ve got to convince him [Billy’s adviser], you know, that I’m not planning on that. Because I’m getting the feeling that’s what he thinks I probably am right now.
JDJ: Ok. And so you want to get off benefits?
BILLY: Yeah. I don’t want to be on benefits. I’ve already done one of the things he said I should do. You know I went round the centre of town and I gave out my CVs to the shops.
150 JDJ: Right. That’s good.
BILLY: I got about fifteen out. I printed more but some got soaked, you know in the rain. So I couldn’t deliver them.
However, seven male and two female customers – all of whom had long previous work histories - stated that they did not want to work, or would only consider work that was suitable for someone with an illness:
ALFONZO [50s, ESA]: No. I couldn’t work now. Not with my back. ANTONIO [50s, ESA]: […] Well I can’t work. It doesn’t make any difference whether I want to work or not.
JDJ: Would you like to work again?
MANNY:70 I don’t… honestly I don’t feel any great need to. I get by with what I’ve got. It’s not a matter of… if there was something I was capable of, and I could do it, I wouldn’t be against it. Part-time maybe. Yeah, sure, but what? I mean what can I do now? It’s a combination of age and bad health at my age. What would I be doing now?
8. Employment is available, if only people are prepared to take it?
A key feature of the pro-workfare narrative is that work is available, but that many unemployed people are simply too lazy to apply for it, or else too pampered to apply for menial roles (Mead, 1986; Bane and Ellwood, 1994; Edwards, 2013).71 According to this perspective, a stricter welfare system is required to force claimants to accept work. Staff generally agreed with this position. As staff member ‘Annabelle’ explained:
JDJ: Is the Work Programme making a difference?
ANNABELLE: Definitely. It’s got to be strict. It’s got to harass people… I think it’s too soft. You’ve got to put pressure on people because there are the jobs there, it’s just people won’t go and do them. And if you think, well there’s jobs, and there’s so many unemployed people… it doesn’t add up, does it? You’ve got to put the pressure on the unemployed to take them.
70 Male, 50s, ESA.
71 In 2013, ‘celebrity chef’ Jamie Oliver stated that “I am an employer of 350 chefs, and when it comes
to the 16- to 20-year-olds we see at the moment, I’ve never experienced such a wet generation. I’m embarrassed to look at British kids. You get their mummies phoning up and saying: “He's too tired, you’re working him too hard” – even the butch ones. Meanwhile, I’ve got bulletproof, rock-solid Polish and Lithuanians who are tough and work hard. Physical graft and grunt is something this generation is struggling with” (Goldhill, 2013: 1).
151 However, staff views more generally were nuanced, revealing a range of opinions on both the jobs market and also the availability of employment roles for different categories of customer. Five staff members stated that employment was available for those willing to do it:
JDJ: What do you think of the job market generally? Do you think there are jobs out there?
ANNABELLE: Oh yeah, definitely. There are jobs. If people really do want to go out and work there definitely are jobs. I don’t think that’s the big problem to be honest.
Three staff members also mentioned that there was a ‘hidden’ jobs market of non- conventionally advertised jobs, which customers could access in order to find work. As staff member ‘Bryan’ explained:
BRYAN: You’ve seen the customer jobs match website? JDJ: Yeah.
BRYAN: You’re only seeing a tiny bit of the available jobs on that so to access the real levels of hidden jobs you’ve got to get out and talk to people. There’s a fluid jobs market out there. It doesn’t fit into a standard advertising… recruitment process. There’s people going off sick, quitting, and there’s jobs turning up, you know when a business has an increased order. I want every employer to know that they can come and see me, I’ve got employees ready to go.
The quality of available jobs will be discussed in Chapter Seven. However, one staff member argued that the jobs market was ‘very poor’:
CHARLES: The jobs market is appalling now, there’s just nothing out there, or not what… what people of my generation thought of as a job, a proper job. That’s swept away. So what’s available… it’s temporary work, zero hours contracts, very poor job roles.
Almost all staff (22/23) argued that, at least for some customers, intensified job search would not be of immediate help, either because the customers were never likely to get into work ‘no matter what’, or because employers would inevitably reject them, or else because such customers needed too much help to reach the point of applying for work. As staff member ‘Erica’ explained:
152 ERICA: Trevor is a very vulnerable customer and another good example of someone facing multiple barriers. He has learning difficulties for a start, and problems reading and writing. He is a really nice guy but he’s not quite tuned into the same wavelength as everyone else. He’s really reliant on his mother as well. They live together and she’s still looking after him. I mean he’s in his fifties but he’s not able to look after himself. And you could probably tell he’s got a problem with hygiene and body odour. I have spoken to him about it. That’s one of the things we have to do, broaching personal hygiene.
JDJ: How long’s he been on the Programme?
ERICA: He’s been on for a year and a half now. To be honest, I don’t expect him to get into work, not through this. I’d expect him to be a full termer. JDJ: Full termer?
ERICA: Yeah, someone who does the whole programme without getting into work. He says he wants to be a cleaner. There are jobs in cleaning but I’m not sure he’d have a chance of getting one at the moment. Besides which you really need a car and a licence to work as a cleaner now. Staff member ‘Trisha’ also noted that not everyone could work:
JDJ: Is it a case of people not wanting to work?
TRISHA: In some cases of course it is. But there again just because you don’t want to work doesn’t mean there’d be a job for you even if you did want to. Oh, we’ve got people here who haven’t worked for decades, no one wants them. I can go on all I want to change their attitudes but would you employ them? I bloody wouldn’t. It’s not all like that, though. I’ve got people coming through, they just shouldn’t be here.
It was also noted by staff that, while it was essential for customers to work harder to find employment, simply applying for all and any vacancies, without a focused plan, was not an ideal approach either, as this was often counter-productive, or else a form of ‘playing the system’ in and of itself:
SOPHIA: This is one of the standard tricks… they think they can apply for a load of jobs… I mean you can apply for them, but they go for loads of jobs that they know they can’t get… that they’re never going to be offered in a million years. Then they look like they’ve applied to tons of jobs but they haven’t. They haven’t applied for any that they could really get.