Cuts Watch

Cuts Watch #224: Temporary staff at Jobcentre Plus

6th September 2010 — Filed under: Cuts Watch: Welfare

Nicola Smith Nicola Smith

Welfare to work blogs are starting to report that ‘most’ of the 16,000 temporary  Jobcentre Plus staff, who were recruited to deal with increased demand for services at the start of the recession, will now not have their contracts renewed.

Should this be true, it would be extremely worrying – not least for those facing unemployment. The claimant count remains 84 per cent higher than at the start of the recession, the labour market recovery is fragile, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers are set to face unemployment and over a million disabled people will shortly be migrated from incapacity benefits, with many likely to end up on JSA. Demand for Jobcentre services will remain high for some time to come – these cuts would be extremely misguided.

PCS is campaigning hard to have all of the contracts of these FTA staff converted into permanent staff or at least have the contract extended, and note that there is still a huge amount of work for the FTA staff to do despite the small decreases in unemployment recently. PCS believe that if these staff leave the only result will be fewer staff available to help unemployed people back into work with a higher cost to the taxpayer in the long run, as unemployment will stay higher for longer. PCS are also developing ongoing campaign work against the cuts, and specifically are making the case on the need to protect DWP funding.

2 Responses to Cuts Watch #224: Temporary staff at Jobcentre Plus

  1. Comment made by Brian Day on Sep 6th 2010 at 9:34 pm:

    I don’t think the government knows how to tackle the crisis. It will probably simply clamp down on existing JSA claimants by stopping the benefits of those who they claim are not trying hard enough to look for work and expanding the jobseeker contract to push jobseekers around.

  2. Trackback made by IDS gets his figures wrong: there are 23% fewer vacancies than he thinks | ToUChstone blog: A public policy blog from the TUC on Oct 22nd 2010 at 9:39 am:

    [...] responsibilities), four fifths of them would still be looking for work. After cutting support for jobseekers, the Department for Work and Pension’s new strategy seems to be to tell people to imagine [...]