Rayner report singles out women and blacks

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IAN LEEDHAM (national chairperson, MSC trade union side, and CPSA) describes the Tories' plans for a clampdown on the unemployed and on job centre workers: changing the workers' role to 'policing the workshy' rather than helping find jobs; letting private agencies take over job-finding; and introducing ethnic monitoring Civil service workers under attack - it is now urgent to prepare SOCIALIST Organiser fights to act as a real SOCIALIST Organiser fights to act as a real As part of its continuing attack on the working class, this Government is now mounting a further assault on the victims of its own corrupt policies the unemployed.

A series of 'reviews' by Sir Derek Rayner into waste and inefficiency in the civil service will result in the decimation of the jobs of the workers in the dole offices and Jobcentres, and the reduction of services to the unemployed already strained to the limit by public expenditure cuts. For example, the. MSC anticipate that by 1984 there will be 820 less staff working for the Employment Service than there were in 1974, when unemployment was 600,000 There were 15,280 staff in the Employment Service inApril 1979, and by April 1984 there will be 11,580.

The first Rayner review was the 'Payment of Benefit to Unemployed People' • This made a number of cost-cutting recommendations, the most cionificant heing the abolition of the need to register at a Jobcentre as part of the process for claiming benefit. The Rayner team felt that making people register was an ineffective method of checking whether people were available for work, or as they put it "policing the workshy"

This narrow definition of the role of Jobcentre staff as agents of the benefit service is one that they have never acceptea, believing that the purpose of the job was to help and advise people who are seeking work, not to police Tebbit them.

The introduction of voluntary registration (VR) will however mean a dramatic cutback in our ability to help people, because Employment Service staffing figures are based on the number of registrations taken. As the figures drop when people fail to register so will the number of staff employed. As the service declines because of a lack of staff to run it, then less people will use it and we will be quickly into a spiral of decline. To compound the sin, the Government have already told the service to anticipate staff cuts of over 500, ignoring the wishes of the MSC who wanted to at least see what effect VR would have on the Jobcentres before implementing the cuts.

The other consequences of VR will be that the current statistics on unemployment will be inaccurate and inadequate. Figures will be based on the number of people on the benefit computer, not those registered for work -unemployment will magically drop by 50,000, and unemployment amongst women (who in general are less likely to be entitled to benefits) will no longer be an embarrassing problem for the Government.

The only statistics this Government felt it was important to keep are the count of ethnic minorities. It doesn't take much imagination to realise why.

This count will be administered in one of three different ways currently being discussed.

1. To issue a card to suspects whose appearance or speech suggests that they are in one of a number of specified groups. The card to be completed by the claimants.

2. Staff would make a visual assessment using four broad-based categories - West Indian, Asian, African and 'other'.

3. A straight-forward black or white assessment.

At the time of writing this article, the signs are that they will opt for the last method. Interestingly enough the Commission for Racial Equality condemned these checks until the Government replaced the CRE chairperson. They have now withdrawn their anndamnatinn Members in the benefit offices will also be told to institute 'availability tests' on all people claiming APRICES benefit - because the Jobcentre will not be doing this any more.

Every claimant will be asked the following question on form: 'Would you take a full time job which you can do?' If the answer is 'yes' then it would mean giving commitment to take any job regardless of the wages. Should any job be refused, then benefit could be withheld or suspended.

If the answer is 'no' then claimants will have to fill in further more complicated form on the type of work 42 offices from the high street to back street premises — clearly an attempt to give the work over to private agencies.

This expectation that the private agencies can step in and do the work of the State employment services ignores the fact that the private agencies are solely concerned with making a fast profit rather than helping disabled people find work, or giving advice and guidance to long term unemployed people and young people, or providing the other myriad services which can only be made available in a Jobcentre. All of the report's recommendations mean a severe cutback in the services provided in the Jobcentre, in order to prevent them from unfair competition with the private agencies. For example, we will still be able to run a 'temps' service, but it should no longer be marketed in an word 'temps' but should call it 'the short-term placing service'. The report will shut down the most effective 'temps' service in the country, significantly situated in Holborn in London, an area surrounded by private agencies.

Doubtful

* We await the deliberations of the MSC and Tebbit with interest, although it is doubtful whether our representatives' on the MSC will be able to prevent these draconiar measures. the fightback The President of the Federation of Personnel Services Ltd. is none other than Lady Howe. Already we are being told to display names and addresses of private agencies in the Jobcentres and to help them fill some of their vacancies - a deal done between our senior management and FPS Ltd.

The answer to these attacks lies in the hands of the workers in the Jobcentres who will have to take direct action by occupying Jobcentres about to close, and mounting a campaigr amongst the community to retain the service. But we also need to build on our links with the wider movement in order to bulla a mass campaign to save the State WILL Employment Service and prevent the immoral traffic in people looking for jobs by the sharks and profiteers in the private agencies.

Links with other unions in the Health Service and teaching will have to be established to fight the race checks everywhere and we will have to call upon wel fare rights groups and unemployed unions to band together with us in the fight.

The Tories have a vested interest in shutting down the State Employment Service and handing it over to private agencies. The working class have a similar interest in expanding it. It is up to us all to fight for this key service.

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