Watch Out for Ub671

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Do you have any children or anyone else who needs your care during working hours?

Gerry Byrne reports on the Rayner plan AWARE that the Rayner recommendations for testing claimants' 'availability for work' could hit women worst, Welsh Women's Aid got a grant from the BOC to research the pilot schemes in the two areas in Wales affected - Ebbw Vale and Cardiff.

Their report makes alarming reading.

They found the questionnaire was administered arbitrarily; that questions about child care arrangements and availability for part-time work only would adversely affect women; and that so would the proposal to make registration at Job Centres voluntary.

The. overall effect, clearly part of the scheme's 14. appeal to this government would be to understate the real level of unemployment.

From October, all new claimants signing on for unemployment benefit will be given a detailed form (UB 671) to test their availability for work.

amendClaims Pavments legislation which will mean that claimants who withhold information (like refusing to answer the questions on the new form) will be disqualified from benefit until they cooperate.

Scapegoat

In the pilot scheme only 2% of fresh claimants were given the detailed form which indicates that the number of those who might even be suspected of being unavailable for work is pretty minute. The purpose of the test seems to be scapegoating of the unemPaid ads 5p per word, £4 per column inch. Send to Socialist Organiser (What's On), 28 Middle Lane, London N8. LONDON Workers' Socialist League educationals on basic Marxism. New series starting soon. Write for details and registration to WSL, PO Box 135, London N1 ODD. SPARTACIST Truth Kit. New pamphlet on the polities and practice of the Spartacist League, by John Lister. 70 pages, £1 plus 26p postage, from WSL, PO Box 135, London N1.

MONDAY

DEPARTMENT OF 15. 15.

20902: 4.500 ployed, especially women, rather than any useful savings even in the government's own terms.

Over the whole period of the pilot scheme only 36 people were disallowed UB. In other words, the whole thing is harassment of claimants for the sake of harassment.

Childcare problems, according to CPSA, were responsible for the largest number of disallowals.

BRENT Socialist Organiser/ Women's Fightback joint meeting: Socialism in the 80s. Speakers: Gerry Byrne, Mick Woods. Tuesday September 7. 7.30pm, Trades and Labour Hall, 375 Willesden High Rd, London NW10 SHEFFIELD niser.

September 8. The Alternative Economic Strategy. September 22. The Labour Party witch-hunt.

All at the Red Cow, The Wicker, starting 7.30.

LAMBETH/SOUTHWARK Socialist Organiser Group Open Forums. 8.30pm at 41 Camberwell Grove, London SES.

September 2: Zionism and the Jewish Question.

September 16: The Fight Against Black Oppression. September 30: Fighting Women's Oppression.

NORTH London Irish Solidarity Committee: showing of the film "The Patriot Game' , Friday September 3, 1.30, Holborn Central&Library, Theobalds Rd. Admission 50p. And this is the real sting in the tail of the Rayner Report.

Married women with children - who have only been able to claim UB in their own right in the last 4 years - are singled out for special harassment.

One of the questions on the UB671 asks what arrangements would be made for children in the event of being offered a job lit previously asked what ISLINGTON SO. Group. Next meeting: Sunday 29 August at 3pm, Thornhill Neighbourhood Project, Orkney House, Caledonian Road.

Tea and sandwiches provided. For baby-sitting, phone Nik (607-5268) in advance.

MIDLANDS People's March for Jobs. September 15 to 18: a five-pronged march from Stoke, Derby, Rugby, Hereford, and Shrewsbury, converging on Birmingham. Coordinator: Sid Platt, NALGO, 7th Floor, Tower Block, Centre City, 7 Hil St, Birmingham B5 4JD (021 643 6084).

CHILE/EI Salvador festival: Thursday-Saturday September 24-26. Three days of music, poetry, theatre, exhibitions, films, seminars and workshops, at Manning Hall, University of London Union, Malet St, London WCI. Details: El Salvador Solidarity Campaign, 01-359 2270. STOP SIZEWELL B - national rally/conference against the Pressurised Water Reactor. Saturday November 6, Central Hall, Westminster. Called Anti-Nuclear Campaign. arrangements had already been • made, but was changed under pressure). Both the local officers administering the test and the claimants themselves saw this question as directed primarily at women. Men with children expressed no problem with the question.

Interestingly, the vast majority of those affected in the survey said that while childcare might PALESTINE Solidarity social to raise funds for medical aid for Lebanon.

Sunday August 29, Bloomsbury Theatre.

POLISH Solidarity Campaign/ Solidarnose Trade Union Working Group - demonstration and rally to mark 2nd anniversary of birth of Solidarnosc. Tuesuay August 3l, 6pm, from Speakers' Corner, London, Speakers will include Phillip White. head MP.

POLISH SOLIDARITY Contact addresses:

Solidarnosc Trade Union Working Group, Acorn House, 314/320 Gray's Inn Road, London WCIX 8DP. Tel: 01-837 9464.

Glasgow Polish Solidarity Campaign. lan McCalman, 18 Mossgiel Rd. Glasgow G43. 041-632 1839.

Edinburgh PSC. C/o Edinburgh Trades Council; 12 Picardy Place.

Oxford Labour Committee on Poland, 468 Banbury Road, Oxford. 0865 58238. Coventry PSC. John Fisher, c/o ASTMS, 26 Queens Rd., Coventry.

Labour Poland Solidarity Fund, c/o Cooperative Bank, 110 Leman St., London E1.

create some difficulties they did not see it as an insurmountable barrier to taking a job if one were available (a big 'if' that!).

This, in a situation like Ebbw Vale where 21.9% of women are registered as unemployed (the national average is 8.6% of women)

and there are co council or private day nurseries and no registered childminders.

It's clear that women with children will go to some lengths to be able to go out to work, and it's sheer effrontery to add the insult of prying questions at the UBO to their existing burdens.

Many women in the survey said they were available for part-time work rather than fulltime: but availability for part-time may disqualify you from claiming UB.

(It's an area open to discretion). So women are pressurised to say they are available for full-time work when they would rather do part-time.

Defined

This might seem paradoxical but it serves a clear political purpose. Women are defined, and often define themselves, primarily in terms of their domestic role. Their existence and needs as part of the workforce are seen as secondary.

Defining part-time work as not 'real' work and overstressing the problem of combining childcare and paid work without providing the resources to deal with it, has a detrimental effect on the position of all women.

who would chance, are made invisible hidden from the unemployment figures and disFIGHT THE TORIES, NOT THE SOCIALISTS!

Labour movement confer ence, sponsored by several CLIs, the Bakers' executive, and the LPYS National Committee.

September 11 at Wembley Conference Centre. Delegates' credentials £1 from Mentmore Terrace, London E8 3PN.

Advertisement Workers' Socialist Review no.2.

FALKLANDS - WHOSEI WAR?

Out soon. 40 pages: single copies 70p plus 20p p&p, 5 copies £3.50 post free. Orders: WSL, PO Box 135, London N1 ODD.

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