[YNDICATIS E 15 -ue du Landu Clé92 -…]

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YNDICATIS E 15 -ue du Landu Clé92 - work?

When TY LICLL nnamninvad person first signs on, the following questions are now asked: 'Would you take any full-time job you can do?" If you say "no" you will be asked to fill in an "availability" form. Answers to the questions on this form about acceptable wages, hours and travelling distances should be given in as general and vague a way as possible as the answers may be used to stop unemployment benefit.

Snerial attention AU LAU TT given to single parents and women with children who will have to "prove" that they have already made arrangements for someone to look after the kids should they be offered a job.

While you are filling in this form, the clerk will be looking you over as part of a programme of ethnic monitoring. This is a race check. You will either be handed a card asking your place of origin, nr else visually assessed and colour-coded by the counter clerk.

There are five categories - West Indian/African, Asian, White, Other or Refusal. You can insist you are put down as "Refuşal" if you wish.

You will no longer get an interview at the DHSS. Instead, the Department of Employment will give you an even longer form (a BIPC) to fill in to send off to the DHSS office.

The form is eight pages long with 109 questions! If you fill it in incorrectly it will be sent back for you to do again. You will receive no money until it is right. (In a recent try-out, only one person in twenty got it right.

You will be asked about your relationship to other people in the household e.g. if you say that there is a person of the opposite sex who is not a dependent it can lead to endless delays and subsequent reductions in benefit, not to mention simpers, etc).

"et the next few years. ir= DHSS system. like the police records system. is in he computerised.

Other government departments and the police will have access to it -anywhere in the country. This, together with postal claims, means you will have no face to face opportunity to correct any mistakes in your record.

It will all be done automatically, with even less right to get a straight answer, from the bureaucratic machine that "processes" your claim, than you have now.

From November 22 of this year, council tenants will no longer receive money for rent and rates from the DHSS. Instead, it will be paid directly to the council.

This will affect over two million households who will have that much less ready cash to play with. This will mean that those families that survive the huge winter heating bills by stalling off the rent man for a few weeks, thereby avoiding power cut-offs, will no longer be able to do so.

It also means that they can't go on rent strike to force. the council to do essential repairs, etc

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Socialist Organiser no.121 February 24 1983 Page 15

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