News articles tagged with claimants and unpaid

A familiar sight to many Parisians are the rows of people living in tents along the banks of the canal St Martin. They are homeless, mostly immigrants, mostly illegal. The tents are supplied by les enfants de Don Quichotte, an organisation that battles for the rights of homeless people.

President Evo Morales was forced to cancel a trip to Brazil due to this and several other protests.

Takeshi Yamashita does not look like a homeless person. From his carefully distressed jeans to his casual-cool navy striped T-shirt, he is every bit the trendy Tokyoite. Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment.

Counter staff, sorting workers and delivery workers at the Le Louvre post office all took part in a one-day strike on April 11.

The counter staff are demanding the withdrawal of a new plan which threatens to slash the 100-strong workforce by 30%. In addition they are demanding that there be no changes to work schedules.

The ICEM reported that a sit-in by street vendors in the southern city of Nasiriya produced a compromise by authorities in negotiations. Street vendors are represented by the Union of Unemployed in Iraq (UUI), part of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI).

The plans involve placing Guixi under the jurisdiction of the neighbouring district, which may mean a lowering of benefits and state wages for Guixi residents. Protestors blocked two rail connections for around six hours, including the heavily traveled line that runs from Shanghai in the east, cutting through Jiangxi to the southwestern city of Kunming.

Pensioners are to protest over planned reforms which they say will not help people already struggling to pay bills.

The National Pensioners Convention - organiser of the central London rally - says the Pensions White Paper contains "nothing of immediate benefit".

The police are widely hated by France’s urban poor for their brutal and often racist repression – they tend to beat banlieu (suburb) kids rather than arrest them. The fear of this caused 17 year-old Zyed Benna and 15 year-old Bouna Traore to run and hide from police in an electricity substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois in October last year.

Voluntary organisations up and down the country were livid at the attempt to make life harder for unemployed volunteers.
The Department for Work and Pensions issued a leaflet last month for claimants wishing to volunteer to do charity work, stating that they can´t have their food expenses reimbursed, as their benefit money already covers their food costs.

Palestinian civil servants are demanding the payment of overdue wages from the Hamas government. Around 3,000 marched yesterday in Ramallah, while in Gaza City over 300 unemployed workers demanding jobs and unpaid welfare fought riot police and attempted to storm the parliamentary building, breaching the gates before police fired live warning shots.

Around 200 students occupied two legs of the Eiffel Tower, symbol par excellance of Paris, France, stopping access to the tourist site for nearly one hour before being dislodged. They then moved onto the Headquarters of the UMP but police presence repelled their plans for a symbolic occupation.

http://paris.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=57149

In the interview Lefresne, of the Institute of Economic and Social Research, questions the widely reported one in four youth unemployment figures that have been used repeatedly as a justification for the CPE.

The Tribunal was closed for the day as result of this action.

'20 Years on: Has the economy of the coalfields recovered?' examined communities where over 10% of the population had been employed in the mines before the mass closures.

The report, brought out by the Centre for regional and social economic research at Sheffield Hallam university, said:

The latest of New Labour's attacks on working class people has been announced. The aim is to abolish Incapacity Benefit (IB). Of course, the radical sounding rhetoric has been applied. Alan Johnson, the Work and Pensions secretary, described the changes as the most radical benefit reform for sick and disabled people since the Beveridge report.

There have been approximately 15,000 job losses in the DWP, and the department seeks to cut jobs by a total of 30,000 by 2008. Recently, upto 1,000 staff have been leaving the department per month.

Job losses have led to significant delays and bottle necks of benefits claims across the company, with the PCS union saying "services are frequently on the verge of collapse".

Apparently David Blunkett was decidedly mellow when it came to Incapacity Benefits cuts, at least he was compared to new Work & Pensions secretary John Hutton (weekly salary: £2,600). This week Hutton outlined his plans to introduce a range of penalties for claimants (weekly income: £58 a week) who show unwillingness to take part in ‘work focussed’ activities.

Spare a thought during this years Consumer Christmas Hellish-day season for those who won’t be pulling a cracker round the family table.