unemployment
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles among the unemployed, unpaid workers and house workers, pensioners and welfare claimants.
Regeneration, but not for miners
Funding for the coalfields has been lauded by the government as a stunning transformation of old mining communities through free-market activity allied with government nous. But buried in amongst the back-slapping are figures which show the ex-miners themselves have been left in the cold while the wealthy profit around them
Despite massive investment in mining communities damaged by Thatcher’s victory in 1984 and with winding down of coal mining in the 1990s, the money has gone not to local workers but to regeneration groups and businesses, according to a new report.
What recession means for us
An analysis of the likely impact of the coming recession on workers' lives and a rallying call for collective action to mitigate that impact.
The recession is here. We're told to tighten our belts and brace ourselves for redundancies, wage and service cuts. Politicians and business leaders are united in saying we should pay for a crisis not of our making [see box for a brief history of the crisis]. A recession is simply when the economy shrinks for 6 months in a row.
Benefits could be suspended for jobless
Jobless people should "spend nine to five" looking for work or doing community service, or face losing their benefits according to a new government-commissioned report.
This would add to recent proposals to end secure tenancies for the long-term unemployed unless they can prove they have been job-hunting.
Workfare comes to Britain
The Green Paper, No-One is Written Off: Reforming Welfare to Reward Responsibility was published in July. Its aim is to ensure everyone has to “fulfil their responsibilities to prepare for, look for, and take up work.”
By changing the system it plans to get more than a million on Incapacity Benefit into employment in the coming years, help 300,000 lone parents get jobs and to have a million older workers more. Future employment levels are targeted at 80% of the working-age population.
Lernia Correctional Facility: a story from a Swedish unemployment programme
A short 'militant investigation' about struggles at a Swedish unemployment programme. by Kim Müller, Kämpa tillsammans!
I have spent about two years in different unemployment programmes in a mid-size Swedish town and this is my story about that experience. For most of the time I was training to become a cook in the Lernia programme (nicknamed "Lernia Correctional Facility" by its inmates).
France: Areva strikers issued with summonses
31 striking workers have been issued with summonses for 'restricting the freedom to work'
80 of the 89 workers at the Montrouge site have been on strike since January 10th over plans to close the factory down. Workers have also occupied and blockaded the buildings in protest. There has been no explanation of why the 31 employees targetted were chosen.
France: organisation amongst the homeless
The treatment of the homeless, especially those who are immigrants the attitude of the French government, as does the resitance organised against it.
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.
Argentina: What is the MTD 'Anibal Veron'?
2003 organizational document of a now defunct national coordination of unemployed workers assemblies. The majority of the assemblies are now integrated in the Frente Popular Darío Santillán.
Agreements drawn up collectively by the unemployed workers movements of Lanus, "Dario Santillan" De Alte, Brown, San Telmo y Lugano de Capital Federal, Berriso and "Oscar Barrios" de Jose C. Paz, members of the Unemployed Workers Movement "Anibal Veron"
WHY THIS MATERIAL? WHY NOW?
After ten years of GEAR: COSATU, the Zuma trial and the dead end of alliance politics
An analysis from the ZACF journal Zabalaza #7 of the African National Congress (ANC)'s neo-liberal Growth Employment And Redistribution (GEAR) policy and its relation to the ANC-aligned Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP).
Lost in Transit
Unemployed recalcitrance and welfare restructuring in the UK today - Aufheben (UK)
1. Introduction In recent years, unemployment and similar welfare benefits - the dole - have become a focus of struggle in the UK. The small group which produces Aufheben has been involved in this struggle.
