Unemployed

Am I the only one to remember that the Government decided not to count the unemployed some ten years or more back. They changed the rules and would only count the compliant unemployed. To be compliant you had to surrender yourself to their programme of harassment and cohesion, to prove within their narrowly focused rules, that you really were trying to look for work. For anyone dependant on the Government through Benefit Allowances or anyone tied into a Insurance scheme where signing on was obligatory, there was no option but to submit to the ritualised weekly humiliation. An uncounted number of people are unemployed but simply no longer counted by the government of the day. We simply do not know or try to find out. They are not counted.

What is wrong with this Government initiative, just making sure, the scroungers off the State, were making some effort to get a job? So the sanctimonious headline is crystal clear Government, good, scroungers, bad, find work, good, fail to find employment, bad. If only real life was as simple and easily separated into black and white issues! Everyone's expectation is to earn a decent living and contribute, to the fullest extent of their capabilities, to the welfare of their family, taking the fullest advantage of the rich rewards of this consumer driven society we are part of. So where does it all go wrong?

The downward spiral of any recessions, ultimately government manipulated or a consequences of government decisions, leaves a trail of redundant people. People in work with aspirations, suddenly without work or hope. Job opportunities evaporated. Looking globally across the nation and all work sectors there is still work to be had. The government can make its point by stating the number of unfilled job vacancies. Vacancies, but not necessarily available to the unemployed in specific locations, commitments and their work expectations.

There are a huge number of social concerns riding on the back of a job. In a fair and equitable society it just is not any job at any wage. Employers do take advantage of pressure on people to get a job, offering the least wage conditions and security they can get away with. Is it right that government should collude with the worst employers and force the unemployed to take a job no matter what conditions? Clearly not. Some employers consider the labour they take on simply as a means to squeeze as much profit out of these labour units as they can. Cutting vegetable outdoors in the fields in freezing conditions all weather is not a career option or even a work option of choice. It is work and has to be done. What does it say of our society when the unemployed are made to take on such work, because it is the only work available? Take meat packing factories, long shifts in chilled environments, monotonous work with no scope for skill. It has to be done. What about the recycling vans, out all weathers picking up the street edge boxes and selectively throwing the contents into the van. Nothing there to aspire you to a career or get satisfaction from a job well done. But it has to be done.

So there is the first issue. Employer have got to change and not regard their captive labour force simply as a unit to be exploited for their personal maximum benefit. They have to come to regard their workforce as their biggest longterm investment and find ways to incentivize them, win loyalty and proactively seek their employees contribution to improve the profit margins. The workforce is not the problem, it actually is the source of solutions, if only employers cast off the old feudal them and us attitude.

Work cannot be isolated from lifetime aspirations. The repercussions of your last employment carries forward with you to the next interview. You cannot shake off your employment past. That lowly salary you were coerced to accept become the new bench mark for all new opportunities. There is no such thing as intrinsic worth. The salary you get tomorrow depends and is directly related to the last salary you earn. If through no fault of yours you have to seek employment in a collapsed labour market your lifestyle and all hopes of where you might eventually rise to will depend on that next job you take. If you foregoe too soon on a skill and settle for something lesser but available, there is no easy going back. Sure if you are in a dying industry there are no forward options and you have to look sideways to what you might be able capitalise on. But if your industry is only in a temporary decline you have to hold on. Yet the government is forcing you to accept jobs well below your parity, blighting you and your families future.

Not an easy position to be put in. Glib for the government to demonise all those people out of work, those shiftless scroungers avoiding doing a decent days work and living off the state. Hits easy targets, but it conceals the personal tragedies that their reckless financial policies has brought about. So next time the government announces the 'unemployment' figures, shout back, no that is only the compliant few, count all those suffering.