Bristol Benefits Action Group. Their Profits Brighton Against Benefit Cuts takes action on the European Day of Resistance to Workfare schemes. The piecemeal privatization of the JobCentres, through attacking the entrenchment of JobCentre Workers, is a crucial element of the attempt by the government to eliminate the dole as we know it, and replace it with a thoroughgoing 'workfare' style system. Of course, the encroachment of the private sector and workfare has already begun. As we are currently hearing in the media, there is no simple 'North-South divide' but areas of poverty and deprivation all over the country.
Some pundits talk glibly of the prosperous South-East.
They obviously haven't been to Brighton. The government's response is to target areas like ours with 'Employment Zones'. Yes more NewLabour jargon. Oh yes, the recent BT call-centre workers' strike. The BT workers' pay and conditions is being undermined by the drafting in of untrained people from Manpower who have none of the employment rights of regular BT workers, thereby establishing a new norm of work intensity and harassment for all BT workers.