DWP staff in Jobcentres around the UK are facing a raft of changes led by Labour’s attempts to put out a rebellion over disability benefit cuts. MP Alison McGovern has been tasked with overhauling employment support after Keir Starmer announced a brutal set of cuts to disability benefits.
Under these new changes, the Jobcentre will no longer force people looking for work into any job. McGovern said:
The Tories used to talk about ABC: ‘Any job, Better job, Career’. I think that if you think about the career [first] … If we can get people into an NHS job where they’re more likely to move on and move up, then that is far better for them.
However, McGovern’s strategy for getting people into a career is to ask DWP staff at Jobcentres to use AI for certain tasks in order to free them up to give “human” support to people in long-term unemployment. She is also planning on getting claimant’s GPs to offer “work support” – as well as physiotherapists.
DWP on AI
It’s no accident that this latest announcement comes just as Starmer is on course for a major rebellion from within his own party. MPs from across the centre, right, and left of Labour have signed a letter which urges him to change policy. As the Canary previously reported:
The letter sets out how the proposals have created “a huge amount of anxiety and concern” for disabled people. According to the DWP, the proposals would hit 700,000 families who are already in poverty. Even so, Starmer has persisted with the plans in an attempt to deliver a saving of £5 billion.
Of course, that saving would come at the cost of disabled and chronically ill people. Whilst departing from the Conservative policy of DWP workers forcing any unemployed person into any old job, this new announcement relying on AI already has its critics. The Canary’s Hannah Sharland reported that the DWP have funnelled £1.5 million to obscure AI companies. Sharland wrote:
the AI service dresses up in wellbeing language, but, emphasis on the “employers’ powerful new tools”. It suggests the potential for employer control over employee health information. Coupled with the DWP’s garble about “economic inactivity” and supporting a “more productive workforce”, it’s not rocket science to see where that could end.
Put another way, it’s for sating the capitalist urge to squeeze every last drop of profit from ill employees.
AI is far from neutral. And, in the hands of a government that has shown such callous disdain for disabled people, it can only be a tool to further marginalise us. Sharland explains:
what we have is AI spying on sick people in work, and AI spying on sick people not in work. Ultimately, this new DWP AI guff is just the government’s latest dodgy gambit to bring sick and disabled people under the thumb of the exploitative capitalist market.
Time is not the problem
McGovern attempted to acknowledge the distress Labour’s disability policies have caused, telling the Guardian:
I don’t blame anybody for being scared or worried about it because given what’s happened with changes to disability benefits before, I understand that.
Under McGovern’s stewardship, the government is set to spend £1 billion a year to get people into work. McGovern said:
what I would like is a person comes into the jobcentre who has perhaps not worked for some years and … they are given the time so that they can tell their whole story. Jobcentres will then be able to pick up the phone to tailored specific support for that person’s barriers, then support once they are in work as well. We’ve got to see the whole person.
DWP staff in Jobcentres will be told to use AI to fill in paperwork and handle other tasks that, in theory, free them up to spend more time on tailored support for people seeking work. Even putting aside the problems of whether AI is actually up to the job, it’s laughable that Labour believe cutting benefits for disabled people – who have more costs and live in poverty – is going to somehow aid them in finding a job.
Have these people ever tried to find a job while struggling to pay rent and bills? Never mind trying to save for disability aids? Or paying for necessary medication and treatment? More time with the depraved monsters who work at the Jobcentre isn’t going to solve this problem that is of Labour’s own making.
Punishment
I’ve been signed on at the Jobcentre at various points, and for those who haven’t had the pleasure, let me tell you that the places are routinely hellholes. Security guards patrol the whole building, waiting for someone in despair to allow them to spring into action. Work coaches speak with barely disguised disdain. More often than not, you’re just another appointment getting in the way of their targets. They don’t care how long you’ve been out of work, and they certainly don’t bother with anything like “human” support.
Having to attend the Jobcentre for work meetings feels like punishment for daring to be out of work. They’re dank and horrible places that are designed to make you feel like a trembling animal being told off for not functioning properly. Anyone who’s had to interact with DWP workers knows how demeaning and disrespectful they are. At their very best, DWP workers are unfortunate cogs in a rotten system following orders to police the humanity of the unemployed. At their worst, they’re willing sadists complicit in a system that disciplines and punishes people who are struggling to survive.
People with complex needs, who these changes are supposed to be for, can include people who are too sick to work but not sick enough to meet the insane thresholds of disability support. You have to get yourself to the Jobcentre, steel yourself for the abject dehumanisation, and go through the motions in order to get the vast riches of…er…maybe some of your rent and bills covered. If you’re good.
Salt the earth – and the DWP
Enabling DWP workers to be able to see the whole person requires much more than time bought via AI fucking up some paperwork. It requires an entire overhaul of how capitalist society is structured. Imagine what career support could look like if people were able to have all their basic needs met – somewhere safe and warm, and – reach for the sky here – pleasant to live. Enough money to feed themselves and their family. A welfare system which genuinely supports instead of punishes people unfortunate enough to struggle with survival. A society which doesn’t see unemployment as a mark of failure, but instead values people regardless of their capacity to work. Perhaps even a government which doesn’t use disabled people as a budget to be slashed, but as people.
Failing that, burn the fucking Jobcentres to the ground and salt the earth. Either will do – just leave disabled people the fuck alone, we’ve got enough to deal with. We don’t want your extra time for “human” support.
Featured image via the Canary
