The DWP have got another harebrained scheme

Tesco is reportedly in talks to join the Department for Work and Pensions-commissioned (DWP) ‘Keep Britain Working’ (KBW) review. The new scheme is part of the Get Britain Working white paper. It’s aimed at keeping disabled people and those with health conditions in work.

Retail giants and the DWP

Charlie Mayfield, former head of both retail chain John Lewis and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, is spearheading the initiative. He approached Tesco and around 100 other companies to work with the DWP in forming KBW plans. The exact findings and recommendations of the review should be published in a few weeks’ time.

The KBW initiative is expected to tell companies to intervene earlier to ‘support’ struggling workers, especially when their mental health is affected. Part of this would be the use of so-called “workplace practitioners” with absolutely no medical training, who act as go-betweens for employers and GPs. They’re intended to provide ‘support’ before a GP might sign the worker off.

KBW will also recommend a greater degree of communication between employers and the government. This is meant to help inform policymaking by allowing the government to spot trends in economic inactivity earlier on. Similarly, KBW will also include a code of practice for how employers should support workers with disabilities and health conditions.

The shitshow looms

If you think that the DWP, an ex-retail CEO and Tesco teaming up to ‘Keep Britain Working’ will be a massive ableist, anti-worker shitshow, you’d be completely fucking right.

Mayfield has previously criticised young people getting signed off work for mental health reasons:

Work can be tough. It’s meant to be tough. Sometimes you’re meant to find it hard. You’re not meant to ace everything or get everything right. And so there are times when it’s challenging. […]

And of course, when you don’t have a system in place to support you, and you go to see your GP and you say, ‘I’m really anxious and I’m really stressed out at work,’ then what the GP may often say is, ‘Well, we better give you a fit note to sign you off work.’

He also characterised disabled people who were out of work as a “burden on the state”:

The number of people who are suffering from ill health or disability is rising fast. That creates a burden on the state. It creates a burden on companies, and it creates a big burden on the individuals. The impact of that is a very serious problem, but also a very fixable one.

Likewise, Tesco has been at the centre of a series of anti-worker scandals in recent years. Last year, the Supreme Court blocked Tesco’s fire-and-rehire policy, which sought to remove employee’s rights to retained pay. In 2022, Tesco faced a modern slavery lawsuit from workers at a garment factory in Thailand. Back in 2021, the retail giant lost an equal pay legal dispute, having underpaid thousands of workers in breach of UK and EU law.

Meanwhile, for its part, the DWP has recently engaged in a program of ‘stealth cuts’ to the Access to Work program. This funding was intended to help disabled people get and stay in work. Many disabled people have reported that they had to leave work because of their support being pulled by the DWP.

We’re all looking for the ones who started this

Regarding the KBW review, a government spokesperson said:

We’re reforming the system, so it helps people get back to health and back to work by shifting our focus from welfare to work, skills, and opportunities.

The Keep Britain Working review will help us and employers better support sick or disabled people even more, and we will consider the recommendations once it is complete.

Likewise, Mayfield stated that there is:

a lot of opportunity for employers to be active around the whole area of a prevention to a much greater extent than is possible for the NHS to do alone.

By the end of the decade, health and disability benefits are expected to require around £100 billion a year in public funding. The number of people who aren’t in work or looking for a job recently hit 2.8 million. That’s a massive problem, but it damn well isn’t the fault of lazy workers or disabled people.

Bosses absolutely should be doing more to make sure that their workers don’t get burned out to the point that they need a fucking doctor to sign them off. But lets be real, expecting employers like Tesco to be part of the solution is absolutely ridiculous. They’re the ones who created the problem in the bloody first place.

Hmm, why are all the workers broken?

Employers have spent years cutting workforces whilst expecting the same level of labour. This means that employees are doing more work for the same pay. Coupled with rampant inflation, that money is worth less in real terms.

Also, in case we’ve forgotten, Britain and the world are going through a pandemic – that tends to mean a lot of sick people. Forcing sick workers to come in means, you guessed it, more sick people.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way for employers to increase the physical and mental health of their workers. Studies have shown that being paid more makes you happier. People’s health correlates directly to the amount of money they have.

So, unless the ‘Keep Britain Working’ initiative proposes better pay, better conditions, and better protections for workers, we’ll know it for exactly what it is. They’re not looking to make life better for workers. They’re finding new ways to deny that there’s a problem in the first place.

Featured image via the Canary

Tags: Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

Comments 1

Archie68 says:

8 months ago

Firstly it’s only in white paper stage, secondly tesco’s track record of pulling out is legendary.
They say they’re going to build supermarkets in towns with the councils. Half-and-half and then they pull out at the last minute.
Thirdly, this has got to go to many stages, then to the lords, back to Parliament. To go to green an I’m back again.
Unless they put it under a money bill and the whips threaten the backbenchers with their jobs……..welfare, pensions etc.