Standing together for the unemployed

by New Worker correspondent

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG) campaigners picketed the Harlesden jobcentre last week to give out leaflets to claimants about the help KUWG can provide. The Group focuses primarily on combating benefits injustices through advocacy in individuals' benefit claims, and on demonstrations that emphasise that there is hope when we come together.
The KUWG recognises that the struggle of the employed and the unemployed is one and the same, but it also affirms that smear stories and marginalisation add to the isolation experienced by the unwaged. The campaign was started by Tom Mellish, a TUC official, some 15 years ago in collaboration with the Willesden Trades Council and it has been going ever since.

Defending the rights of the unemployed!

 by New Worker correspondent

NCP campaign organiser Theo Russell joined demonstrators outside Caxton House, the headquarters of the Department for Work and Pensions, in London last week. Called by the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, the picketers were protesting against the radical overhaul of disability benefits that could see people with complex or invisible conditions left hundreds of pounds out of pocket.
    Under the changes, the deeply-flawed work capability assessment (WCA) for determining benefit payments will be replaced with the existing personal independence payment (PIP) system – which is used to decide what day-to-day help a disabled person might need.
    In its post-Budget analysis, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the Government could face a choice of either widening the criteria or seeing hundreds of thousands of people no longer qualifying for benefits. Tom Waters, economist at the IFS, estimated one million people could be forced into work and some 600,000 could lose an estimated £350 per month in support.

Stop Universal Credit!

By New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other comrades and friends picketing the DWP HQ in Westminster last week to protest against the hated ‘Universal Credit’ scheme and demand that Labour scrap it if they win the next election.

                        Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG) hold protest pickets outside Caxton House every month to highlight the injustices of Universal Credit which discriminates and penalises the people it purports to help.

Gerry Downing from Socialist Fight, who helped set up the campaign during the Financial Crash of 2008, said the picketers were demanding that Jeremy Corbyn keeps his promise to scrap the scheme if Labour wins the general election next month.

Jeremy Corbyn says Labour will axe Universal Credit when it returns to power.

“Universal Credit has been an unmitigated disaster,” the Labour leader said. “It is inhumane and cruel. Labour will scrap Universal Credit. We will introduce a new system that will alleviate and end poverty, not drive people into it.”

                        The protesters ended their lunchtime protest with the KUWG’s traditional salute – ‘V for victory’ and ‘two-fingers’ to the Establishment –  but they will be back in December to keep up the fight.

Scrap Universal Credit!

By New Worker correspondent

Disabled People against the Cuts (DIPAC) and the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group were out in force outside the headquarters of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in London last week. They leafleted passers-by and handed in thousands of Metro newspapers in big boxes addressed to Amber Rudd to complain about the lying advertisement on Universal Credit it ran for nine weeks.

The DWP advert claims to “set the record straight” on “myths” surrounding Universal Credit, stating: “A lot has been written about Universal Credit recently – not all of it correct, sadly.” But the four-page adverts in the Metro, a free tabloid newspaper largely given away on London’s bus and train services system, were dismissed as “propaganda” and an “insult to all disabled people” by campaign groups when they came out last month.

The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC), a coalition of more than 80 disability charities, has now lodged a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the ads, which they said were “deliberately misleading” and contained “obvious exaggerations”.

The government claim that Universal Credit supports you if you are on a low income or out of work. Given that disabled people are struggling to get by on Universal Credit, to claim it works is, at best, simply misleading.

The DBC recently surveyed around 500 disabled people about their experience of Universal Credit. The survey highlighted some serious concerns and deeply worrying findings. The majority of respondents who moved from Employment Support Allowance (ESA) onto Universal Credit said they now get less or a lot less money than they did previously. People told us that the impact of having less money includes struggling to pay for food (70 per cent), driving a significant number of people to food banks (35 per cent) and a worsening of people’s health, in particular their mental health (85 per cent), and most worryingly driving people to consider suicide.

The ads cane out at the same time as a report by UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston that said the scheme was “fast falling into Universal Discredit”.

Ann Galpin, chair of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) disabled members’ council, described the campaign as propaganda and said: “We are appalled that these misleading wraparounds and features have appeared in the Metro

today, coinciding with the release of Philip Alston’s report on poverty in the UK, which heavily criticises austerity and welfare reform.”

Kilburn Unemployed Workers believe that together we are stronger. By standing together we can defend our rights and win changes that everyone wants. They hold regular meetings and picket the Caxton House HQ of the DWP on the first Friday of every month from 12 noon. Their campaign is supported by Brent Trades Council, the representative body for trade unionists in Brent.

Scrap Universal Credit!

by New Worker correspondent

There was a big turnout from Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group picketing the DWP HQ at Caxton House in London’s West End last week. The protesters were calling for the scrapping of the hated ‘Universal Credit’ benefits scheme that is killing the poor and disabled.

Universal Credit is a punitive measure against a vast section of the population on low income rather than a rational simplification and streamlining of the benefit system, as the Tories claim. Universal Credit combines six working-age benefits into a single payment — but is paid monthly in arrears.

The roll out of Universal Credit (UC) threatens to ruin thousands of families throughout the country, forcing them into huge debt, homelessness and unemployment while a recent study led by the University of York found that benefits sanctions are pushing people into destitution, survival crime and ill health.