UK Unemployment Figures - The Perception is Deception !
UK women bore the brunt as the nation's dole queue continued its relentless march towards the "Official" three million mark.
More than 22,000 women joined the jobless ranks, making up nearly four-fifths of the 28,000 total rise. There are now 1.13 million women unemployed - the highest in 25 years. Unemployment among women has increased by 19.1 per cent since the recession, compared with just 0.32 per cent for men.
Unemployment figures out recently confirmed the worst, UK youth unemployment continues rise at alarming levels. The figures are a damning roll-call of the damage done to employment since the Con-Dem coalition began its ceaseless cuts onslaught
Keen to conjure up a distraction from the abysmal unemployment figures the government tries & con the people into believing the "economy is improving" - the perception is deception!
Disabled campaigners working at various Remploy factories joined campaigners in a “dole queue” demo outside Westminster to protest against government plans to shut down 36 of Britain’s 54 Remploy offices, which provide stable employment for people with disabilities.
Minister for disabled people Maria Miller claimed weeks ago that many of the centres were not financially viable.
In the UK we witness another escalation in the official unemployment rate to 8.2 per cent, the highest for nearly 17 years - directly attributable to government policies.
The current total of 2.7 million is a horrific figure but it masks the reality of a far larger number of people denied the essential human right to work.
Not only would many of the 1.4 million part-time workers prefer to have full-time jobs but hundreds of thousands more have been erased from the jobless rolls by bureaucratic gerrymandering that puts them on dead-end work experience schemes or invalidity benefits.
Work experience could have an important role in bridging the gap between schooling and employment for young people, as happens in Germany and elsewhere.
However, most schemes operating in Britain are either a thinly veiled subsidy to private firms or a sponge to soak up jobless youngsters and massage unemployment figures.
Young people are quick to see through governmental deceit and to appreciate that the political elite is largely indifferent to the prospect of growing numbers of a new generation condemned to the scrap heap.
Cynicism flourishes when the victims of unemployment see themselves vilified by politicians and the bourgeois media as if they are on benefits by choice rather than because of the failure of the capitalist system to provide sufficient jobs.
This applies equally to youngsters shuffled from one scheme back to the dole and on to another scheme and to former industrial workers - miners, dockers, steelworkers etc - on incapacity benefit in employment deserts and berated as welfare spongers.
The huge job cull in the public sector - championed, let's not forget, by the leadership of all three of the main parties - has introduced a new category of casualty, women.
Given female preponderance within the public services, coalition government funding cuts are falling disproportionately on women, with the Fawcett Society calculating that women made up 80 per cent of job losses in the past quarter.
This represents a massive blow against gender equality since women are not only the majority of the workforce in the public sector but depend most upon its services.
Women are also the sole wage-earner in most single-parent households.
Coalition government ministers may make cooing noises and put on their concerned faces when they talk about unemployment, but what is happening is not an aberration.
It is part of their economic plan, shared by the other capitalist governments throughout the European Union.
Their intention is to take advantage of the financial crisis sparked by the banks' unsustainable speculation to force through changes to entrench capitalist advantage over the working class.
Trimming the state, particularly public services, the NHS and state pensions and benefits, is part of a strategy to hand over these areas to the private sector for profitable exploitation.
The role of mass unemployment is to neuter the trade unions and to reduce workers to ciphers, employed, if at all, at low pay rates, poor conditions and few employment rights.
Waiting patiently for a possible change of government in 2015 is futile, since a five-year onslaught by the Cameron-Clegg coalition will create a qualitatively different situation..
It obvious, we know what the governments agenda is:
The Tories are taking secure jobs away from workers, who end up working unpaid on the "work programme" - this is "reality" in Modern Britain.
European Day of Action Against Capitalism on March 31st 2012
Here’s the international homepage of M31 – European Day of Action Against Capitalism: http://march31.net/
There will be parallel demonstrations and other interventions in many countries, from the UK, Ireland & Athens through to Zagreb, Frankfurt & to Utrecht plus many more...
The International Workers Association has called days of action against austerity, exploitation, and oppression on 29, 30 and 31 March. As part of this, on Saturday 31 March, Solidarity Federation locals will be taking action against workfare.
Workfare - working for your benefit - is not just an imposition on the unemployed. It is also an attack on the pay and conditions of those currently in work.
Thousands of unemployed people have been forced by the threat of sanctions to ‘volunteer’ for unpaid work in large retailers, charities and other bodies such as councils. Young people are told that ‘work experience’ will help them get a job.
Click on the all the links for current list of demo's
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