W2W & UJ - WAI U NO WERK???

Well, it is now Day 9 of the governments "new" universal jobmatch scheme existence, and over the past nine days the scheme and its website have shown that it offers very little improvement over the previous system, bar it being slightly more user friendly (provided of course that you can figure out how to get past the main page without being tricked into signing up for one of the illegal UJ snooper accounts.

For pretty much the full day last Thursday (22/11/2012) the site was either down or suffering from extreme functionality problems such as links to actual job adverts not working, long page load times, and other misc associated problems that occur with poorly constructed webshites.
On top of sites technical problems, the sites poor levels of proof reading and filtering quickly became apparent when A fake vacancy was posted asking for a 007 style Government assassin was allowed to be displayed for several days before being quickly removed by red faced DWP staff once the advert had already gone viral.

I haven't commented on these, quite frankly, ridiculously lulzy items sooner because for the past week or so I have been languishing with a dose of a winter illness of some description, and when you wake up every morning and spend 20 minutes hacking up cricket ball sized lumps of phlegm, you really don't feel up to writing anything.

So, the latest bit of news from the DWP and Con-Dems latest and most fabulous scheme for demonising the unemployed is that unfortunately The whole fucking thing doesn't work , and, adding insult to injury, it turns out that in reality, more people gained employment by not participating/being forced to participate in the scheme than what they did when they were on it.

The final figures show that out of the comically low target of 5.5% success rate (based on getting people from a state of unemployment to a state of being in work expected to last for more than six weeks), the assembled "private contractors" such as A4E, Serco, G4S and a whole host of others have only been able to secure a final success rate of 2.3%, with a per person cost of £2097...now if thats not value for money then I don't know what is!!!! *rolleyes*.
Also, I will point out now that the "target" of 5.5% was actually not an official target, but in fact the "minimum acceptable level" set by the government as a measure of success, so not only have the W2W providers failed, they've failed hard in an epic fashion.

So, did the government act swiftly to correct this problem by suspending contracts?, did they refuse to pay companies who have failed?, did they try and Do something to correct the situation with regards to people being "underemployed"?.........

No

Instead, Secretary of State for Work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, along with his bumbling sidekick, the Minister for work and pensions Mark Hoban, immediately contacted their PR people to get some positive spin/disinformation on the subject, resulting in a Laughable series of interviews and statements claiming that the figures were actually "good" and that "it was impossible to see the big picture simply from a snapshot of the program from a 12 month perspective"...*sigh*.

In parliament today , Ed Milliband and David Camoron clashed during PMQs over the issue, with Camoron retaliating by quoting figures which have been proven to be either incorrect and/or intentionally not reflective of reality, for example  the figure of "over 200,000" was given as the number of people who had "found work", with no mention of the fact that the majority of this figure is comprised of people who have either been taken off unemployment benefits for some reason, or who have been forced into unpaid and/or short term "non-jobs", only to return to claiming unemployment benefits a short while later.

I attended my first appointment for the "Welfare to Work" scheme at Doncaster Jobcentre on the morning of the 22nd of November, and after being sat there for over an hour, I left still none the wiser as to what I was supposed to be doing, once again demonstrating that the Jobcentre really doesn't bother providing their staff with adaquate training about the services they are supposed to be providing.
The guy I spoke to seemed genuinely willing to help and discuss things, but it quickly became obvious that he had very little idea about what he was actually doing (he had to refer to a manager several times in order to answer some of my questions), but he was very respectful and understanding when I told him that I refused to sign any of the documents that I was presented with until after I had taken legal advice, even saying that I was under no obligation to sign anything, although I was not allowed to take the documents away for further perusal (hmmm..I wonders why?).

Oddly enough though, even though the Jobcentre walls and desks were awash with posters and leaflets extolling the virtues of making an account with Universal Jobmatch, not once was the subject brought up, which is a shame, because i was quite looking forward to having that debate with a JCP drone.

Universal Jobmatch... Big Brothers latest unwelcome intrusion that you know nothing about.

On the 8th of August 2012, the DWP very quietly announced its intention to launch a scheme it called the "Universal Jobmatch".
This scheme, they stated, was intended to "streamline" (alarm bells always ring in my head whenever I hear that word) the current job search system, making it easier for bother prospective employees and employers to access available positions and jobseekers by visiting a single place.

The first I heard about this was on the afternoon of the 8th of November, when I went to sign on at the Jobcentre, or, more specifically, only when I asked what "UJ account approved" meant on a form that I had slid across the desk to me, which, due to the fact that the form requested personal information irrelevant to my claim for JSA (for example, asking for NINOs, addresses and DOBs of relatives) I left mostly blank, and refused to provide the information verbally either.

The explanation went along the lines of this:-

"Its a new scheme that was announced in parliament during the summer. Basically its going to replace jobseeker direct and the job points here"

When I pressed the issue further (which made the guy whom I was talking to uncomfortable) I was told:-

"After the 19th of November we will send you a text to let you know the scheme has gone live. Everyone claiming JSA will have to go to the Direct.gov site and make an account on there, giving your skills, qualifications and experience, from there your skills and stuff will be given a score out of five, then the system will show you what jobs are available in your area that match your score so you can apply for them. Then, whenever you come to sign on, we can quickly see what you have applied for and follow up on them."

This in itself doesn't sound too bad,  but when I asked again about the reasons behind them wanting my relatives personal info, my question was rebuffed, leading me to be highly dubious of their motives, so I did a little digging around to see just what this "Universal jobmatch" thing was all about.

The first thing a Google search throws up is THIS , which is the "official" (and rather worryingly brief) statement of affairs from the DWP website, along with a link to an FAQ document. reading through these two items, again, everything seems fairly above board, however, looking at the other Google hits tells a slightly different story.

The first one to come to my attention was THIS blog post, which describes how originally, the universal jobmatch scheme was intended to simply be an additional tool for job seekers to use in their jobsearch, but then was changed to become a mandatory part of the job seekers agreement, a fact which has been hurriedly covered up by a recent, and unannounced, change to the DWPs FAQ document.

In addition, reading further it seems that this universal jobmatch scheme is being operated without consideration for personal privacy laws and regulations, and in addition to this, the scheme is to be overseen by US based "Monster Worldwide", a company which also runs the US version of jobmatch through the website www.usajobs.gov . It should be noted here that while running the USAjobs website, Hackers managed to steal the personal information of 4.5 million registered users due to poor site security, fills you with confidence huh?

So, in addition to concerns about personal info being lost or stolen, which as we all know has never happened before *rolleyes*, what does this mean to the ordinary joe who is just looking for work?, well, unfortunately, CONSEQUENCES WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!1!!!!one!1!11!!.

As I have stated, the implementation of the UJ scheme is a mandatory part of the job seekers agreement (or at least will be after 19/11/2012) so thus all job seekers will be expected to use the website, which is fine and dandy so long as you have Internet access (this is addressed and neatly sidestepped in the DWPs FAQ document, question #3 to be precise), however, as it is expected/assumed that you will be able to find something to apply for on there, it does not take into account other jobsearch websites, such as jobsite.co.uk, indeed.co.uk and many others.

What does this mean?, well, lets say that in one 2 week period, you apply for only one position through the UJ system, but then apply for a dozen other vacancies through an external job search website, or directly with an employer through their website, your job centre advisor will only be able to see a single application, as the general rule of thumb is that job seekers should be applying for at least 4 jobs in the two week period, this will mean that "proof" of job search has not been adequately shown on their system (and remember folks, the system is never wrong !!!!!), the advisor has more than enough reason to use you as a means to hit their target for slapping you with "sanctions" , because as we all know these days, its all about hitting those targets, regardless of whether its lawful or not.

Personally, i do think that the IDEA of the UJ scheme is sound, but as past experience has taught us, the DWPs target driven environment, coupled with poor training of staff as well as the DWPs poor understanding of the job market will mean that the scheme will probably end up worse for job seekers than the current work program gravy train, in which the DWP is managing to fiddle the unemployment figures by saying that people are being sent on non-existant "training courses" presided over organisations such a A4E, Serco and many others....then of course you have the whole situation regarding the victimisation of those unable to work by ATOS, but that's another story....