by Carola Becker
WORK is good for your health, according to the Government in its recent consultation document on reforming the welfare state. Yet five million workers in Britain suffer from stress at work and half a million of them believe this makes them ill. A survey by the Samaritans found that people’s jobs were the single biggest cause of stress. According to the Government’s own research, mental health conditions are now the single biggest cause of absence from work and of claims for incapacity benefit.
The number of people claiming the benefit more than trebled between 1979 and 1997. This is also the period when the Conservative Government passed laws which greatly restricted and controlled trade union activity. Has this disenfranchisement of working people led to a situation where incapacity benefit provides the only respite for those for whom work has become unbearable?
My experience has led me to believe this is so. When I became ill as a result of workplace stress, my employer promptly made me redundant. My trade union proved to be as bureaucratic as it was toothless. I could not afford a lawyer and public funding is not available for employment tribunal cases. So I had to take on my employer single-handedly. Needless to say, the added stress did nothing to improve my stress levels.
Had I left my job before I became ill and signed on while looking for another one, I would have made myself “voluntarily unemployed” and thus being penalised with a “sanction” of up to 26 weeks without any money. So I had no choice but to stay put until my stress levels reached crisis point and I had to escape – first to my GP and then onto incapacity benefit.
I now live on £86 per week, out of which I have to pay
for prescriptions, dental and osteopathic treatment. I get no help with travel expenses. Consequently, I am often forced to choose between lunch and a bus pass. I am continually subjected to “medical assessments” and “work-based interviews” by the local Jobcentre. I am stigmatised by the right-wing media.
So how is the Government planning to help me and others in my position? The consultation document tells me that the “Access to Work” budget is to be doubled to £140 million and that public and private sector “providers” will be paid out of benefit savings to get incapacity claimants back to work. In other words, money will be taken away from the sick and disabled and given to Government departments and private companies which care about targets and profits, not claimants. A further £173 million will be spent on “psychological therapies”, provided by therapists who are to work alongside Jobcentre advisors to “support” people to get off welfare benefits.
Here is my response to the consultation document: Stop kicking the victims of rampant capitalism. Stop telling us that being bullied off benefits is good for our health. Stop pouring money into machinery designed to deprive us further and leave us in peace, so that we can get better and/or find alternative ways to make a contribution to society.
