Strike scheduled for 28 and 29 August
A two-day strike action by members of the PCS union working at Stockport’s Universal Credit centre is scheduled to proceed late this month after an overwhelming vote in favour of action in a ballot of members.
The union’s statement on the action described declining staff numbers, unmanageable workloads as the core of problems workers are facing in trying to process an ever-increasing number of claims and cases.
The union is demanding the recruitment of a significant number of new staff and the removal of unworkable restrictions on existing staff:
PCS members fighting to improve their Universal Credit service centre are set to strike following a huge vote in favour of action.
Staffing on Universal Credit at Millennium House in Stockport has been in decline since its introduction in 2016/17. Despite existing staff being switched to UC to support hard-pressed members and further staff from the remaining legacy command incoming in September, we believe this is not going to tackle the problem of increasing workloads and the demands placed upon staff.
We therefore believe action is needed to make important changes for members and this was supported in the ballot which closed today with a 71.4% turnout, members voted 91.9% in favour of strike action and 95% in favour of action short of strike.
Case managers have seen their caseloads increase week by week. The volume of telephone calls has gone up in line with those caseloads and members are now expected to be working on several claims at the same time. Stress-related absences are higher on the UC command compared to the legacy commands.
PCS demands the DWP:
– Recruits 100 new staff members
– Limits calls to 30 a week for case managers
– Scraps the one minute after-call work limit
– Allocates time for case work to be completed
– Ends the attack on flexi
– Ends the unnecessary restrictions on breaks and lunches
– Ends the victimisation of a PCS rep and member and the dropping of cases against them.
The Tories have long been heavily criticised for their botched, dishonest and consciously-cruel roll-out of Universal Credit, a system inflicting absolute misery on huge numbers of vulnerable individuals and families.
Supporters who wish to contribute to the workers’ hardship fund can do so via direct transfer to the Stockport and Tame Valley Hardship Account, sort code 60-83-01, account number 20260684.
This strike appears to be all about the welfare of PCS members, and very little to do with the well being of claimants.
Where were the overwhelming votes for industrial action by PCS members when they were implementing the current hostile regime and knowingly persecuting the vulnerable at the behest of the DWP.
Most agree that this union has done whot the dwp government has asked of it carrying out orders yet taking action for its staff is one big joke has it’s about them hmmm they could have at the start of this government actions against the peasants been shown up earlier yet they now strike for themselves oh dear
Yes Steve, that was my first thought and supporting people who’re implementing such despicable policies as UC feels very uncomfortable – but don’t we have to?
The policy isn’t theirs – maybe some of them believe in it but I doubt there are many – they’ve seen it at its worst – from the inside.
They are after all being oppressed themselves by the work practices that are imposed on them.
We wouldn’t refuse to support workers in a plastic bag factory or an oil company or a gas company that’s fracking or any workers in industries of which we disapprove.
They’re workers and I think we have to support them.
We might even gain some supporters with insight into stuff we don’t know about the Tories.
We won’t gain many friends by rejecting them.
I think we are in agreement with the uncomfortable feeling of supporting the enablers of a unworkable system.its a little bit like:not my fault only following orders:.Personally they make me feel unclean……And I am sorry if that upsets anyone and I will not even defend my reaction……just instinctively and beyond my control!
And mine, personally , they can all go and f***k ’emselves.
They only thing they should look forward to is criminal trial and a lengthy stay in one of Boris’ new prisons
I encountered a few twisted job coaches who enjoyed inflicting misery when I was signing on. For those people, the Nuremberg Defence is inadmissible.
The good job coaches are a different matter, though how they stick it out I don’t know. The fact that they can is a testament either to their saintliness or their lunacy. I’m not sure which!
Not a dicky bird about the long suffering poor sods, who, through no fault of their own, cannot find suitable or reasonably paid work.
But they’re easily and gladly sanctioned by the capos of the pcs. All so they can get their £25 m&s voucher or a fucking Easter egg ffs.
I had a rant about the self serving cowards of the pcs and the lily-livered serwotka a while back and some (as usual) had their gripe about my foul mouthed diatribe against the rats… Well looky here… Further proof I was bloody well right.
I’ll be looking for the thread and posting a link to show who’s who…
So to those what had their moan at me back then, go get it right ’round ya. And I mean RIGHT ’round ya!!
Nothing’s changed with them shithouse rat ‘capos’ and NOTHING will. The self serving PCS should be expelled from the TUC.
Here’s one example… I’m certain there’s more so I’ll keep looking…
https://skwawkbox.org/2018/06/12/mcvey-screw-up-costs-thousands-of-dwp-staff-meagre-pay-rise-with-insult-on-top-of-injury/#comment-72594
I can’t believe the anti-working class sentiments of some of these comments. “Capos” — calling the PCS members Nazis — strikes me as rightwing trolling. They are workers and no matter what, they don’t decide the policy. They are penalized if they don’t carry out the rules. Even if some of them are vile people, we have to support workers in struggle and not allow the rightwing to drive a wedge between different sections of workers, be they PCS members or claimants.
tompainesghost at 1:56 am
“They are workers and no matter what, they don’t decide the policy. They are penalized if they don’t carry out the rules.”
I think what has enraged many commentators is that without the co-operation of PCS members the cruel sanctions regime couldn’t have been implemented. There was no mass appeal by DWP staff to their union for industrial action and support to oppose this oppressive regime. But as soon as their conditions are affected they are all rushing to demand industrial action.
You are talking about a demand for a political strike against the government by a relatively right-wing union. While people can be enraged that this didn’t happen, realistically the fact that PCS members are now involved in a wage dispute opens the possibility to win some of them over to refusing to implement the sanctions regime. But that won’t happen if they are denounced as fascists.
While they might not decide policy, they ENFORCE it with varying degrees of gusto. Generally a fair level. I’ve witnessed it first hand; I could provide a plethora of examples from people I know.
There is such a thing as ‘discretion’ but it is NEVER used. So it’s not about being penalised at all. We KNOW that DWP workers receive a ‘bonus’ for removing people off the register…by any means.
Following a visit by dummkopf-schmitt to a JCP in Smethwick a few years back a Mr Lloyd, West Midland regional pcs officer was quoted as saying some pcs workers were : ‘So upset they almost (ha! “Almost” indeed) threatened to tear up their £25 m&s vouchers…It’s a ‘carrot & stick’ approach, and the carrot is a small one’
Even he thinks £25 isn’t enough for condemning some poor bastard to starve because they were a few minutes late or they went to a job interview instead of signing, or they were hooked up to all sorts of machines in hospital instead of looking for 30 non existent jobs per week…
‘We’ are not obliged to support them in any way and you’re only reinforcing their Nuremberg defence.
Much to my complete horror, I discovered yesterday that the CAB have taken toerag “hush money”. That is to say the CAB have taken a paltry few £million in exchange for their silence over DWP incompetency and Draconian measures.
Leaving the least well off with even less chance of redress… But we must stand in solidarity with them, too, I guess…
Tom painesghost….you might be right tom…..for the greater good and all that.I have always been ruled by my heart not my head,but still find myself having difficulty overcoming my prejudice against the enablers of the worst of the Tory party reforms universal credit!….I concede your point….
Here’s how much the pcs stands in ‘solidarity’ with your average benefit claimant
https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/pcs-union-leadership-refuse-to-even-discuss-fighting-benefit-sanctions/
Solidarity is it, serwotka?
And here’s some of the reasons why I describe them as ‘capos’ , because there is NO justifiable excuse.
This article is from 2015 and only gives 100 examples…how many more have there been, one wonders??
https://www.indy100.com/article/sixteen-of-the-most-senseless-benefit-sanction-decisions-known-to-man–x1dmkd2_Me
Sixteen examples … D’oh!
Bloody Sunday.
Battle of Orgreave.
Iraq.
Syria.
Think harder, fair weather ‘socialists’.
At least one person here claims to have served in the army.
It’s easy to find excuses not to support workers we disapprove of – but then the voters who say there’s no difference between the parties will be right.
http://docshare.tips/pcs-union-midlands-regional-newsline-summer-2013_58bfc6b9b6d87fc5418b529d.html
Mr Lloyd said Jobcentre workers had threatened to tear up £25 Marks and Spencer vouchers received for getting claimants off benefits as part of a DWP ‘carrot and stick’ approach. He said: “The carrot is a small one and a number of PCS members from Smethwick were considering tearing up their vouchers in front of IDS to show their feelings over the matter.”
There you go folks. That’s how much the pcs give a flying one about you. They ‘considered’ tearing up their £25 m&s vouchers (What they got for sanctioning people for the most frivolous of reasons no doubt)
And they want MORE moolah for throwing you under the bus.
That’s ‘solidarity’ , pcs style. And some on here think ‘we’ shouldn’t alienate them? That we NEED them as ‘allies’?
Jesus wept.
‘Ends the unnecessary restrictions on breaks and lunches’
Would that be anything to do with the Govt removing the subsidy on the DWP canteen, as reported in the most recent issue of ‘eye’ (P.13) ? 🤔
Wouldn’t surprise me.
I think I have to bow to those who are on the hard end of UC,Unless we have knowledge of the disgusting benifits system, we cannot comprehend the misery that those who imposed and those that enable the UC to be driven through the working classes.Listening to the arguments regarding UC by the posters on here have swung me against the PCS support.For me thats a first in not supporting a union!
Joseph – imagine you’re a claimant and you’re offered a job as a ‘claims adviser’ (or whatever they’re called these days) in the jobcentre.
Do you refuse it on principle and have your dole stopped?
Take the job but refuse to sanction anyone and get fired ‘for cause’ and hey, guess what – no dole for three months?
There’s the unwritten ‘blacklist’ of references to consider too.
So – do you stand on principle or do you do as you’re told and adopt a Tory attitude to claimants to protect your sanity?
Without independent means all workers are trapped.
‘Without independent means all workers are trapped.’
There’s LESS means for those without a job ffs. They’re the poor sods have to kowtow to the whims of these collaborators just to get their monthly pittance.
It’s NO excuse for refusing to even discuss the plight of those less fortunate than themselves – who they now expect to sympathise with them.
Hardfaced twunts have even set up a ‘hardship fund’.
OH, THE FUCKING IRONY!!
Their actions have led to kids looking in bins for something to assuage their hunger pangs; and they’re going on about ‘hardship’…
My blood pressure’s goin’ through the bleedin’ roof, now. I need time out.
David fully understand that is why I think that this is a very difficult question for me.I have cut ✂ my nose to spite my face a number of times,isnt that why we are proud to be socialist.None of us take the easy route.We all have a dream,most of the time we are disappointed.But all of us have a moral compass and maybe we are wrong but having listened tonight to the veiws on here I think I could not stand on the picket lines and feel comfortable with the PCS……they have no moral compass and seem too enthusiastic at least from what posters are saying.We agree to disagree david!Soon be bedtime here so hope this week Will bring good news on the membership front…….Our power is in the membership…..and that’s what frightens the Labour right!
Are they the only workers we should cast adrift?
We’re against nukes – that means you’ll refuse support for navy workers or shipyard workers in Barrow or civilian workers at Faslane, right?
What, am I putting words in your mouth?
Where on this thread has someone written that ‘we’ shouldn’t alienate them? That we NEED them as ‘allies’?
I don’t say we should support them because of who they are but because of who we are.
You want to make lists of ‘bad’ workers we should shun, you fucking proto-Nazi.
Where on this thread has someone written that ‘we’ shouldn’t alienate them? That we NEED them as ‘allies’?
How about HERE, divvy?
David McNiven 17/08/2019 at 5:34 pm
”They’re workers and I think we have to support them.”
AND
”We won’t gain many friends by rejecting them.”
Thats before this post
https://skwawkbox.org/2019/08/17/stockport-universal-credit-workers-strike-to-go-ahead-end-of-august/#comment-116755
Go on….You were saying?
—————————————————–
I see I’m a ‘proto-nazi’, now? Whatever one of those is…
You wanna call for solidarity with a union that accepts bribes (Face it, they’re nothing else BUT bribes) to put people in penury – and I’M the ‘proto-nazi’?
You call for solidarity with a union that refuses to even discuss (Nevermind oppose) the hardships they’re imposing on people from a Government they proclaim to disfavour?
And I’M the ‘proto-nazi’?
You call for solidarity with a union that does nothing to prevent those who cannot work through disability being forced to find work or starve, and
Which makes ME the ‘proto-nazi’?
You’re a fucking bellend of the highest order, lad. If you was standing in front of me right now you’d look very funny picking your teeth out of your shite with broken fingers.
Another internet warrior. Pfft.
I’m six feet two, fifteen stone and close to seventy.
Last thirty-year-old hard man who thought he’d teach the white-haired old guy a lesson for daring to blow the horn at HIM found himself backed up against a lamp-post with his wrists crushed white. I have big strangler’s hands.
I still didn’t hit the sucker when he tried to take a poke after I let him go – there was no strength left in his arms anyway and I’d have been late for work waiting for his ambulance and the cops.
All my adult life I’ve restrained people instead of hitting them because a couple of kids at school had fits when I did – thinking I’d killed the last one scared the shit out of me.
If you do ever meet me in person you’ll give a fake name, tough guy.
By that I mean a different fake name obviously.
Oh, do be quiet, old man.
If you want a ‘tale of the tape’ I’ve got 20-odd years, about 6 stone (Easily carried) and at least 3 inches height on you, plus I’m a veteran of several football related and other bar brawls, none of which I’ve come out the worst from. Believe me, I’m more than capable, and your attitude wouldn’t gain you any quarter, even if your age might.
Next time I see a frequent poster on here, in the street I’ll introduce meself to him; and if he wants to, he’ll be able to confirm you’ll be the one giving the false name.
A corpulent, stunted fucktard like you making threats of violence over the internet is hilarious.
Try replacing one of your five-a-day with a salad, dummy.
Man cannot live on pies alone.
Yep.
David –
“Are they the only workers we should cast adrift?”
I think your analogy is precisely right – if uncomfortable. The messy world of reality is very different from the inside of Citizen Smith’s head with cardboard cut-outs playing ‘Cowboys and Indians’.
I guess many of us reading this story immediately asked ‘How can anybody be compliant enough to do this job and still invite sympathy?’
But then there arises the question that you have raised : “What if I was destitute and was offered this job/?” Would I have the guts to turn it down? Would I find some reasoning that would make it acceptable?
… or if I already had the job, would I have resigned when the effects of the system became apparent?
Casting the first stone etc? Victimhood has many real faces beyond the pontificating that the luxury of a computer terminal and the internet allows us, and the distinction between coerced individuals and a bent system is important.
Try another difficult question : Do damaged veterans not deserve support because they compliantly fought in wars that we find reprehensible?
Of course damaged veterans deserve support – but because they need it, not because they’re veterans.
This whole thread is an irrelevance and a distraction.
Setting one group of workers against another – that remind anyone of anything FFS?
Is anyone here seriously NOT aware of that most basic of Tory weapons inherited from their East India Company forebears – set the natives at each others’ throats and pick up the pieces – divide and rule?
It’s worth all the money in the world to the Tories – literally.
And then some.
I try not to call anyone ‘troll’ but I can’t think of any other explanation or excuse for the toffee.
In case there’s any doubt – my question should be rhetorical for any Labour Party member.
“Setting one group of workers against another – that remind anyone of anything FFS?”
… which is exactly my point – remembering also the sad fact that line of thought attracts votes.
RH, the competitive, hierarchical, almost cell-like nature of unions is now one of their greatest failings in my opinion, and a large part of the reason I believe we should ditch the block vote.
Their structure, and that of Labour to a degree, seems to me more suited to an underground resistance movement than to a major political party.
History explains the structure but I believe it’s outlived its usefulness in the digital age.
The Labour Party is the real ‘UNION’ of the working people of this country.
When one oppressed group has to seek, bargain for or poll the help of separate little blocks of workers it’s all too easy for our enemies to play one off against another.
Think of the Labour Party as a continuous Congress of trade unions if it helps – it would be an upgrade not a downgrade for the unions.
They produce natural candidates for Labour PPC’s anyway – separation, disunity and competition make no sense.
“What if I was destitute and was offered this job/?” Would I have the guts to turn it down? Would I find some reasoning that would make it acceptable?
… or if I already had the job, would I have resigned when the effects of the system became apparent?”
If someone has a family they don’t realistically have much choice but to do as they’re told.
Easy for fuckwits like toffee to splutter on about how evil they are.
Some will be evil twats but most will be just trying to put food on their own family’s table – the job’s not exactly well-paid.
His attitude to others shows he’d be a pissy little martinet if he was ever given a scintilla of power over anyone.
In the seventies, I belonged to a left wing group who were laughed at for warning that ‘The Tories intend to make the unemployed work for their dole money’. Effectively, that is what has happened with unemployed being forced to take part time, zero hours contracts for a benefit ‘top up’ and being classed as employed if working one ot two hours per week. How have we let it come to this? What’s worse than that prediction is the way the sick and disabled have been hit.
Perhaps this industrial action by a seemingly unprincipaled workforce should be encouraged as the catalyst to bringing this rotten policy to it’s knees. The problem is that the claiments will once again be made to pay and left high and dry with no money. No collections proposed for them.
Correct, Carlene.
The corporates get their free labour at the taxpayer’s expense. That’s corporate fascism and slavery.
I oppose that in every form, but apparently opposing that and opposing the people who are carrying out this programme on the front line with no resistance whatsoever, but conversely doing it with much enthusiasm, makes me a ‘proto-nazi’
There’s some knobhead on here thinks I should be grateful to the rats and indeed SUPPORT their cause for better pay and working conditions for their overt collaboration with a programme reminiscent of the nazi aktion t4 programme.
But I’M the ‘proto-nazi’
And I though steve h made some outlandish stuff up. The crown now belongs on someone else’s head, doesn’t it, mcniven?
A few years ago the DWP had me working for 6 months doing 30 hrs pw for a “charity” 25 miles away (a 2-train commute), so it’s been going on at least 5 years. (The”charity” sector, incidentally, has done itself immense harm collaborating in this disgrace and has turned me off any sort of volunteering for life. It’s just virtue-signalling for mugs. I imagine many others who were in the same position feel similarly now).
Then the spiteful old hag who ran the “charity”, so confident she had the DWP’s tacit consent to take the piss, tried to change the hours for me and another guy making the same trip, taking our commute over the 90 mins each way limit.
I told her where to stick it. No comebacks whatsoever. The other poor sod was too pussy to stand up to her and has probably been hating himself ever since…
We aspire to better.
No government relying on charities to take up the slack left by its inadequate social policy is worth having.
The recipients of charity may well feel grateful but they also feel demeaned.
Every human being alive at any given time has an absolute right to shelter, sustenance, safety and whatever else can be provided equitably. No rich, no poor.
Charity is for cats and dogs.
Oh, and before I forget – the National Lottery justifies its “little bit of a flutter” with charitable donations & good works yet it’s had its ill effects too.
It’s at least partly to blame for normalising gambling – and look where that’s led some of our citizens.
I wouldn’t ban gambling but governments shouldn’t be promoting it.
Carlene Edmonds…I have always thought that the propaganda sorounding social security system needs to be addressed urgently.A start would be the banishing of the disgusting benifits word which is inaccurate and almost used for propoganda by Torys.to shame and attack legitimate claims for social security payments.The Horror of terrorising decent people who have fallen on hard times….. by Tory policys and. made to feel guilty by the enablers of UC,. it cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.Even my£670pounds pension per month for myself and my wife is now a benefit(charity) regarding the enablers….I have been swayed by the arguments about the morality of some of them in administration of universal credit……Love to get some of our Labour mps on that!…….So this forum is much more than a talk shop if we can be swayed by intelligent argument on a complicated subject!
Total agreement on charitys david……they undermine the state social security system,in the same way private education and pensions are undermined by the same.. No civilized society can afford not to have social security. Even the American people are beginning to understand that!.. Shame the Establishment don’t get it?
I appreciate the dilemmas faced by those who are torn over whether or not to support the PCS in their proposed action to improve their situation. However, having struggled over whether to support them or not I find that I cannot support people who are complicit in the oppression of other workers.
I used to be a member of the IWW, which, if you know anything about the IWW, is a radical industrial union that organises along industrial lines which is to say that, for example, if you are a teacher, a classroom assistant or a cleaner or lunchtime supervisor you all join the IWW’s education workers union, as you all work in education. The IWW likes to call itself the ‘union for all workers’ (which includes unemployed workers too, as full members, unlike some unions who could be mentioned) but there are limits, and requests for membership from workers who suppress/oppress other workers will not be allowed to become members of the IWW, (the IWW similarly does not allow membership to anyone with the ability to hire or fire). This usually means that the police or prison officers or most security guards could become members. This understanding clarified for me why I could not support PCS members who work for JCP+ or the DWP, because, as a routine part of their job, they are encouraged to oppress the unemployed, the sick and the disabled.
Equally, none of the policies that PCS members have to operate under were implemented overnight, and there was sufficient time to organise an effective fight back against Universal Credit that could have, if publicised properly, have engendered a sympathetic response from many concerned unemployed people, and also helped to build solidarity. I have been involved in actions against the introduction of UC and against Workfare since quite early on, and the only time I ever saw the PCS turn up was when their interests as workers were involved, (such as UC affecting them) and never in acts of solidarity when we organised pickets outside of Jobcentres.
The PCS has also rather cravenly hidden behind Tory anti-union legislation, of which much has been made of, but in reality are so trivial that the restrictions are petty, and to be quite honest, ineffectual if the union is run on robustly democratic lines, such as the way the IWW is run – anti-union legislation hasn’t affected the way the IWW acts, but rather sharpened their awareness and made for imaginative, and legal ways of ignoring it. But then, the big difference is that the IWW is run by its membership, and not by a bureaucracy, as any ‘leadership’ (which the IWW just does not possess in any conventional sense) is actually just a committee of delegates who are subject to immediate recall.
Then we have the so called ‘political motivation’ that some unions seek to use as a defence for doing little or nothing. Claims of this nature are risible, and as such should be dismissed. Such claims of actions being politically motivated are so arbitrary so as to suggest that literally any action could be so labelled, and also ignores what all genuine activists know: that all such actions are political, and certainly when fighting the Tories at any level it becomes political, because for the Tories it is always deeply political.
I understand why people are so unwilling to support the PCS DWP workers, and I support that viewpoint myself, but in many senses, DWP members of the PCS have only themselves to blame. Not once have they shown any public solidarity with those whose lives they hold in their hands. If they had been more vocal, and prepared to work in solidarity right from the get go then they, and we might not be in such a pickle now. It’s still not too late, and the PCS membership could push the issue internally and change union policy and start to stage solidarity actions with those of us on the sharp end – but the ball remains very much in PCS member’s court.
sibrydionmawr 19/08/2019 at 8:19 p
Thanks for expressing my own thoughts far more eloquently than I could have myself.
sibrydionmawr, I hadn’t heard of IWW, so thanks for the info about it – it sounds like a great organisation and possibly a model for others.
I don’t think knowing that there’s a more democratic union than the PCS in existence helps decide whether to support them in this present situation though.
Other unions have proved themselves unworthy – Wapping comes to mind.
I remember thinking at the time that the EEPTU should be expelled from TUC but that didn’t happen until a later dispute.
I’m not aware of any gains to anyone but Murdoch and some journalists from that dispute.
Withdrawal of labour by PCS would hurt claimants, as would a go-slow, and the government would have a perfect scapegoat for UC not working and claimants not being paid.
What else could PCS do?
Make unauthorised payments? They’d just be clawed back when discovered.
Publicly criticise UC? That would just let the Tories blame its failings on the front line PCS workers for not giving it their best efforts.
Sorry but I think you’re all wrong on this.
Hi David, glad the information about the IWW was of interest.
Apart from wondering how I can be wrong when I’m expressing an opinion I don’t quite know. All I do know however is that claimants have been let down by workers represented by the PCS since at least the time we got this vile Tory government.
From a strictly trade union perspective, the PCS are of course representing their membership, but have never shown any solidarity with claimants, and indeed have operated the Tory killing machine. They may not have been willing, but they’re certainly complicit. Several years down the line it would appear that any attempt to scupper UC would be in vain, but that isn’t really the issue as PCS members could have done something very significant in the early stages as soon as it became clear what the implications of UC actually were. The PCS membership chose to remain silent about the deleterious effects of UC, and have remained mute over the terrible effects the policies they administer are having on millions of ordinary people whose only crime is to be poor.
Huge numbers of us would probably otherwise support PCS members in their current action were they not oppressing us every day as part of their work routines.
Hi Sib, another Void veteran here, Ulysse , so ill give that blog a look too, cheers for the heads up (Btw, as a fellow Anarchist, i did learn an awful lot from your insights)
Hello Sib (star commenter of old from The Void RIP). Good to see you back!
Hi Timfrom – not so sure that I was a ‘star’ commmenter, but very kind of you to say so! I often comment on Kate Belgrave’s blog these days, and there is a good regular crowd there commenting too. We’re a pretty erudite bunch too, and we not only learn from each other, but often get our intellects exercised too!
A list, just a list? https://garethwillmer.wordpress.com/2019/07/28/forbidden-banned-glossary-of-dwpconservative-governments-failings/
If you look at the bottom of the page there’s a link to another piece by Gareth Willmer called “gaming with autism.”
Maybe some people just like to make lists.
He appears to be a comrade so should we cut him a break?
Universal Credit staff poised for further walk-outs
Universal Credit staff working at two centres in Walsall and Wolverhampton will take two further days of strike action this week, after losing patience with the government in their campaign for more staff and better working conditions.
The walk-out will take place between Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29, after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to meet the demands of workers.
https://welfareweekly.com/universal-credit-staff-poised-for-further-walk-outs/