Scrap sanctions targets and keep the bottom rung

There are a lot of things in the Scottish Labour manifesto which Calton does not agree with, however, scrapping benefit sanctions targets is one policy he can wholeheartedly support. It is totally iniquitous to set sanctions targets for job centre staff when they are supposed to be helping folk into work. It is a system open to abuse and is one of the reasons for the rise in foodbanks we have seen recently. There is nothing wrong with sanctions for those who are claiming jobseekers allowance while having no intention of looking for work. Such people are actually a tiny minority. What is wrong is sanctioning people who genuinely want to find work for things like not turning up to the job centre because they were at a job interview! The success or otherwise of job centres should not be measured by the number of sanctions they dish out but by the number of people they help back into work, and by "work" Calton means a proper job with a decent number of hours and job security, not a zero hours contract. Job centres also need to end the practice of pushing the unemployed into self-employment when they don't actually have a viable business plan which will earn them a sufficient income. Starting your own business is not an easy route out of unemployment, as many failed entrepreneurs can testify. It is not for the faint-hearted and what bothers Calton about all the calls for a higher minimum wage from Labour and other parties is that, if implemented, it could well either discourage employers from taking on more staff or put them out of business altogether. We need to be making it easier for businesses to employ people, not harder because, at the end of the day, if we knock out the bottom rung of the employment ladder (ie minimum wage jobs), we will consign ever more people to endless unemployment and that is not a good thing for any of us.

HOW much?

Why are the Scottish Government spending taxpayers' money on a report which will only kick in if Scotland becomes independent? Talk about pre-empting the referendum result! Sounds to Calton more like a bribe to vote YES - if you are on minimum wage - and this from the selfsame government which refused to mandate the living wage for government contracts in the recent procurement bill. At the time they used the EU as their excuse, which is a bit rich from a party committed to an independent Scotland remaining in the EU.

The scourge of the working poor is one which Calton would like to see removed from our society but we need to be careful that hiking the minimum wage does not cost jobs. Trying to mitigate the hike by reducing employer's NI contributions will not always work, particularly for the likes of cleaning employers who typically employ people on part-time contracts where the hours are so low that they do not pay NI.

As for the rest of the report, the only positive measure is the proposed increase in carer's allowance - the rest is just a return to the bad old days of a bloated benefit system where many were better off on benefits than in work and, as usual, it is unclear how the Scottish Government would pay for it all. Calton is just thankful that it is unlikely to be implemented as, even with blatant bribes such as this, the Yes campaign are still failing to make any headway in the polls. They just don't get that canny Scots want to know how much something will cost before committing themselves! And, while we're on the subject, how much did the expert group on welfare's report cost us?

Sir Ian sees the wood from the trees

With youth unemployment running at nearly 20%, Calton welcomes any initiative to get our young people into work and the Wood Report, published today, seems to have some very positive ideas. It is good to see that the report recognises the importance of vocational training for the businesses which exist in a particular geographical area and recognises that academic studies are not the best way into work for all youngsters. It is now up to the Scottish Government to start implementing the ideas in the report. What concerns Calton is the fact that, if the SNP persist in their aim of bringing thousands more immigrant workers into Scotland, our young people will still be up against it when looking for a job. Businesses may want to employ Scottish youngsters but if their communication skills, plus their motivation, are not up to it, the jobs will go to immigrants who do have the skills employers are looking for. Put more simply, the unrestricted immigration from the EU in recent years has hidden the fact that some of our young people are unemployable and the Scottish Government seems to have been quite happy to allow a lost generation of unemployed to grow up under our noses as long as businesses were not complaining and the wheels of commerce kept turning. It's just not good enough. Parents need to take some responsibility for kids who can't get out of bed and do a decent day's work but if they can't read and write properly, there's something wrong with our education system. Businesses have told the Government what they need - it's now up to the Government to come up with the goods and simply increasing immigration to fill the jobs is not the right answer.

Alex Neil - right on symptoms, wrong on cause and treatment

Calton has some sympathy with beleaguered SNP Health Secretary Alex Neil, who is being lambasted on twitter for blaming Scotland's drink problems on Maggie Thatcher. There is some truth in him saying that the loss of jobs for men in traditional heavy industry left them turning to the bottle. Where Neil goes wrong, and loses Calton's sympathy, is in blaming Thatcher for a) the demise of the coal and steel industries and b) not providing decent replacement jobs. Thatcher may have hammered the last nail in the coffin of coal and steel but the corpse was already dead and embalmed - the industries were uncompetitive, uneconomical and hampered by unions like Unite who, unlike Unite, could not see the writing on the wall and adapt to save jobs. There is a limit to how far any government can go in propping up ailing industries with taxpayers' money just to keep a few people employed. Similarly, there is a limit to how much government can do to provide new jobs. How many times have sweeteners been offered to firms to locate in Scotland, only for them to pull out the minute the money runs dry or penalties no longer apply? How much public money was spent on the infrastructure for a semiconductor plant at Halbeath, Dunfermline which never opened and has now been demolished? We need to create an attractive tax and infrastructure environment for businesses to operate in Scotland, yes, but sweeteners are bad for Scotland's economic health.

Alex Neil is also in trouble for saying that checkout jobs in shops or working for McDonald's are not "good jobs". Well it depends on how you define a "good job". Working at a supermarket checkout is better than being unemployed but it will never make you rich. It might not even pay the bills, given that some retailers do not offer staff full-time contracts. McDonald's does have training schemes which could lead to a better job however many of the chain's UK workers are on zero-hours contracts. Perhaps Neil could have phrased his comment somewhat better but, the truth is, if you want to have any hope of achieving at least the national average wage of £25k and have some prospect of advancement, you do generally need to have "training, education and a qualification" as Neil said, otherwise a McJob may be all that is open to you.

On a more positive note

It says on the right of this page that Calton is not affiliated to any political party and, just to prove it, here are a few of his current 'likes':
Ed Miliband setting his sights on employers who exploit loopholes to pay workers less and firms who only advertise job vacancies abroad.
Nigel Farage on the Syrian refugee issue.
David Cameron on pensions - given that pensioners' savings are not earning any interest, it's the least he could do.
Danny Alexander on raising the personal tax allowance, which has been a boon to low earners.
The SNP's policy of free prescriptions.
Since we are still in the season of goodwill, and the year is not that old, Calton will leave his list of 'dislikes' for another day. He is trying to strike a positive note. Happy New Year!

Don't forget the poor singles

Calton is not at all surprised that those in poverty are now more likely to be working than on the dole. He's also not surprised that they are likely to be single, childless adults. If you don't have children, you lose all benefits as soon as your income goes over about £100 a week but you don't qualify for working tax credit unless you work at least 30 hours a week. That is becoming increasingly difficult in these days of zero hours contracts and part-time work. The result - a lot of single people stuck in a poverty trap. It is good that child poverty has fallen, according to the latest Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, and pensioners are also better off, however a truly just, fair society will look after all its members, something which British society is currently failing to do. If we don't end the scourge of low wages and under-employment, we are stoking up a problem for the future when poor single people reach pension age and do not have anything apart from the state pension to fall back on. Perhaps the new Universal Credit should recognise the reality that full-time employment remains a dream for many people and include a graded benefit rather than the current step-change at 30 hours a week. Now that would be progressive.

If this is Utopia, no thankyou

It may well be sensible, reasonable, logical, etc, etc for the rUK to be in a sterling currency union with us post-indy but the noises coming from England and Wales are not positive at the moment. It would inspire more confidence if the SNP listened to those noises, rather than ignoring them, and answered the questions the noises generate, such as the one posed by Drew Smith at Holyrood this afternoon (35 mins in), instead of ducking the issue, as the Deputy First Minister did.

Calton has still to digest the contents of the White Paper (literally) but one thing did stand out today and that is the SNP's nightmare vision of an independent Scotland bankrolled by the taxes of women freed from the drudgery of caring for their own children by increased state provision of nurserycare, which will, in turn, provide 35,000 low paid jobs for women, caring for other women's children while their mothers work in the modern equivalent of the old mills - call centres and warehouses. The irony of it all seemed, unfortunately, to be lost on Ms Sturgeon as she enthusiastically presented this Utopia that could be ours, if we vote yes. Yet another reason to vote NO.

It's not the immigrants who are the problem

Calton has never disputed the fact that most immigrants to this country are hard-working and make a positive contribution to our economy. It is no surprise to find that, in recent years, they are less likely to be in receipt of benefits than Brits. The problem is, the ready supply of skilled people with a good work ethic has allowed us to ignore the fact that many of our young people are unemployable and many of our unemployed do not want to work. If we did not have uncontrolled immigration from the EU, genuine jobseekers would find it a lot easier to find a job and the work-shy would find it a lot harder to hide. We would not have such a huge problem with youth unemployment and business owners would be putting a lot more pressure on the government to sort out our education system so that it turns out employable youngsters. As it is, the influx of Eastern Europeans is masking a growing problem within our society. It is also fuelling resentment because, now, they are not just doing the jobs Brits don't want to do - they are doing jobs that some Brits do want to do. Recession has made us less fussy when it comes to a job, which would be no bad thing if the jobs were available. Given the announcement today of up to 1000 job cuts at BAE Systems yards north and south of the border, it is time for both the Scottish and Westminster governments to take a serious look at whether we can afford a further influx of Eastern Europeans at the end of the year, especially when we have no idea how many will come. We should let in the immigrants we need and the ones who need asylum but call a halt to unrestricted immigration from the EU.

Give them a bike

In the 19th century, people moved from other parts of Scotland to Glasgow to find work. Now it seems that a reverse migration is needed, with the news that Glasgow has the highest number of workless households in the UK, never mind Scotland. Unfortunately, the sluggish state of the housing market and a general lack of affordable rented homes in most, if not all, parts of Scotland makes moving to find work very difficult. It also seems to Calton that the welfare system does not encourage relocation. Moving costs money, something which the unemployed do not have. It also requires motivation - the confidence that a move will bring an improvement. The sad thing is that Eastern Europeans are more motivated to come and work in Scotland than some Scots are to move to the other side of the country to find a job. Instead of taking the initiative, many unemployed seem to expect the state to provide for them, both in terms of benefits while unemployed and also by subsidising companies to set up businesses in areas of high unemployment. Instead of moving to find work, people expect work to come to them. Sadly, companies which receive large amounts of public money to locate in Scotland quite often leave when the subsidies dry up. The Scottish Government would be better advised to spend the money on improving public transport and providing affordable rented homes in areas where there are jobs. Grants to enable unemployed families to relocate to areas where workers are needed might also be a good idea. The Government needs to encourage mobility but there's no point in telling people to get on their bike when they don't have a bike to get on.

Tinkering while UKIP gains ground

It's a bit rich for Labour politicians to go on about companies recruiting more local workers when they (Labour) presided over an education system which has failed to get a generation of young people ready for the workplace and it would seem that they (Labour) deliberately encouraged mass immigration as a way of forcing acceptance of the philosophy of multiculturalism. And we all know how well that worked out. As long as companies can get cheaper, better workers from outside the UK they will do so - it's called capitalism. It's up to the Government to limit immigration if they want to keep jobs for British workers and that will not be possible as long as we remain in the EU. That is why UKIP are gaining support in many parts of England. Unemployed Brits are fed up of seeing jobs go to Eastern European immigrants and it is fuelling resentment, especially when getting a job means that an immigrant passes the residency test and can then get a council house. The three main Westminster parties all realise this but are not prepared to do what is necessary to sort it i.e. leave the EU. Instead they are all tinkering round the edges and fighting with each other rather than dealing with the problem. No wonder the voters are losing patience with them.

Wanted - a minimum hours guarantee

It's not just zero-hours contracts which are being abused in theses times of austerity and business retrenchment - it's also self-employment contracts for workers who should be employees, as Calton has already pointed out. Both types of contract can offer workers flexibility and can be appropriate but, all too often, workers are not being given any choice in the matter. If they refuse to accept what's on the table they know that someone else will. Many people on these types of contracts are low paid - the last thing they need is uncertainty about the number of hours they will get each week. Self-employment contracts offer no job security at all as they can usually be terminated without notice. Employees have, for some time now, accepted that the days of big annual pay rises are over. Some have even accepted pay cuts in order to keep their jobs. The least employers can do is give them some sort of minimum hours guarantee and there should be a crack-down on those employers who are using self-employment contracts in order to get out of having to comply with employment legislation.

Teth aile nan Eilean Siar

Calton finds it really hard to believe the unnamed Scottish Government spokesperson who said, apropos the proposed Western Isles interconnector, that "Improved grid connections will enable the huge renewable energy resources of Scotland's islands to create jobs - up to 3,500 jobs in the Western Isles, almost 2,900 in the Shetlands and over 4,500 in the Orkney Islands by 2030." In the construction phase maybe but permanently? When, as Calton has already pointed out, a seven turbine windfarm can be managed by just two part-time technicians? If you do the maths, that means that there would need to be about 25,000 turbines on the Western Isles to give that level of full-time employment. That's 21 turbines per square mile and 8% of the total Western Isles population working on them. Well, they'll probably need to be right enough, because their tourism industry will have suffered the same fate as the White-throated Needletail and there will be no birdlife left anywhere on the islands - just a lot of sad little corpses littered around the bases of the turbines. Just as well the BBC filmed 'Hebrides' when they did. Or maybe the unnamed spokesperson is talking a lot of hot air?

Strength in numbers

Before we all get too excited about the news that Scottish unemployment is falling, we need to reflect on the fact that a new study commissioned by the Scottish Government shows a rise in underemployment. More than 10% of the workforce are underemployed i.e. working less hours than they would like. There are less full-time jobs now than in 2008, although the situation is improving, and wages have fallen. More people are self-employed, partly as a response to the lack of jobs but also, worryingly, due to a trend for small employers to put people who should be employees on to self-employed contracts, in breach of HMRC rules. Such employers know that it is more than their job's worth in these hard times for employees to complain about the change which robs them of the right to paid holidays, sick pay and other rights as employees. It is in these circumstances that trade union membership comes into its own. Calton was not a supporter of the militant trade unionism of the Thatcher years but he is a believer in the value of trade unions when it comes to ensuring a fair deal for low paid workers. He also believes that health and safety whistle-blowers should be protected, not blacklisted. Times are hard, but that doesn't mean that unscrupulous employers should be allowed to exploit this.

Farage and Amazon

So, let's see if Calton has this right - Amazon were given £2.5m by the Scottish Government to expand their operations in Dunfermline and Gourock and, in return, the company has paid £2.4m tax. That does not sound like a very good deal. OK, so they have created some jobs, of which quite a few have gone to Eastern Europeans. The arrangement seems to be that Alex Salmond, that well-known supporter of the EU, says that we need more immigrants to fill the jobs which his government is paying companies like Amazon to create. Here's Calton's idea - we leave the EU, stop paying companies based in Luxembourg large sums of money to provide jobs for non-UK nationals and use the money to improve the employability of our young people instead. If Amazon don't like it, they can take their low-paid jobs somewhere else. If we didn't have an open door to any EU national who wants to come and work here, we wouldn't need them. (Calton realises that he risks being mobbed a la Farage next time he visits the Canons' Gait for daring to air such views but, tant pis, someone needs to say it.) The bottom line is this - subsidising industry to locate here doesn't work in the long term. Improving the skills of our workforce does.

Good week, bad week

Calton has just had an email informing him that his energy bill will be increased by 27.5% as of next month. How much of this, he wonders, is going to fund wind turbines like the one in Hatton, Aberdeenshire which blew down in a gale recently? If, instead of subsidising windfarms, our government subsidised clean coal power stations, perhaps Scottish Coal would not now be in administration with the loss of nearly 600 jobs. Miners facing redundancy will hardly be cheered by the sight of turbines popping up all over the countryside, as windfarms do not bring much long-term employment, although there may be some jobs going in clearing up the fallen ones after every storm. There's no such thing as an ill wind......That was the bad week. The good week is that this blog will not be affected by the new press regulation, seeing as how the turnover is zilch and the number of employees is zero, Calton being the sole, self-employed author. Also, those who, like Calton, are feeling somewhat disenfranchised by the main Scottish political parties now have a new one to vote for - The Alliance Party of Scotland. About time too.

Standing up for the underemployed

Calton has always wondered how the Office for National Statistics comes up with the figure for the total number of people out of work, given that the only hard measure which we have is the number of people claiming jobseekers allowance, and this is always lower than the total unemployment figure. Be that as it may, it is encouraging to see a fall in the number of unemployed in Scotland, coupled with a rise in the number of people in work. What is not so encouraging is the rise in recent years of the 'underemployed' - those who are in work but not for as many hours as they would like to be, or not using their skills fully. Calton is not convinced that the answer to this is more training - it's not lack of skills which is the problem but a lack of decent, full-time jobs - however it is good to see that the plight of the underemployed has been recognised by the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee at Holyrood. According to the Convener of the Committee, Murdo Fraser MSP, the effect of underemployment can be similar to that of unemployment on both income and the ability to get a job in the future. While there is a limit to what the Scottish Government can do in this situation, cracking down on unscrupulous employers who are moving employees onto self-employed or zero-hours contracts would be a good start. Employees are in a vulnerable position at the moment due to the recession - the government needs to ensure that their rights are protected.

Boot out the blacklisters

There is no place in Scotland for companies who blacklist workers for speaking out about health and safety issues or for belonging to a trade union. Calton fully supports the workers who held a rally in Dundee today against the practice of blacklisting. Their requests that companies that use blacklists are banned from getting future government contracts and that a full inquiry into the practice is held are entirely justified. The Scottish Government has said that it is opposed to blacklisting. It now needs to put its money where its mouth is and make sure that companies tendering for government contracts are properly vetted to ensure that their hiring procedures are above board. Just saying that they are 'not aware' of any blacklisting taking place is not enough. Men have lost their livelihoods just for raising concerns in their workplace. This then deters others from speaking out for fear of suffering the same fate in this time of recession. The result is that health and safety in the construction industry becomes the casualty. Our workers deserve better.

One big no-no

The number of people employed in Scotland has just gone down, we have a huge youth unemployment issue, we have a lack of affordable homes and we are about to see a large number of people trying to downsize to avoid a housing benefit cut due to under-occupancy but the SNP is getting ready to welcome a potentially huge influx of Romanians and Bulgarians with open arms and they don't seem to have any contingency plans to cope if, as seems very likely, the numbers exceed even the most liberal estimate. If any further evidence was needed to prove that our Government is stark, staring mad, this is it. OK, so we can probably house them in all the larger council houses vacated by Scots who can't pay for them any more, but what about schools, medical practices, dentists etc, etc, etc? And what about all the Scots who find they can't get a job because they are all taken by Eastern Europeans? What are they supposed to do? This is not just a few skilled immigrants, which we need, or some temporary unskilled immigrants doing menial agricultural work which we don't want to do. We could be talking millions of people in the space of a few months and we have absolutely no control over it while we remain part of the EU. One very good reason to vote NO to independence and NO to the EU.

Escape from Amazon

Allan Lyall, Vice President of European Operations, Amazon, has obviously been to the same school of question avoidance as Alex Salmond, judging by his performance on today's Business Scotland program. When asked about the recent criticism over Amazon's failure to pay corporation tax in the UK, Lyall sidestepped the issue, saying that he was "very, very busy" ensuring that customers got their parcels on time and was not the right person to ask about tax. (Amazon had £7bn sales in the UK between 2009 and 2011 but only paid £2.3m corporation tax.) Lyall also talked about locating their new 'fulfillment centre' in Dunfermline because of the people, rather than the £10m government grant they were given, however Calton has heard that Eastern European languages are as common as English on the warehouse floor over in Fife, making him wonder just how many locals have benefited from the behemoth on their doorstep. Mind you, if fellow blogger Middleschmiddle overheard right, they've maybe had a lucky escape.

History repeats itself

In the wake of the hoo-ha about the number of renewables jobs, Calton thinks it is worth pointing out that Tullo windfarm near Laurencekirk, which has seven 100m turbines, is "managed by only two part-time technicians, who also manage another windfarm" according to an article in this month's edition of the Scottish Mountaineer, the magazine of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. So, once the Scottish Government has covered every square inch of land available with turbines and the construction phase is over, there will be no point in looking to operational windfarms for employment. Haven't we learned anything? Have we forgotten Kishorn, Nigg, Ardersier, Portavadie? Are we doomed to keep on repeating the same mistakes because our politicians don't seem to be able to learn from history? (And, if we vote for independence, we can add Faslane to the above list along with one of the BAE Systems yards on the Clyde.)