JSA-holes

I've changed my mind about something. While studying a Social Policy module at university I discovered that the government now refers to people who claim benefits as 'customers' as opposed to 'claimants' or 'recipients'. This is an example of New Labour's mania for translating everything into the language of commerce. This tactic may originally have been a way of selling social democratic policies to people who would who would not have voted for Labour prior to 1997 but that purpose has been forgotten and such words serve to propagate free market ideology.

Or so I thought! On Wednesday, I went to a Back To Work session at the Job Centre Plus. It was a PowerPoint presentation given by a woman who explained that the session is a new government wheeze and attendance is compulsory for everyone on Job Seeker's Allowance. She rattled through it very quickly and I became disproportionately annoyed when anyone prolonged the experience by asking questions.

She referred to us as 'customers' throughout as per the JCP jargon. In this context the word seemed to inculcate the idea that the JCP was a place that provided us – customers – with a service. The JCP is not simply an office for signing on. The focus is on getting a job not on getting free money.

A 'customer' sounds like someone with rights, someone to be treated with respect. So while putting the emphasis on the search for work as opposed to claiming money, the use of the word 'customer' does not force responsibilities on us; it helps direct us towards responsibilities – possibly this is consistent with all that Nudge shit.

The word 'customer' is not as stigmatising as a word like 'claimant'. In a capitalist society such us ours it is the customers who are important; if the 'claimants' are not 'customers' then they are something else. They are apart, they are needy, and they have taken enough already – we owe them nothing.

I would rather be a customer than a claimant. So all of you sitting there in your fucking ivory tower universities, getting your fancy degrees, listen to this lesson from the university of life!

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You're not allowed to do work experience while you're on JSA. I think that I need more work experience to have any chance of getting the sort of jobs that I'm after. You can do voluntary work but not work experience.

The Tories, of all people, are considering changing this for the under 25s. The government says that the tax payer ought not to be paying for weeks of unpaid work; the company should pay. But in the absence of any legislation that says that companies must pay interns and when hardly any companies pay interns, internships are too costly for most people. Certain jobs, particularly in the media, are for this reason off-limits for people whose parents cannot support them while they are not being paid.

On JSA you are required to do three 'things' a week to look for work. It would be quite easy to be doing more than that while also doing work experience. There could also be an understanding that you would stop your work experience if offered paid work.