Sanctions targets at the jobcentre are combined with a culture oozing out from IDS down to middle management to shopfloor staff that demonises claimants as lazy, shirkers, scroungers, wasters who will only get into work if they are forced. This combination creates a toxic situation where jobseekers are sanctioned for the most bizarre of reasons by advisors under pressure to reach targets – or some chasing them to win an easter egg, or those few who think the same as IDS or are on a powertrip and sanction just because they can. Here we present a few cases we’ve come across online, in newspapers and parliamentary debates. Remember that sanctions are supposedly there both to “incentivise” claimants into work (by making them starve) and to punish those who flagrantly break rules.

If the consequences of this madness were nil then it wouldn’t be a concern, but the consequences are huge for those affected. Some of these sanctions will have been overturned on appeal, months after the person has suffered as a result of having no money. Whilst many people support the principle of sanctions to remove benefit payments for people they think really aren’t trying to find work, the examples above are the direct result of having such sanctions available to be used and then pressuring staff to use them.

Sanctions are no help for jobseekers. They target the wrong problem. It doesn’t matter how hard you look for work when you are one of 2,500,000 unemployed people and there are only 400,000 jobs available. If we want to help people into work we need to create jobs, not punish individuals for being out of work during the worst recession for over 100 years.

What is to be done?

If you are sanctioned you should ask for a review and then appeal if the review is not successful. You should get advice – in Birmingham you can go to the CAB, the TUC centre for unemployed workers or contact the Birmingham Claimants Union. You can join Unite Community Union or SolFed. Unfortuantely with cuts in funding and legal aid, combined with a huge rise in the need for their support, many advice centres are struggling and Birmingham Law Centre has closed.

If you find your housing benefit stopped this is wrong, you need to file a nil income claim. A Birmingham charity, Sifa Fireside, says that “housing benefit is increasingly suspended if people are being sanctioned by Job Centre Plus”

As a community we can fight back against the regime running the DWP. Boycott Workfare are looking for people who have been sanctioned to tell their story and are taking action around the country against workfare and the work programme, where many sanctions originate from, and helping to build up a movement to return welfare to social security.

In Birmingham, there will be a picket of Marks and Spencers from 1pm, in protest at their use of workfare which accounts for 2% of their workforce. Benefit sanctions must be fought against.