Another entry by Daft Old Duffer. Ed
Here we go again. Another new government, another set of headlines threatening the unemployed.
Can anyone remember an election when those same old headlines didn’t appear?
Great of course, if it works out this time. I don’t suppose there are many of us who would argue against having to earn our keep. Or of breaking the long-term unemployed away from their comfort zone.
Tried it myself
I myself, entered into that comfort zone back in 1982 as a direct result of Maggie’s determination to ruin British industry.
Only for a few weeks fortunately, yet time enough for me to merge from anger and despair into holiday mode, adjusted to living within my benefit allowances, freed from having to get out of bed on those freezing winter mornings or worry that my job was going to be terminated without warning. And in the end feeling quite resentful when someone suggested a job I might try for.
“There are no jobs – everyone knows that. So why are these Employment Exchange children harassing me and asking me what I’m doing to find one?” was my attitude.
A universal excuse of course.
Lucky escape for me
Luckily I escaped the pit – purely by chance.
But I can’t help wondering what my mental attitude to work would be if I had been unemployed for several years rather than several weeks.
When I reached the age of 65 I was made to retire – very much against my will. I scrabbled around and found a further year’s work substituting for someone off sick. It was a menial job, but that didn’t bother me. Indeed I felt lucky to have landed it.
But I was terrified one of my old acquaintances might find out what I was doing. Someone who knew me as a suit, manager of a large department, a boss.
Sheer snobbery of course. What I was doing was honest and necessary. A task undertaken by many others and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. But there it was – I was mortally afraid of being humiliated and I was quite relieved when my stand-in job came to an end and I was forced to leave.
The crux of the problem
Thus I think I experienced two of the reasons long-term employed people tend to stay unemployed. Apart from the lack of jobs of course.
The first being that they become resigned to their fate and soon enough comfortable with it. And the second is pride. Offer an ex carpenter, painter, bricklayer, shop manager, department head, a position cutting grass or painting council walls and he will wish himself back in the warm privacy of his rent and tax paid home.
Where he cannot be seen as the failure he secretly considers himself to be.
Image: me’nthedogs under CC BY 2.0
