How do we fight universal credit?

Benefit cuts and Universal Credit are a massive assault on the safety and well-being of women and feminised people. We comprise the majority of those whose caring responsibilities (childcare, elder care etc) prevent us earning an income through the waged labour market, or who are reliant on “top-up” benefits due to combining part-time waged work with unwaged care work, and/or being funnelled into and trapped in low-quality, low-waged jobs. The statistics also clearly demonstrate the intersecting and mutually amplifying impacts on people of colour, disabled people and those caring for a disabled child.

Single parents moving to Universal Credit are one of the most rapidly-growing groups to be sanctioned – mainly for leaving or failing to take up a job due to childcare issues. A second group disproportionately affected by sanctions is disabled people who struggle to access the system, who are waiting for a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) or have wrongly been found “fit for work” and given worksearch conditions which they realistically cannot meet.

Very critically, at this stage, the long waiting time for a first payment when making a new claim for Universal Credit can trap women in abusive relationships, placing their lives and the lives of their children at risk. The risk of violence and coercive control is higher due to the system of separate conditions within joint claims, which allows partners to see each others’ worksearch records and offers no safe way for a someone in a physically or financially abusive relationship to safely disclose their situation and ask for help.

Fleeing an abusive relationship is a number-one trigger for homelessness, and this can only increase when benefits are so hard to claim, take so long to arrive (despite the possibility of an “advance” which only serves to leave the family in long-term debt), and are often so inadequate. The possibility of being trapped in financial dependency – especially when there are children to worry about – is much increased.

Although “transitional protection” means that claimants being moved to Universal Credit under “managed migration will initially not see a drop in benefit income, those claiming UC because of a change in circumstances (eg leaving a partner) will often get significantly less under the new system than they would have under the old. And for those who are caring for children and are not able to work for at least 16 hours per week, the Benefit Cap will mean they have a shorfall in their income which will prevent them securing housing because they will not be able to pay rent (or must pay it with money meant for food and other basics)

What do we do about this? For the short term, Women’s Strike Assembly and Women’s Lives Matter have put forward demands for everyone affected by the move to Universal Credit to be compensated by the council, and no-one left at risk through financial dependency. Obviously we need more resources put into refuges and other services for abuse survivors, and mass investment in council housing is needed to ensure that no-one is at the mercy of rapacious landlords. The Labour Party has promised to overhaul the benefits system, but there are few really radical ideas on the table, and in any case we need immediate action to save lives.

In the longer-term, we think that we need a “welfare” system which is radically redistributive, that gives everyone an adequate independent income, and which proactively seeks to reverse the inequalities which stem from the idea that only those able to support themselves through the job market should have a decent income. Caring work including childcare (both in the home and in collective or professional settings) needs to be properly recompensed, and the costs of living with disability need to be fully collectivised to promote genuine equality, not just a bare “safety net”.

In addition, the system needs to promote high-quality and socially beneficial employment, not the kind of hyper-exploitative and often pointless work pushed on claimants by the benefit system, which enables the government to point to low unemployment figures whilst millions continue to struggle in poverty and insecurity.

To do that we will need to build a mass movement, and we need to strategise around this seriously. Are claimants and tenants unions the answer? How do we get mainstream unions to push seriously for a decent benefit system? Do we need rent strikes, other forms of mass civil disobedience? How do we build practical support structures for ourselves whilst fighting for the radical system change that we need? What is the role of electoral politics (local and national) and lobbying? Please come alonmg and bring your anger and your ideas!