People turning down 25k/year jobs - reality or FF spin?

thebaldsoprano

From this article:

Mr O'Keeffe said he had met representatives of small businesses in Galway on Wednesday who informed him that people were turning down jobs paying €25,000 a year because they would lose entitlements.

"I met 25 representatives of small business there, and there are real concerns that jobs being offered at €25,000 a year are not being taken up, and Eamon O'Cuiv and myself are sitting down and looking at how we can achieve this," he said.

Are our state benefits really that generous? I've a hard time buying this, since dole and 500 pm rent allowance for a single person works out at ~16k. Surely an extra 9k will provide enough of an incentive for a good number of suitably qualified people to apply for such a job.

Is this FF spin, or am I missing something?

Colonel Sanders

I know of people who have turned down jobs not because of losing entitlements but because they were offered much less than they were earning during the so called boom (and feel they're entitled to expect the same wage now & are almost insulted when someone expects them to work for less). I think welfare in Ireland is far too generous but this could be another FF attempt to foster another "Them Vs Us" attitude in public opinion (similar to how they've tried to turn the private sector against the public sector) before making decisions on cutting welfare.

changes

thebaldsoprano wrote: »

From this article:

Are our state benefits really that generous? I've a hard time buying this, since dole and 500 pm rent allowance for a single person works out at ~16k. Surely an extra 9k will provide enough of an incentive for a good number of suitably qualified people to apply for such a job.

Is this FF spin, or am I missing something?

If the job is somewhere they need a car to get to it then that 9K will be reduced considerably, also they would prob lose the medical card etc.

I'm working for 27K and i pay a mortgage and run a car out of that. I do question sometimes why i bother. I don't have a medical card either.

RedXIV

I'm on that and i'm renting and running a car out of it with two kids in the house.

I'm just hoping for a raise

moomooman

I might turn a 25k job down (which is a sizable amount more than I'm earning) if it meant having to commute again. Travel would add another 3 hours to my work day.

rossc007

I do know a person who turned down a 28k job because they "wouldnt be much better off".... Shameful attitude if you ask me

AnnyHallsal

It seems like deflection to me. The problem isn't that we have 450,000 people on the dole who won't work for 25,000. If you offered every one of them a job at that salary (or less) the unemployment rate would plummet. Even the WPPs are snapped up immediately.

The_Honeybadger

for a young single person 25k would be fine, it would be worth taking the job. For a family man with a couple of kids, if they were to lose RS and medical card and possibly pay for childcare, it would not. Although I think they may be entitled to family income supplement depending on their situation. I find it very hard to believe that a large number of 25k per year jobs are being turned down, where do they think they will do better at the moment, this is spin to justify a cut in the dole and entitlements, which are certainly too high when you consider the revenue we have available to pat for it, and the revenue we are likely to have in future.

SkepticOne

Batt: "I'm also looking at the 64,000 people on a three day week and how we can entice them to go back to work a five day week,..."

This quote shows how deeply out of touch these politicians are.

changes

SkepticOne wrote: »

Batt: "I'm also looking at the 64,000 people on a three day week and how we can entice them to go back to work a five day week,...

Thats a very interesting stat, Family Income Supplement is paid out to families learning less than 500 or so a week.

So if we had a father working in a factory 5 days per week for €400, he/family would get 100 from FIS, what would stop him taking up an offer of a 3 day week for 240 when the FIS will make up the difference. Another soft option thanks to our generous Social Welfare system.

thebman

I used to work for 23,000 a year and commute to City Centre from outside.

I still saved ran a car on it and went out every weekend and was saving money. People need to learn to budget.

In saying that, I don't think anyone on the dole would turn down a job like that. They would most likely take it and look for something else immediately while taking the extra cash while working there.

It is far easier to get a job when you have a job.

Essexboy

There is a not a shred of evidence to support this claim.

gurramok

Essexboy wrote: »

There is a not a shred of evidence to support this claim.

Huh? Have you looked at our social welfare system?

The more kids you have the more money you get. Try encouraging a single parent with 3 kids to take up a job when they get 35k already.http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=66188084&postcount=337

If you don't have kids nor a welfare dependent partner, its worthwhile taking that 25k job.

max 73

SkepticOne wrote: »

Batt: "I'm also looking at the 64,000 people on a three day week and how we can entice them to go back to work a five day week,..."

seriously are you batty Batt????

i'm on a 3 day week, the industry i'm in - construction - with the company i work for has everyone on 3 days.....the work is just not there for a 5 day week, how are you going to entice my boss to put us back on 5 days????:eek:

with that clown ahern with his atm tax and now o'keeffe with this - what planet are these people on?????

thebaldsoprano

gurramok wrote: »

Try encouraging a single parent with 3 kids to take up a job when they get 35k already

Good point, and interesting to see the figures, but I'm still not buying it:

there are real concerns that jobs being offered at €25,000 a year are not being taken up

It's very easy to read into that there are 25k/year jobs on offer which no one is taking. I'd be very surprised if any such job doesn't generate considerable interest. It mightn't be in some people's interest to take the job, but it looks like FF are tarring all unemployed with the same brush - likely because they want to cut benefits.

If Mr O'Keefe elaborated and gave details of some of these supposed jobs that'd be fair enough, but failing that he could at least be upfront and say something like "we need to cut benefits because we don't have the money". This type of shenanigans is in no one's interest, except FF.

bbam

Working for the Dole... Why now, when there are so many folks genuinely unemployed.. Asking unemployed highly educated people out to clean the streets and cut hedges is an insult and a sure way to drive emmigration. This should have been done with the 2-3% who were on the dole during the boom... they were intentionally unemployed and the real spongers in our society.

People have to realise that there is a threshold where it is or isn't worth leaving unemployment assistance to take up a job... So somebody turned down a job at €25K, they probably thought that they could bargain a better salary after getting through the interview, lots of jobs are advertised as salary DOE... There are always more folks ready to take the job, its not like it went unfilled.. (I'm not on assistance so not protecting/defending my own position:))

thebaldsoprano

bbam wrote: »

So somebody turned down a job at €25K, they probably thought that they could bargain a better salary after getting through the interview, lots of jobs are advertised as salary DOE... There are always more folks ready to take the job, its not like it went unfilled..

Yeah, that's it. If someone does turn down the job, how much of an impact will this have on the business? If there is an impact then this obviously needs to be looked at fairly sharpish, but I'm guessing there's no impact whatsoever - there'll be no shortage of other, equally qualified candidates waiting to take the job.

SkepticOne

This is a classic piece of spin, imo.

There are two ways of interpreting what Bat O'Keefe is saying. 1. The literal factual way and 2. the intended effect.

The first is that among the half a million or thereabouts people unemployed there are some turning down 25k jobs. This, of course, is to be expected and no doubt some employer will have some anecdote about how he was turned down by someone on the dole when offering a job. Even if there were no dole, there would be a small number of unemployed people turning down jobs for various reasons.

The second (intended effect) is that employers are having difficulty filling jobs at 25k and that this is a significant problem. A moments consideration is all that is required to see that the first in no way implies the second.

AnnyHallsal points out that even WPS schemes where you simply keep your dole are oversubscribed. Personally I know several people who have been put on short time by their employer who would jump at the chance of 5 days a week work. Some of them come in the remaining days unpaid even though this means they are ineligible to sign on.

This in no way means the dole doesn't need to be cut. The country is more or less broke yet still uncompetitive. It is the spin and manipulation by those that presided over the current mess that I find objectionable.

bbam

SkepticOne wrote: »

This in no way means the dole doesn't need to be cut. The country is more or less broke yet still uncompetitive.

Cutting social welfare for those just out of work is weak government and is the hitting of easy targets to be seen to be doing something..

What we need is regulation and verification of who is getting what.. Get to the bottom of the fraud and the bill for social welfare will be reduced.

People making out that the recently unemployed are going to break or have broke the country is rubbish..

Driving down personal income of hard hit families before there is a substantial drop in the cost of living doesn't reflect a forward thinking society.

SkepticOne

bbam wrote: »

Cutting social welfare for those just out of work is weak government and is the hitting of easy targets to be seen to be doing something..

What we need is regulation and verification of who is getting what.. Get to the bottom of the fraud and the bill for social welfare will be reduced.

People making out that the recently unemployed are going to break or have broke the country is rubbish..

Driving down personal income of hard hit families before there is a substantial drop in the cost of living doesn't reflect a forward thinking society.

I would disagree with cutting dole in isolation. It needs to be done as part of lowering costs across the economy in both the private and public sectors at all levels. This way, if the dole is cut, prices of goods and services as well as taxes are also lowered.

We are not a rich country; we merely had the illusion of wealth due to a housing bubble. If we were a rich country then we could also be an expensive country but the illusion of wealth is not enough. The objective of the current government is to preserve as much of that illusion for as long as possible lest the people turn on them so that they can get out at the next election and let the opposition take the blame when the illusion vanishes.

Hence the "we've turned the corner" rhetoric and the remarks by Batt O'Keefe in the piece the implication of which is that unemployment is caused by people turning their noses up at jobs when for the most part that is not the case.

bbam

SkepticOne wrote: »

This way, if the dole is cut, prices of goods and services as well as taxes are also lowered.

If you cut the dole BEFORE there is a cut in the cost of living you are condemming countless families to poverty while they wait in hope that the price of goods and services come down...
That is the economics of many hungary children

alex73

rossc007 wrote: »

I do know a person who turned down a 28k job because they "wouldnt be much better off".... Shameful attitude if you ask me

Its true.. I know of many people who would think twice before taking a job because they would loose their benefits.

johnnyskeleton

Batt O'Keeffe wrote:

I'm also looking at the 64,000 people on a three day week and how we can entice them to go back to work a five day week, how we can make it profitable for them go back on a five day week and how we can interact with the employers to ensure that they offer that opportunity.

What a buffoon! The people on a 3 day week usually don't want to be on it but were put on a 3 day week by their employers as an alternative to redundancies. The work simply isn't there anymore, and/or it's no longer profitable to keep people working their full 5 day week. The employees don't need enticing and employers don't need a simple bit of "interaction" to allow them back on 5 day weeks - there are 64k people on 3 day weeks because there is not enough productive work available for them, but their employers are trying to keep them on.

johnnyskeleton

bbam wrote: »

If you cut the dole BEFORE there is a cut in the cost of living you are condemming countless families to poverty while they wait in hope that the price of goods and services come down...
That is the economics of many hungary children

1. Demand leads to high prices, but high prices don't lead to demand. The high level of the dole is a major cause of high prices rather than the dole being high due to high prices.

2. It's hardly poverty let's be fair. As already mentioned some families on social welfare can earn 35k plus additional benefits on sw. A cut of 5 or even 10k while it would no doubt impact their standard of living, would not condemn them to poverty as even on 25k you can still put food on the table. In the UK a family on benefits will get considerably less than in Ireland, even when you adjust for higher prices.

3. I fail to see why people with jobs should struggle to keep themselves out of poverty and fail just to keep people who don't work in the standard of living to which they have become accustomed.

4. If cuts have to be made anywhere, it is logical to cut those payments which produce the least benefit to the country. Social welfare has less benefit than a lot of public services and even less benefit still than infrastructure projects. But ironicially the people of Ireland will vote for cuts in the capital budget sooner than they will for cuts in social welfare. This is a road to ruin.

I don't want to give people on social welfare less. I'd give them all a million euro a 6 bed mansion and a lamborghini if I could. But the simple, undenyable fact is that we simply cannot afford to keep paying social welfare at present, when the cost of social welfare is heading towards exceeding the two biggest tax receipts - income tax and vat. It might help people to think about it like this: every penny you or I pay in income tax and vat goes to the social welfare.

Kalimah

A friend of mine ignored completely a text from me telling her of some temp work in my workplace. Nice atmosphere,good conditions etc and the job paid 10.50 ph.
Same woman's husband has been out of work for the last two years and she's down to selling family possessions and crying on the phone to me about no money.
As someone else said easier to get a job when you have a job.

thebaldsoprano

Looks like the spin machine is cranking up...

From this article:

THE Government has ordered a full investigation into claims that some Irish businesses have been unable to recruit staff on wages of €25,000.

Enterprise Minister Batt O'Keeffe said he was taken aback by the claims -- particularly with almost 450,000 people unemployed in Ireland.

He has ordered a full probe into the claims.

"Forfas is now doing an analysis of the whole area to see if there a foundation for this particular allegation that's being made," he said.

It's good to see taxpayers' money being so well spent, as usual.

Nijmegen

This is a typical example of government spin meeting reality.

On the one hand, these guys are really a bunch of plonkers and have no moral authority to run the country, particularly when they overblow situations like the below.

On the other hand, I do (as an employer and a businessman) know that looking to hire anyone on less than €25,000 off the dole can be difficult. In some cases. Not all.

The social welfare entitlements do mean that the gap between dole - rent allowance, dole itself, medical card, etc - and work, where you get hit for transport, for your lunch, etc - isn't so much really.

I think the easiest way to solve this is to provide people what they need whilst giving advantages to working - don't pay cash for everything. Pay out welfare in the form of "food stamps" - not just for food, but for use on paying bills, buying clothes, etc, with a certain "social stamps" bit thrown in.

Social welfare should allow people to live, not to live as they wish. I know of cases where people are sitting quite pretty on the dole. In many other cases, they are not. It would make a difference to those sitting pretty if we had a stamps based system.

The advantage? You get up to 25k in stamps you can spend in a controlled government manner. We can pull you up if you're spending it all on booze. But if you're working, you get 25k cash, enjoy.

I know there's a "But it's not fair!" argument, but at the end of the day, what is the point of welfare? To help people survive. Stamps do that.

liammur

Pathetic.
Why do the likes of 15,000 people then applying for a few hundred jobs in cinemas and shops etc.

Count Dooku

liammur wrote: »

Pathetic.
Why do the likes of 15,000 people then applying for a few hundred jobs in cinemas and shops etc.

Majority of them are not entitled for benefits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf31q4TC790

average_runner

As i saiod before we tried to get Graduates for IT company an they wanted nothing less than 40k!

Told them where to go!

I think when you interview someone,t hey should give you their PRSI number so history can be kept. If you offer one of these a job and its 25g a year and they refuse it, well cut all social welfare off them.

This country needs to wake up, welfare is only a short term solution, if your offer a job thats worst off, well you still take it and do your bit until something better comes along.

We taken a 25% cut over last 2 years but grateful to be able to contribute to the country

pocketvenus

To me this sounds like the usual Government spin. I do not belive that the majority of people made redundant over the past 2 years would turn down a job of €25,000. Ok there may be a small majority who would turn it down maybe due to increase in transport costs, childcare etc,

However having been unemployed myself for past 15 months I would be happy to take a job with a salary of €25,000. I have applied for for jobs with a salaries varying in amounts form €15,000 to €20,000 and I know it is a large pay cut form what I earned before I was made redundant but my view is it is better to be working build your PRSI back up and have a job.

The Gov knows it is up the creek without a padle, they won't tackle where the big cuts need to be made such as their own wages and the other high ranking public servants and instead what to blame the newly unemployed and use it as an excuse to cut JA & JB rates in Buget. How about tackiling welfare fraud etc but no the usual excuse is oh it takes too long or too much to bring that or set up a system for it. We are told the public service is over staffed in some areas so use these people to do this.

Count Dooku

pocketvenus wrote: »

How about tackiling welfare fraud etc but no the usual excuse is oh it takes too long or too much to bring that or set up a system for it. We are told the public service is over staffed in some areas so use these people to do this.

And then we will have another few thousands posts from "Silvio Dante" and other lazy CPSU clerks, who don't want to leave their easy jobs.
This is why PS unions were insisting on voluntary transfers and did everything to prevent compulsory redundancies.

lmimmfn

Dole + 500 per month rent allowance = approx 16700euro per year
25000 - tax = approx 20580 per year

Diff = approx 3880euro
( i use approx because tax can be claimed back on different things also welfare can be increased with differnt allowances )

so for getting up out of bed in the morning and incurring the extra expense of getting to work and buying lunch etc you get an extra 74euro per week. Hardly an incentive

RichardAnd

lmimmfn wrote: »

Dole + 500 per month rent allowance = approx 16700euro per year
25000 - tax = approx 20580 per year

Diff = approx 3880euro
( i use approx because tax can be claimed back on different things also welfare can be increased with differnt allowances )

so for getting up out of bed in the morning and incurring the extra expense of getting to work and buying lunch etc you get an extra 74euro per week. Hardly an incentive

I can't speak for everyone but if I earn just over 25k before tax. The thought of leaving to go on the dole has not even entered my wildest dreams.

Having a job, for me, is about more than just my wages each week. It gives me some comfort that someone values me enough to give me money for my services. The dole does not do this and the lack of this feeling of value is extremely depressing. I know from personal experience because I was unemployed for nearly 6 months which was the most harrowing time of my life and finally getting work meant no more boredom, no more dealing with HR idiots, no more b****** from chancer employers etc etc.

So if it's a choice between what I have now and that, I will stay where I am for as long as I can.

yrwhu8jxtni06a

bbam wrote: »

Asking unemployed highly educated people out to clean the streets and cut hedges is an insult

Same sort out of desperation are applying to work in shop or flip burgers,i think alot have being forced to eat humble pie due to their financial situation.

recedite

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

1. Demand leads to high prices, but high prices don't lead to demand. The high level of the dole is a major cause of high prices rather than the dole being high due to high prices..

!!! Surely you don't believe people on the dole drive inflation?

I don't want to give people on social welfare less. I'd give them all a million euro a 6 bed mansion and a lamborghini if I could.

Somehow I doubt that

djpbarry

RichardAnd wrote: »

Having a job, for me, is about more than just my wages each week. It gives me some comfort that someone values me enough to give me money for my services.

Not just that, but x months in employment (any employment) looks far better to a prospective employer than x months unemployed. It's also much easier to get a job from a job.

padma

I'd bite the hand off anyone who offered me 25,000 a year for a job.

RichardAnd

djpbarry wrote: »

Not just that, but x months in employment (any employment) looks far better to a prospective employer than x months unemployed. It's also much easier to get a job from a job.

That's so true. What really helped me to land a job was that my uncle managed to pull a few strings and get me some part time work for a place he used to work in. It's wasn't much and it had nothing to do with what I studied in college but I think it made alot of difference.

AnnyHallsal

RichardAnd wrote: »

I can't speak for everyone but if I earn just over 25k before tax. The thought of leaving to go on the dole has not even entered my wildest dreams.

Having a job, for me, is about more than just my wages each week. It gives me some comfort that someone values me enough to give me money for my services. The dole does not do this and the lack of this feeling of value is extremely depressing. I know from personal experience because I was unemployed for nearly 6 months which was the most harrowing time of my life and finally getting work meant no more boredom, no more dealing with HR idiots, no more b****** from chancer employers etc etc.

So if it's a choice between what I have now and that, I will stay where I am for as long as I can.

There's also the feeling of failure, some people judging you to be a failure, not to mention being subject to the kind of suspicion expressed elsewhere in this post. For people who have been successful all their lives I wouldn't underestimate the blow of losing your job and failing to land successive jobs.

Gone West

bbam wrote: »

Asking unemployed highly educated people out to clean the streets and cut hedges is an insult and a sure way to drive emmigration. This should have been done with the 2-3% who were on the dole during the boom... they were intentionally unemployed and the real spongers in our society.

2-3%??? Your numbers are way off.
from 170k during the boom to 450k now. Thats more like 35% Who were unemployed during the boom.

Secondly, highly educated, unemployed people, who were sacked. They were sacked because of various reasons. But no point claiming that the smartest guys are on the dole. They are not. the best workers, the guys who provide value, generate money, and are profitable for their employers are still in work.

Its much worse to be unemployed, doing nothing with your architect´s qualifications, just sponging. No more shopping centres to design. Get out there and cut the hedges or clean the streets. Why not, they are not useful to the state right now. Dead weight, emigrate and do the state a favour. Or work for your dole like the good little unemployable people that they are.

daveyboy_1ie

Mate of mine just lost his 25K a year job after the 6 month probation as his employers felt the position was no longer viable. He had previosly been on the dole for the previous year before that as his entire work experience was in the building trade.

On the one hand he is sick, he loved earning again and would easily have stayed there, but on the other hand he feels its not quite that bad as after he pays a creche and extra expense commuting he is probably only €10 a day worse off in his estimates. He is still looking for a job now and will take another if it came along but say he was not so commited to working, would the tenner a day motivate EVERYONE to work?

The_Honeybadger

Fuzzy wrote: »

2-3%??? Your numbers are way off.
from 170k during the boom to 450k now. Thats more like 35% Who were unemployed during the boom.

Secondly, highly educated, unemployed people, who were sacked. They were sacked because of various reasons. But no point claiming that the smartest guys are on the dole. They are not. the best workers, the guys who provide value, generate money, and are profitable for their employers are still in work.

Its much worse to be unemployed, doing nothing with your architect´s qualifications, just sponging. No more shopping centres to design. Get out there and cut the hedges or clean the streets. Why not, they are not useful to the state right now. Dead weight, emigrate and do the state a favour. Or work for your dole like the good little unemployable people that they are.

Some perfectly good and productive people lost their jobs in the past two years as their companies went out of business for various reasons so I don't know how you can say these people are unemployable, do you know each and every one of them? Keyboard warrior, bet you wouldn't have the balls to say this in public but it's easy to look down on people from behind a computer keyboard isn't it, pathetic! Emigrate and do the state a favour indeed.

theg81der

This is absolute rubbish! Their obviously trying to reduce the dole. My husband has a 1.1 level 8 degree and can`t get a job in McDonalds, Aldi, Lidl etc he`s applied EVERYWHERE. These jobs are for €16000-20000.

And also the assumption that everyone gets rent allowance and a medical card is rubbish. There was 77,000 people in receipt of rent allowance in 2009, it doesn`t give a break down but a fair few of those would be long term illness not UA/UB aswell.

- http://http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Press/PressReleases/2009/Pages/pr170209.aspx

Of the medical card holders 338,000 are under 70 and there is no further breakdown on the number who are long term illness and who is UA/UB, I will post if I find the breakdown.

http://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2010-07-07.1700.0

Count Dooku

lmimmfn wrote: »

Dole + 500 per month rent allowance = approx 16700euro per year
25000 - tax = approx 20580 per year

Diff = approx 3880euro

and it will be less when PS unions will enforce taxation of low paid workers

inforfun

mickeyk wrote: »

Some perfectly good and productive people lost their jobs in the past two years as their companies went out of business for various reasons so I don't know how you can say these people are unemployable, do you know each and every one of them? Keyboard warrior, bet you wouldn't have the balls to say this in public but it's easy to look down on people from behind a computer keyboard isn't it, pathetic! Emigrate and do the state a favour indeed.

True enough that if a company closed their doors for the final time, skilled highly motivated workers ended up on the dole.
But dont be mistaken, there are quite a few companies who took this recession as an opportunity to get rid of some dead wood/waste of space.

Nijmegen

inforfun, I can assure you that no company needs dead wood to the tune of an extra 350,000 people on the dole queue.

The assertion that people on the dole are the idiots and spongers is a stupid notion, frankly, and I say that as a businessman and an employer.

munstergirl

I would say its total spin. Why didn't they give the name of the company who are recruiting?

Not everyone on the dole gets €196 per week, not everyone gets rent allowance.

Boots recruited in limerick recently got over 1,000 applicants for 18k.

inforfun

Nijmegen wrote: »

inforfun, I can assure you that no company needs dead wood to the tune of an extra 350,000 people on the dole queue.

The assertion that people on the dole are the idiots and spongers is a stupid notion, frankly, and I say that as a businessman and an employer.

As I tried to make clear in my post it is neither one or the other.
Not all of the people are highly motivated just as not all of them are spongers.

Nijmegen

inforfun wrote: »

As I tried to make clear in my post it is neither one or the other.
Not all of the people are highly motivated just as not all of them are spongers.

But that's the natural way of the workforce. You need a mix of people who are go-getters and those happy to collect a wage. You can't have all of one and none of the other.

The additional 350,000 people on the dole are not there by choice, and I doubt more than a small percentage are truly "wasters" that companies were looking for an opportunity to get rid of.

The_Honeybadger

inforfun wrote: »

As I tried to make clear in my post it is neither one or the other.
Not all of the people are highly motivated just as not all of them are spongers.

Yes I would agree here, it probably suits some people just fine to be on the dole, however there are plenty others who would be a terrific asset to any employer and would give anything to be back in work, generalizing all unemployed as lazy unemployable spongers as the poster I was responding to did is very unfair, and easy to do when you are yourself unaffected.