Welfare to work requirements fail to reduce inequality and are inhumane - they force people to take jobs that are low-paying and demoralizing.

Against this background, Seikel and Spannagel examined the links between activation policies and in-work poverty. 39 They explained that research on activation often ignores employment conditions, such as whether the new job is full-time or part-time work, and the levels of remuneration. On the basis of empirical evidence from 18 European countries, they stressed that an increase in employment does not necessarily mean less poverty: ‘simply making the jobless work is no guarantee for a reduction of in-work poverty’.40 Activation policies, as they explained, force individuals to take up any job irrespective of how much it is paid, while cuts to benefits reduce the total income of the household. They argued that ‘activation can be seen as a driver of in-work poverty’ and found that ‘strict conditionality of welfare benefits and a high degree of commodification of labour seems to force unemployed persons to accept jobs regardless of the pay levels’.41 They also highlighted that the stricter a welfare conditionality system is, the more likely it is that participants will become part of the working poor. Activation policies that focus on upskilling can have a positive effect on household income, while strict conditionality systems force people to accept jobs irrespective of pay, which means that some schemes often turn the unemployed poor into working poor.42 The UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, produced a Report following a visit to the UK in 2018, which focused on the problems of Universal Credit and in-work poverty. 43 He said that ‘the philosophy underpinning the British welfare system has changed radically since 2010’, 44 extensively discussed welfare conditionality and its punitive effects on the worst off, and also referred to in-work poverty. He emphasised that in the UK there are 14 million people in poverty, that 60% of those who are in poverty are in families where someone works, and 2.8 million people in poverty are in families where all adults work full time.45 He also explained that even if both parents in a family work full time and earn the national minimum wage, they are still 11 per cent short of the income that is needed in order to raise one child.46 A Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report of 2018 found that there were four million workers in poverty, a rise of half a million in comparison to five years before.47 Since 2004-2005, the number of those in in-work poverty has been rising faster than the total number of people in employment.48 Alston emphasised that the denial of benefits has pushed certain categories of claimants into unsuitable work,49 and explained that people want to work, and take work that is badly paid and precarious in order to meet their basic needs.50 Having spoken with Universal Credit claimants, he said that not only did they have to ‘fill out pointless job applications for positions that did not match their qualifications’, but also that they had to ‘take inappropriate temporary work just to avoid debilitating sanctions’.51 To further corroborate the claim of Seikel and Spannagel, empirical research conducted in the UK on the effects of Universal Credit suggests that claimants are routinely forced to apply for and accept jobs that are precarious. It is crucial to underline here that claimants are expected to accept zero hour contracts, because these are viewed as valuable flexible arrangements.52 For those who accessed the Jobcentre, the experience of applying for many unsuitable and inappropriate jobs is reported to be ‘soul destroying’, in the words of a foodbank volunteer. 53 The duty to accept exploitative work accentuates the problem. Someone interviewed said: