AS WE enter the deepest recession in living memory, many more workers will be thrown on the dole, especially when the furlough scheme ends. Spare a thought for those essential workers, who, throughout the national lockdown, have held up the welfare safety net for the nation to make sure the massive upturn in benefits applications were processed.

Most civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions were not given a homeworking opportunity these past six months. Because of a lack of investment in IT that could facilitate homeworking, most struggled to balance work/home life, caring, home-schooling and all the other “new normal” pressures of lockdown living, while still having to use public transport to commute to their workplaces and rapidly adapt to new health and safety workplace measures.

And all so that they could process the huge surge in benefit claims as businesses collapsed because the economy too became locked down.

Now, the workplace safety of these essential workers could be compromised if plans by DWP management are allowed to advance. Without consulting unions or evidencing a business case, the DWP seeks to extend services and opening hours into the evening and weekend.

In response to this intransigence, from August 17 until September 7, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) is consulting workers in jobcentres and universal credit (UC) workplaces on the threat to safety contained in these plans. Our first large national consultative ballot of the pandemic covers 24,000 essential workers.

We are not balloting because we oppose extended services per se, but because there has been no consultation or evidence that staff safety should be compromised during the coronavirus pandemic.

Remembering the applause for key workers and valuing the labour that really matters to society is at last recognised, if not yet rewarded through better pay, terms and conditions. Many of those heroes in care work, hospitality, distribution and retail are in precarious employment, or are so low paid they and their families have been dependent on UC for years.

Government workers, like those in the DWP, are the unsung heroes of the national emergency, as they keep the country running. Like health workers, carers and shop staff, the very fabric of our society would break down if they didn’t or couldn’t do their jobs.

Yet civil servants in the DWP are often last recognised as doing positive work but first to be blamed for draconian government welfare policies such as sanctions. Our union has longstanding policy to end conditionality and for a welfare alternative that invests in people and communities. But still, too often, jobcentre and UC staff are in the front line for misdirected abuse. It is Tory ministers and their ideological approach to welfare scapegoating that should be the real target, not public-sector workers.

During lockdown, most other government departments managed key services with 80 per cent of civil servants working from home while the majority of DWP staff are required to attend their workplaces and have done so throughout. Jobcentres and UC centres never closed. Only 40 per cent, even now, have been given equipment to work from home. So by reporting into their workplaces, these essential workers have had to place themselves more at risk throughout the crisis.

Compromising safety to staff by extending opening hours of offices during a pandemic without consultation or evidence of the benefit is unacceptable. More so, a slap in the face to essential workers processing benefit payments to stop multitudes of the populace falling into unexpected financial hardship.

These plans appear to be entirely unnecessary. With growing numbers unemployed or underemployed, is it really likely that a claimant will wait until mid-evening to contact the DWP? Or on a Saturday?

As we approach the end of the furlough period, into deep recession, dependency on UC and other benefits is set to become another “new normal” in the world that emerges.

Back in April, the Financial Times was reporting that UC claims were running at three times their normal rate. Job losses soared, as the unemployment rate rocketed. More than 1.4 million claims were made in the first four weeks of lockdown. Staff found themselves processing more claims in a week than would normally be handled in a month. They should be applauded for that alone.

When jobcentres reopened to the public at the beginning of July, so did benefits sanctions for jobseekers. This draconian regressive practice had been suspended during lockdown. With unemployment rising despite job retention measures, it is grossly unfair to both jobseekers and to job coaches to reinstate the detested “claimant commitment.”

In Scotland alone we have 440,000 people already dependent on UC, more than double the figure from last year. Scottish unemployment is up 30,000. This is going to worsen. There are few jobs out there. The jobs “market” has simply disappeared.

This is impacting on all families and communities. I know young hospitality workers in Edinburgh, experienced engineers in central Scotland and professional senior managers in Glasgow, all first time claimants, now dependent on UC, as their jobs and careers dissolve before their eyes. Not one of them indicates that they require jobcentres and UC staff to be available to them on a Saturday or up to 8pm in the evening.

Surviving on benefits is no Wham Rap either. Back in April, the monthly UC allowance for a single person over the age of 25 was just £317 a month. Surviving for a month on less than the daily attendance allowance in the House of Lords is obscene.

Ironically then, after years of job cuts and office closures, the DWP now finds itself hiring staff to meet the demand. In recent months, staff had to be temporarily redeployed from other work streams to prioritise payments. But now tens of thousands of new recruits with be joining the Civil Service ranks to work on UC and to double the number of job coaches. And correspondingly, our union membership in the department is on the rise.

Before every out-of-work Morning Star reader flocks to become a fat cat civil servant, remember the DWP itself is a low-paying employer. Our union research uncovered some years back that many staff working on UC are themselves entitled to claim. So it is little wonder they know how deal with an anxious public, whose lives have been wrecked by poverty and low pay in the pandemic. It is their own living reality.

The PCS ballot is in opposition to department plans from November, evenings and weekends opening during the pandemic. DWP management made these plans without either consultation with unions, consideration for additional health and safety risks for the workforce nor evidence that the public seeking to claim benefit require to do so up to 8pm on weekdays or on the weekend.

There is simply no need to extend services — staff in jobcentres have done and are still doing a fantastic job. The DWP has shown no business need to extend opening hours.

During the pandemic new claims, with focus on getting benefits into payment have by been completed very effectively by telephone with offices opening only for the most vulnerable cases. Staff in UC have dealt successfully with 2.5 million extra cases. Why extend services and endanger staff and customers in the middle of a pandemic, when a good job is getting done?

If we have a resounding Yes vote in the consultative ballot, management might start to listen to their staff who are living the reality of “the new normal” more than most.

Lynn Henderson is acting senior national officer for the PCS Union.