Jobcentre calls in the cops! This time it's not on account of a KUWG leafleting session

Sanctions & staff sickness create tinder boxes of jobcentres

By Dude Swheatie of the KUWG

Often in the experience of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, when we stand outside a jobcentre with bullhorn megaphone, the police are called in by the lawless place where people are degraded and treated like dirt with no inherent human rights. Of course, the bullhorn helps alert all around to the silent screams for help from jobcentre 'customers' who — unlike jobcentre management — greet us with smiles and thumbs up and really want to talk to us.

And the police, when they arrive, realise that we are not the problem and go on their way, agreeing with us that the jobcentre management are really wasting police time.

Yesterday, however, the KUWG were not leafleting outside Kilburn Jcp and the police were called in and stayed a while as the tinder-box effect was heightened by staff illness and understaffing added to the tensions caused by the staff remaining being left to implement nasty policies that degrade not only the 'service users' but also those hired to implement those policies.

You can read more about the specifics of why the police were called into Kilburn Jcp yesterday on Kate Belgrave's blog. Perhaps the presence of the KUWG outside a 'sanctions centre' with placards, leaflets and bullhorn as well as understanding ears serves as more of a safety valve than an agitant when pressures mount?