Boland, Tom

Dukelow, Fiona

Whelan, Joe

Cork Open Research Archive

UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available.Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks!Title 'Tossed to the wind'? The Pandemic Unemployment Payment and thereshaping of the Welfare StateAuthor(s) Dukelow, Fiona; Whelan, Joe; Boland, TomPublication date 2020-07-27Original citation Dukelow, F., Whelan, J. and Boland, T. (2020) ''Tossed to the wind'?The Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the reshaping of theWelfare State', Progressive Economy@TASC, 27 July. Available at:https://www.tasc.ie/blog/2020/07/27/tossed-to-the-wind/ (Accessed: 7October 2020)Type of publication Contribution to newspaper/magazineLink to publisher'sversionhttps://www.tasc.ie/blog/2020/07/27/tossed-to-the-wind/Access to the full text of the published version may require asubscription.Rights © 2020, TASC.Item downloadedfromhttp://hdl.handle.net/10468/10642Downloaded on 2021-11-27T11:18:00Z06/10/2020 Progressive Economy | Home Pagehttps://www.tasc.ie/blog/2020/07/27/tossed-to-the-wind/ 1/5'Tossed to the wind'?The Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the reshaping of theWelfare State27/07/2020-The report 'Tossed to the wind'? The Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the reshaping of the Welfare State and thisblog summary was written by Drs Fiona Dukelow, Joe Whelan and Tom Boland of University College Cork. ‘We weren't just tossed to the wind at all’‘A godsend’  These are two responses that sum up key messages on Covid-19 work and welfare supports from a digital surveywe carried out between late April and early June on experiences of being out of work because of the pandemicduring the early months of its impact in Ireland. The nationwide survey, which received 161 responses in total,focused on a relatively small number of long-form, open-ended questions to encourage respondents to re ect ontheir experiences of work disruption and their attitudes to how the government responded.The surveyThe survey conveyed the massive shock and uncertainty felt by people who suddenly faced unemploymentbecause of the pandemic or who otherwise had their work disrupted by being forced to work shorter hours orbeing put on furlough.I work in a Crèche and Montessori school and we found out on 12th March around 11.30am that we would have to closethat evening. I was upset about the short notice and about having no income. I was extremely worried and stressed abouthow I would pay my bills. (Female, Early Years Educator, 46-55)06/10/2020 Progressive Economy | Home Pagehttps://www.tasc.ie/blog/2020/07/27/tossed-to-the-wind/ 2/5I was only in the job 3 weeks when we were told we were all going on reduced hours. We were all told at the of ce midmorning. It felt like a massive blow. I had been scrimping and saving for a couple months and had big plans for my newsalary including saving for a deposit on a house. All that had been taken away in a matter of minutes. (Female, MarketingManager, 26-35)People like these fuelled the numbers in a rapidly expanding unemployment rate and the sudden reality of a newwelfare payment, the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP), upon which unprecedented numbers of peoplerelied. The extent of the crisis was further evident in the numbers of people accessing the Temporary WageSubsidy Scheme (TWSS) which effectively generated a new way or ‘category’ of being out of work, or on furlough,in the Irish context. While the numbers unemployed rose almost overnight, the return to work and the reductionin the unemployment rate are already proving likely to be much more drawn out affairs, with this shock to thelabour market likely to produce a high rate of unemployment on a prolonged basis.   A Re-balancing of States and MarketsWhile people expressed massive shock as to what was happening to them, at a macro scale, their experiencesgenerated the reinvigoration of the role of the state, speci cally the welfare state, as a social and economic shockabsorber. So, in Ireland, as elsewhere, we have witnessed the re-assertion of the importance of the state as anactor, with unparalleled capacity to provide social and economic stability.  In times of crisis the state again came tothe rescue, but unlike the 2008  nancial crisis, when the state rushed to rescue the  nancial sector, this timeordinary people are being protected from the economic fall-out of the pandemic. This raises the question of whether this might be the pathway to a longer term, sustainable shift and a re-balancing of states and markets, and with it a re-set of the negative aspects of the experience of unemploymentand the work-welfare nexus. This would mean that the pandemic response would move from a state of exceptionto a more permanent re-set.  This stems, in turn, from recognising that the pandemic exposed many deeperinequalities; imbalances between economy, society and the environment; and related states of anxiety andinsecurity that people live with. Something which was also recognised by participants in the survey:I think this is the 'breathing room' we all needed as I feel the proverbial wheels were about to come off for most people inbusiness and in Ireland as a country. Things were moving too fast and becoming very stressful, for our nervous systems ashuman beings to catch up. It was overwhelming.(Female, Self-Employed Physical Therapist, 36-45)Although the severity of the 2008  nancial crisis meant Ireland never even contemplated a Keynesian response,we’ve been here before in wider European terms.  During the  nancial crisis, Europe’s emergency reconversion toKeynesianism was just that, an emergency response that lasted all but two years, between 2008 and 2010 beforeausterity narratives and economic orthodoxies took over.  Already as tensions about public debt, work incentives and ‘stories’ of welfare fraud creep into Irish discourse,there is a danger that we quickly forget the vital importance of the role of the welfare state and the importance ofsocial protection, as attested by the experiences reported in this survey. Rather than seeing the pandemic and thestate response as a ‘state of exception’ it can equally be considered a an episode of ‘potent possibility’: that a moreactive, protective state is possible, whether it’s addressing unemployment, economic precarity, homelessness,hospital waiting lists, CO emissions or any of our contemporary states of diswelfare that leave people ‘tossed tothe wind’.   The PUP or TWSS was ‘a godsend’Re ecting more speci cally on the many variations of the expression that the PUP or TWSS was ‘a godsend’ byparticipants in the survey, the policy response to unemployment also marks the return of unemployment asunemployment. While the PUP by its name is intended as limited to the pandemic, the positive experience of the2 06/10/2020 Progressive Economy | Home Pagehttps://www.tasc.ie/blog/2020/07/27/tossed-to-the-wind/ 3/5payment by the survey participants, and the contradictions between the nature of this payment and that ofunemployment payments ordinarily available to ‘jobseekers’ also raise questions.  These include questions abouthow we treat unemployment, how the social welfare system is designed and how it could be re-designed.In essence, the PUP created forms of decommodi cation and experiences of social citizenship increasingly absentfrom the Irish social welfare system, and elsewhere, particularly over the last ten to  fteen years. By 2006,jobseeking replaced unemployment in the lexicon of social protection; by 2010 conditions attached to job-seeking payments were being ramped up and level of payments cut, with lone parents and younger unemployedpeople particularly harshly treated. The PUP operates on a completely different plane to the conventionaltreatment of ‘jobseekers’ in terms of access, conditions and levels of payment. The security it offered and its lackof stigma was very evident in the survey responses:Government were right to issue the 350 payment - warts and all to allow people to keep going. (Male, CommunityDevelopment Worker, 56-65)I have been impressed at how the government handled this so quickly and in the early days offered a subsidiary paymentto anyone who lost their job, even the self employed. I would not have  nancially gotten through this without it. (Female, Of ce Manager, 36-45)I think the supports for employees were great, at least people are not suffering  nancially too much (unlike the  nancialcrash) (Female, Childcare Manager, 56-65)I particularly was grateful that they quickly put in place a  nancial emergency payment to help support me and my familywhen I lost my income. (Female, Self Employed, Slimming World Consultant, 46-55)While some respondents to the survey felt that the level of the PUP payment was relatively generous, at least forsome recipients; for low paid respondents it simply replaced their already low pay:The €350 payment was almost doubled the normal unemployment rate and on its own, that shows that people like me inlow pay are basically living hand to mouth with a lower standard of living (Male, Taxi Driver, 55-56) Short-lived - its decommodifying potential and securityIn response to both  scal pressures to reduce state spending on welfare, and the agenda of returning to ‘fullemployment’, plans have been outlined to reduce and taper off the PUP payment. As such, its decommodifyingpotential and the security it offered will be short-lived. Collapsing what is now a tiered system to its lowestjobseeking level of €203 weekly essentially exposes more people to the risk of poverty re ecting that fact thatthe conventional job-seeking payment rate is below the at risk of poverty line.  That is something people whowere unemployed before the pandemic are routinely exposed to. Additionally, the proposed ending of the PUP in April 2021 whereupon claimants must apply for jobseekersallowance/bene t implies a return to conditional welfare payments – dependent on compliance withbureaucratic demands, monitored jobseeking and accepting any employment offered on threat of sanction.Jointly, this exposure to risks of poverty and the uncertainty of conditionality undermines the clear success of thePUP. Rather than continuing with this clearly successful social security net, the state plans to retreat – ‘throwingpeople to the wind’ as it were. The early pandemic response at least stretched the limits of what is politically possible and engendered a positivemode of solidarity. If we are to take seriously the poverty and the insecurity of unemployment of allwho areunemployed why not consider ways and means of levelling unemployment supports up rather than down? Posted in: Economics (/blog/categories/economics/) • Welfare (/blog/categories/welfare/)06/10/2020 Progressive Economy | Home Pagehttps://www.tasc.ie/blog/2020/07/27/tossed-to-the-wind/ 5/5  Facebook(https://www.facebook.com/TASCthinktank/)  Vimeo(https://www.vimeo.com/tascblog) SoundCloud(https://www.soundcloud.com/tasc-8)Copyright © 2020 TASC06/10/2020 Progressive Economy | Home Pagehttps://www.tasc.ie/blog/2020/07/27/tossed-to-the-wind/ 4/5 Comments0 Comments Progressive Economy 🔒 Disqus' Privacy Policy Login1t Tweet f Share Sort by BestLOG IN WITH OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS NameStart the discussion…?Be the first to comment.Subscribe✉ Add Disqus to your siteAdd DisqusAddd Do Not Sell My Data⚠ RecommendTagged with: covid19 (/blog/tags/covid19/) • employment (/blog/tags/employment/) • recovery(/blog/tags/recovery/) • social welfare (/blog/tags/socialwelfare/)Share:Related PostsBook review and summary: "Deaths of despair: the future of capitalism" (/blog/2020/08/12/book-review-and-summary-deaths-of-despair-the-futu/)New Department of Finance Economics and Banking Divisions (/blog/2012/05/11/nat-oconnor-department-of- nance-has/)The Economics Anti-Textbook....at last some fresh thinking on economics (/blog/2010/07/24/economics-anti-textbookat-last-some/)  RSS(https://www.tasc.ie/xml/rss-blog.xml)  Twitter(https://twitter.com/TASCblog)  LinkeIn(https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/11023337/)

'Tossed to the wind'? The Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the reshaping of the Welfare State

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'Tossed to the wind'? The Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the reshaping of the Welfare State

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