THREAD. Self employment and Universal credit.The first £274->(35 hours at min wage) of a self employed persons wages is not counted. So when the DWP work out your entitlement to benefits, they ASSUME your earning 274 profit a week even if your NOT.
Self employed people will see their benefits dropped from say £500 a month to £0 a month. There's 3 million self employed in the UKabout a third will be affected by the minimum income floor, thats 1 million self employed businesses that will have to close when UC rolls out fully
So where do these 1 million people go? They’ll have to become unemployed and claim Universal Credit. There’s more jobseekers than jobs advertised in the UK.
People are self employed for various reasons, disability, working hours to fit around children, providing services to local communities etc etc. This will destroy local communities and ensure that even more people become unemployed
But if self employed workers are forced to hive up their employment, the DWP might judge them as leaving a job out of choice and sanction them before they receive a penny.
The length of sanction terms can last as long as 3 years. So what are self employed people going to do? We won’t be allowed to continue trading or working, we might be judged by the DWP for giving up employment and we will be left without a penny.
This will cause no end of suffering and deaths. I’ve been speaking out about this for years now but so far few are concerned. I’m furious tbh this could potentially destroy communities.
Many self employed people already life on an extremely low income, they can’t afford to take a hit like this. They barely survive but do their work often to benefit others.
Yet few are interested in this, maybe because it doesn’t affect them.
And now we have CAB aiding and abetting the DWP instead of protesting about UC they will also be ensuring that people will have to live under this dystopian system.
