Just wanted to share. I live in Scotland. During the last two years I have been a “key worker” within a social care setting in a caring roll. I like my job and though it can be challenging at times it makes me feel good about helping others. In Scotland our leader (First minister) pledged a £500 bonus to all frontline NHS and social care workers who had been put in danger by continuing to support the most vulnerable and sick members of our society during the pandemic. On the surface this sounds great, until you find out that it would be taxed! So £500 becomes about £380… no big deal. Its still extra money I tell myself. However, I would not even be entitled to that according to the powers that be.
So my wife was an accounts assistant. Fresh from uni with her degree and ready to work. Unfortunately she got a job, working with a small Shop shutter company that fixed store fronts all around the country. The bossman for this company was a nasty twisted little s*** who I had to stop myself from doing in, as he would constantly have my wife in tears because she didn’t do things “his way”. In his head he had a successful business and therefore my wife’s training as an accountant played back seat to his “tried and tested” methods. In reality he was haemorrhaging money and chasing outdated debts while taking on more and more work. The actual accountant told my wife to do things the proper way and then the boss would come in and tell her to do it his way; my wife having no real work experience and worried about her job at this point submitted to him and did it his way. This was never good enough for him. This was almost daily. Getting blamed for the money not being paid and then not letting her do it any other way but his. It impacted her mental health (and even put her off the profession) and left her feeling like she was useless. After taking sometime to look after her mental health she discovered she was pregnant. Her first week back she builds up the courage to approach him and tell him she will have appointments to go to…
My wife pretty much told her boss, “I have something to tell you.”To which he responds, “I have something to tell you too. There are changes happening round here and you are one of them!” So that was it. They paid off a pregnant woman just as callously as that. So now we have a baby on the way and my wife has just lost her job, so that £500 (£380) bonus was going to be helpful due to our change in circumstances.
But I wouldn’t be here if thats how it had went. In the UK we have a thing called Universal Credit. It is a benefits system for the unemployed and other benefit needs such as housing etc. Because my wife/our family had to now claim benefits, it then meant that I would no longer have access to my bonus. How does that work? Thanks for asking.
So Universal Credit (UC) puts you into debt as soon as you claim in most cases. This is done in the form of giving you a loan to live off while they process your claim. So when its finally processed they begin to deduct money from you to pay back the loan they give you. So already you are down money before it is even in your bank. The fluctuating nature of the job market means you can be in many short term contracts that lead to multiple claims of UC, which means a new loan each claim as they process it. So basically we had already claimed after finishing uni and gotten into debt, to be put into more debt as we needed to take another loan from them until they processed our claim due to my wife’s unemployment.
So, when it comes time to get my bonus, the powers that be deemed it extra income and deducted it from my wife’s claim. So essentially I was punished by the government by having my bonus taken from me because my pregnant wife had the audacity to lose her job from a toxic work environment! I honestly feel like whats the point?
I have been annoyed about this for a long time and I wrote this as an effort to vent.