Maia vs. WINZ: The Forms

You get a lot of forms after your WR4U seminar, all in a pretty orange folder. In fact that's the reason you go to WRK4U seminars, because they won't give you the form to apply for the unemployment benefit unless you go to a WRK4U seminar. Apparently they are currently on very dodgy legal ground in doing this, but the government is going to change the law to increase WINZ's surveillance of people with the audacity to want government support very soon. I knew I could probably get out of the seminar before I went, but I decided it wasn't worth the effort, plus I wanted to write a blog post about it.*

About half the forms and random bits of paper they give you are about applying for the benefit, the other half are about looking for work.

My favourite form of the whole lot is the self-assessment form. In this form they give you a set of questions and you have to circle 1-5 depending on whether they apply 'Not At All' or 'Always'. Some of the statements are really inane "I am a positive person" is the silliest. Although my personal favourite was: "I know y rights and obligations as an employee" after 4 years of being a union organiser I wanted to make a new category 6 or - 'more than WINZ form-writers'.

You have to be careful with these evaluations though, because if you're not you might come across as the sort of people who needs to go on a WINZ course. WINZ courses are boredom vortexes from which you may never recover, and while Straight2Work - Retail sounds bad, I'm sure it's nothing compared to what they've got from someone who doesn't know that they must circle at least 4 on every question about job interviews and CVs.

The forms about work are funny, and relatively easily ignored (although they expect you to keep a job lead diary of all the job-leads that you've gone after and followed up, isn't surveillance fun). The bigger problem is the application form itself. Here's what you need, besides the form:

Verification of bank account details (easy enough for me, harder for people who don't have a bank account).

Original of birth certificate or passport (I have my birth certificate filed under 'D' for documents in my filing box - people with a bad relationship with their parents might find it harder to get hold of, and it costs time and money to get a replacement - even more so if you were born overseas).

Another form of identification such as driver's licence (which is problematic if you don't have a driver's licence)

A letter from Inland Revenue showing your tax number (I saved one of these under 'T' - otherwise I'd have had to make a special trip down to inland revenue. Not that big a deal for someone with a car and without a child).

Gross income details for the last year (I did this by getting my ex-employer to fill out a form. It was easy enough to do, because we have a really good relationship. But an ex-employer could really screw you over, particularly if they hadn't provided pay-slips. It would also be that much harder if you had two jobs, casual or part-time work).

Verification of accomodation costs (filed under 'F' for flat - and relatively easy for most people although harder if you don't have a tenancy agreement).

Verification of assets (just a trip to the bank away - although the bank will probably charge you).

There's a whole bunch of other things you may have to verify, names changes, evidence of citizenship/residency status, children's birth certificates, . Then if you were silly enough to admit you were in a relationship in the nature of marriage you have to provide all the same information for your partner. For any supplementary allowances there's more documentation; if you want a disability allowance you have to go to the doctor (at your own expense) and provide receipts of everything you've ever bought.

If you know what you need in advance it may not be that hard making sure you have all this stuff when the time comes. But if you don't, then it's a lot of time and expense, when you're probably least able to provide it.

Which comes back to the theme of these posts - it's not the ones who need help least who are kept out by bureaucracy - it's those who need it most.

* I'm 28 the fact that I can treat dealing with WINZ as a strange venture into a foreign land is both weird and a sign of my priviledge.