As part of the growing army of the unemployed created by the biggest crisis of the capitalist economic system since the Great Depression of the 1930s (and soon to be compounded by the onslaught of the Con-Dem government’s ‘austerity’ measures), I think it’s about time someone brought up one of the less talked about aspects of how shite it is being on the dole: constant job applications.

While most jobs under capitalism involve more than their fair share of boring, repetitive and socially unproductive tasks, few can compete with the demoralising process of filling out application form after application form, in full knowledge that with the vast majority of them, you are wasting your time. For young people especially, with dozens and even hundreds of people going after every available job, chances are someone with more experience is going after each and every job you apply for. Of course we’ve little option but to keep on plugging away, doing searches, filling out forms, writing covering letters, editing CVs, changing the focus to what we think each particular employer wants – much like a really dull office job but without the compensation of actually getting paid a wage for it.  This situation isn’t helped by the sheer irrationality of the job application methods used by many employers, most of which seem deliberately designed to produce an experience more frustrating than watching Nick Clegg on the news.

What follows is a list of some of the worst, most irritating features of contemporary job application procedures, compiled from my own experiences over the last few months. The list is far from comprehensive – please add some of your own in the comments section below. Consider this article as advice to employers (though I doubt they will take any notice), or as a guide for ‘what *definitely* not to do’ in organising work in a post-capitalist society; but for the most part treat it as some light entertainment for those of you (and I know there are plenty) who know exactly what I mean, having encountered exactly the same things yourself. For those lucky enough to not yet have experienced that depressing trip to your local Jobcentre Plus, to be condescended to and checked up on in return for a meagre £51.85 a week (£65.45 for over 25s – lucky for some!), consider it a sample of the kind of crap you’ve got to look forward to, especially if the planned government spending cuts are allowed to go ahead.

Attention all prospective employers:

• If you don’t have a specific reason –e.g. genuinely unique (non-bullshit) questions – then you don’t need an application form. Consider the amount of time people have to spend copying out the exact same information (education, work history, other skills and experience, blah, blah, blah…) into whatever poorly formatted word processor document you’ve thrown together with little thought. Does it really help you all that much to have all applications fitting your arbitrarily defined layout, with 4 year degrees squeezed into one thin column of a table, and a big block of empty space to describe some crappy temp job, just because it happened to be the most recent?  Could you not just have mentioned what information you want a CV to include and save us all a fuckload of time and wasted effort?
• If you do require a huge, complex, 15-page application form, maybe keep that for a second stage of the application process, for people already being seriously considered. Spending 1-2 hours filling out a massive form only to never even receive a reply is just taking the piss. To any employer who has ever done this (and that’s the majority of them): fuck you.
• If you don’t know how to format a Word document so that blank fields work as blank fields, then don’t do it. Please do not just put blocks of underscores in the same way you would for a printed document. This does not work.
• Stop asking stupid questions. You know the sort of thing I mean. “Give an example of a time you have succeeded in doing x” or “Explain how you have dealt with a situation where y”. These are more common at job interviews, but appear in some application forms as well. They are essentially designed to test the applicant’s ability to bullshit. In interviews they test your ability to bullshit on the spot. Generally there are two types – questions far too vague to provide any real insight beyond “can this person think of something relevant/make something up that sounds like what (we think) we want to hear” (examples include “Give an example of a situation where you’ve had to solve a problem”), and those that are far too specific, seemingly designed to test whether you already have the particular knowledge or skills that you could only really acquire by doing the job that you’re being interviewed for!  (Advice: don’t attempt to subtly point out how stupid a question is during an interview. This doesn’t go down well, it seems).
• Online (web-based) forms are great, if:
  - they can be saved half-way through, or are short and to the point
  - they can be used for multiple applications
  - they work properly (most are buggy, poorly designed, and end up covering all the same information you have to submit in separate CV upload anyway)
• Don’t make us repeat ourselves. Stop making us say the same thing more than once. If you base application form questions on the structure of a job description, be careful not to put very similar things in different parts of the job description. Clue: using the same word or word groups in slightly different ways (‘organisational/organising/well organised’) does not mean you’ve written a new question or have created a new type of skill.
• Send a reply, regardless of the outcome. If you’ve got an email template ready it takes a couple of seconds per applicant. It’s not hard.
• Offer feedback if possible – if someone’s making the same mistake in all their applications and you don’t tell them about it, you are a dick.
• This one’s for recruitment websites – if your website is just going to convert my Word file to text, while fucking up the formatting, CV upload services are pretty much worthless. I can copy and paste text myself.
• I don’t know what I’ll be doing in two years time. Nor in five years time. This is at least in small part because I don’t know if you’re going to give me this job or not. Be realistic – nobody only applies for one type of job. If you ask me this question, you are essentially testing my ability to lie convincingly.  Apparently I’m not that good.
• Maybe, just maybe, it might be nice to let people know by when they can expect a reply.  And then stick to it. Y’know, like actually reply. Especially if they’ve already made the effort to travel across the country for an interview. kthxbye

Below we feature a guest post by Meritxell Ramírez Ollé, a student at the University of Edinburgh, co-creator of a new online local newspaper (Vacarisses Digital) in her hometown of Vacarisses, Catalonia, and a supporter of Catalan independence.

On Saturday, over a million people marched through the streets of the Catalan capital of Barcelona, led by a large banner proclaiming, “We are a nation, we decide ourselves”. The demonstration, which has been widely reported as the largest in the history of Catalonia, was a response to the sentence issued by the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (the charter for Catalan self-rule).

A regressive sentence amid a manipulated decision-making process

Around 2005, in the context of Spain’s system of regional devolution, some in Catalonia felt that it was necessary to revise the earlier Catalan Statute, dating from 1979, and set out a draft for a new charter. Eventually, in 2006, the Statute was passed by both the Catalan and Spanish Parliaments, and it was endorsed in 2006 by a popular referendum in Catalonia. However, the Popular Party (PP) (the main right-wing opposition party in Spain) and the Spanish ombudsman (a holdover from the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) [read: the Spanish version of the Labour Party, who are currently in government – Ed.]) appealed the renewed Statute to the Constitutional Court.

The decision-making process of the Constitutional Court (CC) during the issuing of its ruling was not free from controversy: the mandates of three of its twelve members expired nearly two years ago and have not been renewed, and another judge died during his term and has still not been replaced. Despite all the legal abnormalities, and the fact that the CC is a political body whose members are handpicked by the two major parties in Spain, the response to the PP’s and the Spanish ombudsman’s appeal was eventually published one week ago. It briefly concludes:

1)    There is no legal basis to recognise Catalonia as a nation. As the Court obsessively makes sure to state twelve times in the text of the sentence, “the only nation within Spain is the Spanish one”.

2)    The Catalan language should not be prioritised over Spanish in Catalan administrations, public media and in schools, despite the marginalisation it suffered for centuries and the minority use of Catalan in public spaces.

3)    The Catalan people are recognised as “a people” but without any political or juridical powers. The Court aims, with this decision, to underline that the only sovereign people are the “Spanish” people.

4)    Although Catalonia has a recognised deficit of investment from the Spanish Government, it cannot ask for similar levels of fiscal autonomy to the Basque tax system, comparable to that of any EU Member State.

5)    The judiciary power will remain centralised in Madrid.

A Constitutional sentence above Catalans’ will

While the two main parties in the Spanish Parliament (PP- PSOE) have accepted the sentence with all its legal irregularities, all Catalan parties, except for the Popular Party (PP) in Catalonia and the small Anti-Catalan Nationalism Party (Ciudadanos), are unanimous in their analysis. They argue for respect for Catalonia’s identity and for what the Catalan people have voted for in a binding referendum, which the Spanish Constitutional Court has undermined. However, Catalan leaders differ in their suggestions as to how to come out from this political cul-de-sac. On the one hand, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the Catalan Eco-Socialist Party (ICV) in office, and the centre-right Catalan Nationalist Party (CiU) insist on re-negotiating with the Spanish Government a new agreement regarding Catalonia’s national ambitions into the Spanish Constitution. On the other hand, the left-wing Catalan Independence Party (ERC) (also in office), and the ex-Barcelona Football Club president, Joan Laporta, who has just created a new party, Democràcia Catalana, advocate for Catalonia’s secession from Spain. In this sense, Saturday‘s demonstration was clearly dominated by pro-independence sentiments and positions, and it is probable that the upcoming Catalan elections in November this year will also be framed around the issue of independence.

The CC’s 2010 sentence: the latest (and last!) frustrated attempt for a federal Spain

However, the debate over the CC’s judgement, and of Catalonia’s relationship with the Spanish state, is not a new issue.  The attempt to create a federal Spain, with Catalonia on the inside, has been at the heart of much of the country’s modern history, but it has continued to fail, often with fatal consequences for Catalonia.  In the 19th century, the First Spanish Republic, established in 1873 by the Catalan federalist Estanislau Figueras I de Moragas failed as a result of anti-federalist coups and ended up with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.

Later, the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, and the first Catalan Statute in 1932, were overthrown by the fascist Francisco Franco and led to the bloody civil war in 1936. As George Orwell describes in his book Homage to Catalonia, written while he served as both a private and a corporal in Catalonia and Aragon in 1936, the effects the civil war had on Catalonia were devastating.

After 35 years of dictatorship, and after the passing of the Constitution of 1978, Spain created a unique system of regional autonomy, known as the “state of the autonomies”. The result of this system was nothing but a constitution full of ambiguities in its most fundamental aspects, and autonomous territorial structures that did not satisfy anyone, but all political parties accepted it for fear of returning to the ‘old times’ of the dictatorship.

The calculated ambiguity of the Spanish Constitution (which continually needs to be interpreted) requires that all important laws affecting legal autonomy are the result of negotiation, and should be ultimately interpreted by the CC. The latest episode of this process of negotiation was the political sentence of the CC issued last week. This time, the CC has sent one more clear messages to the Catalans:  ‘the will of the citizens of Catalonia doesn’t matter, because here we are the only sovereign institution that can make use of democracy’.  Therefore, with this sentence, the situation is not ambiguous anymore: Spain is expelling us; Spain has no room for the Catalan, if it not under its subjugation and national indignity. At that point, in my opinion, the only road to a decent future for Catalonia is our political independence. But, that’s a story for another post.

The unfortunate aftermath of the latest SSY party

The ConDem coalition government has shown its true shade of green with new proposals to reward households who produce more recycling waste.  The plans, announced last week by Communities Secretary, Conservative Eric Pickles (whose name just seems to capture his essence), are ostensibly designed to reduce waste going into landfill sites around the country.  In reality they illustrate how the government’s commitment to market idealism trumps any supposed commitments to the environment made during the election campaign or before.

Microchips are being fitted to wheelie bins and household waste measured on collection, in a pilot scheme being rolled out to 60, 000 households in the Conservative-controlled borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the southeast of England.  The scheme rewards households for producing more recyclable waste, with a loyalty-card like system whereby residents collect points for their recycled rubbish, which are then exchanged for shopping and restaurant vouchers for up to the value of £130.  While there are not yet plans to create a national scheme, Pickles’ endorsement could mean other English local authorities follow suit in the near future.

The previous New Labour administration had toyed with the idea of microchips in bins before, tabling both incentive schemes like this one and the contrasting approach of introducing tax-like penalties for households sending too much waste to landfill.  The latter idea generated a fearful response from the tabloids, with the Daily Mail warning of “Spy chips hidden in 2.5 million dustbins” and “council snoopers [planning] pay-as-you-throw tax” in March this year.

However both the carrot of the incentive scheme and the stick of the waste tax are misplaced policies that fail to tackle the real causes of the excessive quantities of rubbish our society produces.  As philosopher and environmentalist James Garvey argued in the Guardian last week, the point should be to reduce waste overall, not just change the bins people use to dispose of it.  The old environmental adage, “reduce, reuse, recycle” was in that order for a good reason.  Recycling of recyclable materials should be the last resort, with far greater emphasis on reducing the amount of waste produced in the first place.  This is because while recycling is certainly better, and more energy efficient, than sending waste to landfill and creating new products and packaging from scratch using raw inputs (like oil for plastics, trees for paper and card or metal ores for tin cans), it is still an energy-intensive and environmentally destructive process, especially as recycling too has been left to the fate of the market.

John Vidal reported in 2004 that over one third of recycling waste collected in the UK was being sent 8,000 miles around the world for processing in China, without any consideration for the environmental and social consequences – especially as China is quickly becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world, with very little in the way of legal protection for the environment or exploited workers.  The Environment Agency admits that the practice of exporting recycling waste has continued to expand, suggesting on their website that, “If you work for a local authority or company that is involved in waste management, an increasing amount of the wastes you collect and process for recycling and re-use will ultimately be exported.”  They report that the volume of waste exported doubled from seven million tonnes in 2002 to 14 million tonnes last year.

Sometimes SSY members try to sneak back after their 27th birthday

However even if recycling were rationally planned and performed locally to good environmental standards, it would still be far less efficient than producing less stuff in the first place. The problem with both the bin tax and the incentive scheme is they do little or nothing to reduce the amount of rubbish produced.  The Tories’ incentive scheme could even potentially increase the amount of waste generated.  As Garvey describes it:

“The point of recycling has to do with understanding the importance of reducing waste in a finite world. It costs energy and resources to make a plastic bottle, fill it with water, package it and ship it to your local shop. We currently get almost all of that energy by burning fossil fuels and doing damage to our climate. The resources which go into the bottle’s production, distribution and disposal might have been used in other, better ways. Once empty, the bottle might take up space in a landfill or end up in the ocean. If you understand the value of reducing waste in a finite world – if you want to avoid a hand in wasting energy, causing climate change, squandering resources, poisoning oceans – you might think twice about buying a bottle of water. If you recycle because you earn reward points for doing so, you might just buy a lot of plastic bottles.”

This also points to the second problem with market-based “solutions” to environmental problems, that of inequality.  The pay-as-you-throw tax proposal would have affected all households equally, regardless of income or the availability of opportunities for avoiding excessive packaging and wasteful consumption.  Only those with access to gardens or allotments, as well as spare time, are in a position to compost their food wastes, for example.  Similarly the incentive scheme encourages wasteful consumerism – especially rewarding those who can afford to consume the most – while celebrating that it might persuade a few more to use the right kinds of bins for the right kind of rubbish.

A complete rethink of priorities is necessary to really challenge the way waste is produced and dealt with, rather than simply attempting to tinker with people’s behaviour to get a few more items in recycling bins and a few less in the ground or floating in the sea.  Supermarkets, the food industry and other commercial interests need to be challenged and prevented from covering everything in maddeningly excessive packaging.  People should be given the opportunity and be encouraged to consume less stuff and live less wastefully, not just cajoled into using recycling bins, whether by carrot or stick.  The logic of free market capitalism has been the cause of excessive waste and environmental destruction. Are we really expected to believe that a market-based response can do anything to reverse that?