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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
March/April 29
R
ecenly, he Irish Times (of Jnury)
repored he enry of mjor Americn
compny clled ‘Mximus’ ino he Irish
mrke osensibly o “ge he counry bck
o work”.
The report stated:
“A large US government contractor has made
moves to expand to Ireland and is understood to
be considering bidding to run State schemes
aimed at getting jobseekers back to work.
Maximus, a multinational company and
significant US government contractor, has
incorporated a subsidiary company in Ireland,
which has yet to begin trading”.
A quick Google search revealed that Maximus,
both in the US and the UK, has a colourful track
record.
Obstructionist Sregy
In the US a Maximus strategy is to low-ball for
contracts, making them seem like good value on
the face of it. But the service they provide, which
is more of a strategy for obstructionism than an
actual service, means that their costs are
negligible anyway, while their profits are always
healthy, unlike the individuals, usually disabled,
they leave in their profit-making wake.
The US leftist magazine Mother Jones reports
that “Most of what Maximus earns does not come
from moving people into the “self-suciency”
that… is the goal of work requirements. It comes
from managing the hurdles placed between the
poor and public aid”.
In the US in 2020 the company, described as
being “notorious for backlogs and lost
documents”, lost a contract in Kansas. According
to the Kansas City Star, this followed “years of
complaints about backlogs and mishandled
Medicaid applications”.
Falsification
In the UK, Labour MP Louise Haige described the
company’s activities as revealing “a disconcerting
pattern of behaviour” which included using
By Emonn Kelly
A company noorious in he UK nd US for obsrucing hose seeking
benefis is bidding for Socil Welfre conrcs in Irelnd
Labour MP Louise Hige old prlimenry
commiee h: “There seems o be n
lrming rend of cses being rejeced bsed
on fcul errors or even – I hesie o sy
his – flsificion”
“fitness for work” tests and often falsifying the
results.
During a debate in 2016 Haige told a
parliamentary committee that:
“There seems to be an alarming trend of cases
being rejected based on factual errors or even – I
hesitate to say this – falsification. I have had
several cases of people telling me that their
assessment report bears absolutely no relation to
the assessment that they experienced with
Maximus...One or two cases could be dismissed
as an honest mistake, but the situation appears to
reveal a disconcerting pattern of behaviour that
indicates that the trade-o between cost-cutting
and profit maximisation is being felt by very
vulnerable people”.
The idea that Maximus is in the business of
“getting jobseekers back to work”, as the Irish
Times has it, appears to be a deliberate falsehood.
The nature of this deception was covered in a
lengthy article by Tracie McMillan in a 2019 issue
of Mother Jones. The article claims that Maximus
was one of the leading companies in what the
magazine calls “Trump’s war on the Poor”.
The job-creation aspect is actually more of a
Trojan horse for a system that is designed to place
itself between providers of public services - usually
health and welfare - with a view to dissuading
people from applying for benefits they may be
qualified to claim.
They achieve this by deliberately applying
bureaucratic overload to applicants, based
primarily on the false lure of job creation. Simply
put, they snow people under in paperwork when
the applicants try to prove eligibility for, and an
ability to, work.
Job Creion
But in practice the company shows little or no
interest in job creation. In fact, when applied to
disabled people, as it was in the US and the UK,
the ruse was cynical in its pitch that it was simply
“helping” people towards independent living,
when in fact the trick was to help Maximus by
disqualifying those who were eligible for help and
services.
The company was so successful in this in Kansas
that nursing homes began to go out of business
due to a sudden dearth of qualified seniors. But
worse than that, “assigning the contract to a
private company had eroded the state’s capacity
to perform the work itself”.
The result was that Kansas had to continue
employing and paying Maximus to perform
inadequate work, simply because Maximus had
supplanted the previous infrastructure, much as
Maximus intends to do now with the Local
Employment Service Networks in Ireland.
They will probably be used, judging on past
Maximus performance, as “hides” to seek cuts to
welfare and health benefits and to discourage
applications for services, as well as allowing
Maximus’ entry to the Irish market to oer other
Maximus, Mximum
profis, Miniml benefis
NEWS
30 March/April
similar “services” in health and welfare.
Similar to the strategy used in the UK, Maximus
essentially buries applicants for medical care in
paper-work related to job-searching, until the
applicant gets weary of ever applying for the
benefits they may be qualified for, and simply
gives up.
Maximum Hrm
In the Irish context it is to be hoped that Maximus
will employ sta from the old Local Employment
Service Networks. But potential employees might
be wise to hesitate before hitching their wagon to
Maximus.
In February 2020 the Topeka Capital Journal
reported that “Communications Workers of
America…filed a complaint against Maximus with
the US Department of Labor alleging Maximus
classifies highly skilled employees as low-level
workers to avoid paying higher wages”.
This complaint preceded a report entitled
‘Maximum Harm’ by the Government Contractor
Accountability Project.
The report said: “Problems at Maximus have at
times directly impeded vulnerable Americans from
accessing the health services that they desperately
needed…Maximus has also been implicated in
performance failures that aect the security of
health system information, health care provider
payments, and stewardship of public dollars”.
The company then is associated with poor
performance generally, and in particular with poor
financial management of public monies and with
treating data with inadequate confidentiality.
In Ireland it is envisioned that Maximus will
supplant the already existing Local Employment
Service Networks, using the network to create a
false job-creation front in order to go after health
and welfare spending.
And once established, the company will no
doubt move into dismantling other public services
for corporate profit.
The irony in all this of course is that the Local
Employment Service Networks, which is currently
staed and funded by the Community Employment
scheme will be the first cut in making way for
Maximus, freeing the Department of Social
Protection from responsibility for the networks. So
essentially, Maximus’ entry into the Irish job
market to “get people back to work” will begin with
the wholesale destruction of all the current jobs in
the Local Employment Service Network.
Under-Reporting
The Irish Times story fudged the issue of how
engaged Maximus already is. It did reveal that
Maximus had set up a subsidiary in Ireland two
years ago before changing its name to Maximus a
year ago..
The newspaper failed to note that an aspect of
Maximus’ modus operandi is to meet the
contractors, in this case the Department of Social
Protection, long before contracts are even sent out
for tender.
In late December, the Department of Social
Protection advertised for companies and
organisations to bid for €170 of contracts to run
local area employment services, which provide
supports to get the long-term unemployed back to
work.
New York Workfre
On this point it is at least worth registering what
took place in New York under Mayor Rudi Giuliani
when Maximus was bidding for the delivery of a
workfare programme.
In December 2019, journalist Becky Z Dernbach
reported in an article for Mother Jones that
“Maximus consultants met with New York City
welfare ocials months before new contracts
were even put out for bid. Maximus was initially
awarded $104 million out of nearly $500 million in
welfare¬-to-work contracts there. The city’s
comptroller rejected the deal based on what he
described as “corruption, favoritism, and
cronyism”.
So it seems to be part of the modus operandi for
the company to meet first with those seeking
contractors to replace public services with private
services, forging personal links
with public service individuals.
For instance, in the same
article it was reported that,
“Seema Verma, [later Trump
advisor on Medicaid] the current
head of the federal Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services…
has long-standing ties to the
company, and held a consulting
contract with the company
worth $10,000”.
That’s like a top civil servant here in the
Department of Social Protection advising a
company on the best methods of acquiring private
contracts for public services.
Awareness
Since everyone informed in Irish politics, media
and public services, is well aware what the
Maximus package oers: cuts to health and
welfare spending by first creating a job-creation
distraction, the inevitable outcome of poor
services and taxpayer losses must also already
have been factored in.
Judging by the UK and US experiences, it is
inevitable that a similar scenario will play out here
eventually, with Maximus providing a poor service
while the State continues to pay the company,
because the previous networks they supplanted
no longer exist.
End-Game
The upshot, when the dust settles, will be that the
Department of Social Protection, after all the
raging and reports about wasted tax-payers’
money, will have achieved the goal not of job
creation, but of cuts to public services: the first
casualty here being the current Local Employment
Service Networks, which is working just fine.
This information concerning the performance of
Maximus already exists. The fact that it is ignored
suggests an insidious Irish agenda to facilitate its
aggressive and regressive – neo-liberal - methods
of achieving health and welfare cuts.
Maximus dissudes people
from pplying for benefis
hey my be qulified
o clim by deliberely
pplying bureucric
overlod o pplicns,
bsed primrily on he flse
promise of job creion
