Say NO to Work for the Dole!

Say NO to Work for the Dole!

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The Dole Action Group began distributing this leaflet (pdf) outside Centrelink offices in Melbourne today:

WHAT IS WORK FOR THE DOLE?

Work for the Dole (WftD) is a key part of the Coalition government’s ‘welfare reforms’ outlined in the last Federal budget. These ‘reforms’ punish the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society. WftD forces unemployed people to work for free for non-profit organisations (like charities). You eitherwork for free, or you are kicked off the dole, and forced to survive on no income at all.

WftD is being EXPANDED. The government is currently trialling their new WftD program in eighteen regions around Australia. In Melbourne, these areas are ‘Westgate’ (Melbourne’s outer western suburbs) and ‘Mornington’ (Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula). On 1 July 2015 the program will be expanded to cover all job seekers. From July 2015, welfare claimants under 30 will be forced to do 25 hours of unpaid work per week, while 30-50’s will be made to do 15 hours.

Under the new system, everyone on a Centrelink payment who is considered ‘job ready’ (most people) will have to do WftD after being unemployed for 6 months, as will anyone under 30, even if they are classified as having ‘significant barriers’ to work. All other claimants will have to do WftD after 12 months. This means hundreds of thousands of unemployed people across Australia will be forced to work for free or starve.

USELESS

WftD is a failure! Countless studies, including some commissioned by government departments, have shown that participation in WftD actually makes it harder to get a job. Being forced to complete busy work to keep a meagre Centrelink payment does nothing to build skills. It makes life even harder for those bringing up children or caring for sick or elderly relatives. It takes up time that would be better spent studying, training or looking for paid work. Unsurprisingly, there is also evidence that employers actively discriminate against people who put WftD on their resume.

The government claims that WftD and other punitive measures that punish the poor are intended to ‘build skills’ or ‘motivate’ the unemployed to obtain one of the plentiful jobs that apparently exist. They speak of ‘dole bludgers’ and ‘job snobs’, of ‘lifters’ and ‘leaners’. Politicians and shock jocks blame the unemployed for being unemployed, but what do they know of the stress and hardship of trying to live well below the poverty line? Have they ever worked for minimum wage in a precarious job, often far away from where they live, with little job security and no long term prospects?

They are being deliberately dishonest. They know (or ought to know) that there simply aren’t enough jobs. In September 2014 there were 156,000 job vacancies in Australia. At the same time there were at least 750,000 people out of work. If you include those who are under-employed (do not receive enough work to make ends meet), an estimated 920,000 people in 2014, there are ten job seekers competing for each job vacancy in Australia.

Why are unemployed people to blame for the politician’s crisis? How can people be made to work for free because they can’t find a job when there aren’t even enough jobs to go around anyway?

UNFAIR

Work For The Dole is best described as a new minimum wage. It exploits job-seekers, who end up getting far less money from their dole payment than if they were paid the minimum wage for working 25 hours per week. For those on Newstart, the rate is approximately $10 per hour. For those on Youth Allowance, it is even worse, between $6-$8 per hour. How can this be fair? The legal minimum wage is $16.87 per hour. Work is work! Everyone who works should be entitled to the minimum rate at the very least.

But it gets even worse. WftD participants have no access to the ordinary rights and conditions that other workers have like breaks, OH&S regulations or the right to negotiate working hours. WftD participants don’t even have the protection of the Work-Cover scheme (compensation if you are injured on the job).

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

Work for the Dole only functions because ‘host organisations’ (wealthy charities like the Salvation Army and the Brotherhood of St Lawrence) agree to exploit unemployed people. Organisations like the Salvos are attracted to this scheme because it makes them eligible for government subsidies of thousands of dollars per unemployed person. They benefit as businesses from the unpaid labour of Centrelink claimants.

The good news for us is that the government needs to find roles for hundreds of thousands of unemployed people in these organisations. By placing pressure on the non-profit organisations and local councils who stand to benefit from the free labour of unemployed workers, we can disrupt Work for the Dole and stop it in its tracks. We’ll be asking non-profits to boycott participation in Work for the Dole, and asking organisations that use volunteer labour to keep volunteering voluntary.

Even if you’re not receiving a Centrelink payment at the moment, this matters to you. If you have a job, WftD is designed to reduce your wages. If you are studying, you already know what it is like to try and survive on a payment well below the poverty line, and it is very likely that you will face this situation when you graduate.

The Dole Action Group is a collective of unemployed workers and their supporters. Our key goals (so far) are:
• To fight for liveable (above the poverty
line) welfare payments for all
• To abolish dehumanising Centrelink participation requirements
• To stop welfare claimants being used as a source of unpaid forced labour.

If you have a tip off about a Work for the Dole provider, would like to join us or find out more, you can contact us in the following ways:
Email: doleaction at gmail.com
On the web: http://doleaction.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
doleactiongroup
Twitter: @doleaction

Work for the Dole template letter

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Does your local council, favorite Op Shop or other local NGO intend to exploit unemployed workers on the government’s Work for the Dole program? Why not ask them and find out?

The Dole Action Group has prepared the following template letter for you to modify and use. Please change anything about it to suit your needs.

[Name and title of contact]
[Council/NGO/Charity]
[Organisation address]

Dear [Contact name],

I am [details of your relationship to the organisation, eg. “a resident in the City of…”]. I are writing to you about the Federal Government’s new Work for the Dole scheme, which as you probably know is being significantly expanded in July to job-seekers aged under 50 who have been receiving welfare payments for more than six months.

Will your organisation be participating in this policy and using people required to do Work for the Dole in any of its projects and services?

I respect [organisations name] commitment and ongoing work towards creating a fairer society. I share your commitment to [most relevant statement of the organisations values from their mission statement or alike].

It is with this in mind that I ask [organisations name] to commit to not taking part in the Government’s Work for the Dole scheme. Work for the Dole fundamentally undermines the spirit of volunteering in our communities. I believe that we should keep volunteering voluntary.

Work for the Dole is unfair and discriminatory for the following reasons:

1) Volunteering Victoria has stated that Work for the Dole is “problematic” under the definition of volunteering as “an activity undertaken of the volunteer’s own free will and without coercion.”[1] Work for the Dole is a mandatory program that compels participation under threat of the loss of a job seeker’s welfare payment. Its coercive nature undermines the spirit of volunteerism and is likely to alienate long-standing volunteers, leading to a loss of skills and experience.

2) No person should be subject to a system of involuntary labour, let alone involuntary labour for welfare payments already well below the poverty line. Unemployed workers choosing to do valuable work in our communities should be remunerated for their efforts and have access to a real income, which the Government has the capacity to provide. This would result in stronger community organisations, and would reduce both welfare poverty and the unemployment rate.

1) The government states that Work for the Dole is about ‘getting people into work’, but many studies, including some commissioned by the Australian Federal Government, show that this is not the case. Jeff Borland and Yi-Ping Tseng from the University of Melbourne recorded the experiences of 860 Newstart recipients aged 18-24 taking part in Work for the Dole in 1997-1998.[2] They found that “quite large significant adverse effects of participation in Work for the Dole” for job seekers. Unemployed people who were required to do Work for the Dole were significantly less likely to be able to find work than job seekers who did not participate.

2) Australian Department of Employment data shows that – for job-seekers in 2013 – only 19.8 per cent of participants in Work for the Dole schemes found a full-time or part-time job within three months. Work for the Dole has a poorer track-record than other pathways to work, such as training.[3] Being forced to ‘volunteer’ to keep your Centrelink payment makes life even harder for those bringing up children or caring for sick or elderly relatives. It takes up time that would be better spent studying, training or looking for paid work. There is also evidence that employers discriminate against people who put Work for the Dole on their resume.

3) Work for the Dole represents a threat to the jobs of people who work in local government and the community sector, by replacing some of the roles typically filled by paid workers with unpaid labourers.

4) The government makes Work for the Dole attractive for community organisations by offering financial incentives. We know many community organisations struggle to fund their work, but acceptance of Work for the Dole incentives would compromise your organisation’s values, reputation and independence.

5) Solutions to unemployment require an acknowledgement of the lack of jobs that exist. According to ABS date, in September 2014 there were 156,000 job vacancies in Australia. At the same time there are 750,000 people out of work. If you factor in the high number of under-employed, an estimated 920,000 in July 2014, there are ten job seekers competing for each job vacancy in Australia.[5] We need real job creation, instead of expensive, failed approaches that blame job-seekers for things outside their control.

This unfair policy can only be opposed through a combined refusal to participate in Work for the Dole. I invite your organisation to commit to not taking part in the Government’s Work for the Dole scheme and to keep volunteering voluntary.

I intend to encourage members, supporters, welfare claimants and the general public more broadly to support organisations who have committed to keep volunteering voluntary.

I look forward to hearing from you and establishing a dialogue with you on this question.

Yours sincerely,

[Your name]
[Your group and contact details]

[1] http://volunteeringvictoria.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/WFTD-position-statement-REVISED-5-Feb-15.pdf
[2] http://cf.fbe.unimelb.edu.au/staff/jib/documents/wfdwp.pdf
[3] http://www.uniya.org/research/mo_martyn_mar06.pdf
[5] http://unemploymentunion.com.au/myth-4/

You can forward any interesting responses you get to this letter to doleaction at gmail dot com.

Work for the Dole: What you can learn from a job advert

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max-screwing-you-over

The Saturday Paper recently reported that:

Nearly half of the Work for the Dole co-ordinator contracts tendered by the federal government have been awarded to two giant corporations, including one in a joint venture with a major Australian charity.

One of the big two is Max Employment, a company known for persecuting disabled job seekers in the UK.

Now that they’ve got the contracts they’ve started advertising for people to do the dirty work of persecuting people on Work for the Dole, and it’s amazing what you can learn about the coming Work for the Dole scheme from a single job ad.

Max Employment are advertising for ‘Work for the Dole Field Officers’, a role basically responsible for ensuring there are Work for the Dole places to put the legions of unemployed Abbott is forcing into unpaid work.

1. Max Employment expect people will get hurt

It seems the Work for the Dole coordinator has a significant role on the WHS side of things (we’ve previously highlighted concerns that Work for the Dole labour wont be properly protected by WHS law and WorkCover).

The duties of a Work for the Dole field officer include:

Undertake, review and update risk assessments and develop risk mitigation strategies for all activities

Timely and appropriate management, investigation and reporting of activity related incidents

Work in horticulture, hospitality or aged care can be dangerous enough for staff with appropriate pay and training. People are going to get hurt and the providers know it.

2. Work for the Dole will displace paid work

The W4D field officer is expected to:

Develop and negotiate project proposals, contracts and agreements appropriate to WfD activities (as lead or sole Employment Provider)

And in order to do this they will need to be able to:

Ability to identify and develop WfD activities linked to labour market trends, employer requirements and job seeker needs

‘Labour market trends’ and ’employer requirements’ are barely even euphemisms for “We aren’t even going to come close to placing this many people unless we can figure out where the demand for labour is going to be and then shove W4D forced labour into the gap”.

Fields such as aged care are presently areas of growing paid employment, admittedly at atrociously low rates of pay. The rate of pay is going to get even lower as Work for the Dole ‘volunteers’ are directed to aged care homes and alike.

3. There’s a lot of money to be made in forcing the unemployed to work for free

Max Employment know that screwing over the unemployed is big business and they are keen to let you know it to!

Why join the MAX team? … Participation in competitive bonus schemes for individual and team performance … We are committed to a high performance, engaging team culture and investing in our people enables a rewarding career with MAX. If you have what we are looking for, do not delay – APPLY NOW.

(Emphasis added)

Profiteers like Max Employment have to be stopped. We can break the Work for the Dole scheme, but we need your help. Get in touch to get involved.

Green Army or Work for the Dole – What about safety?

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As we approach the implementation of the government’s expanded Work for the Dole program in July, a serious question that is not being addressed is safety.

Workers in traditional work are protected by a rafts of OHS legislation, work place insurance, and most importantly union rights. Workers compelled to participate in Work-for-the-Dole and similar programs will not have the same protections.

Crikey and others raised questions about this last year, questions which remain open:

The 15,000 young people who intend to work in the Coalition’s “Green Army” will have no protections against racial, religious, sex or other forms of discrimination during their six months in the program, and will not be protected by workplace bullying provisions.

Fairfax newspapers revealed on the weekend that under the Social Security Legislation (Green Army Programme) Amendment Bill 2014, participants would be paid as little as half the minimum wage for working up to 30 hours a week. OH&S and other workplace protections would not be available because participants would be exempted from the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, the Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988, and, most importantly, the Fair Work Act.

Have you been injured on a work-for-the-dole placement? Get in touch and tell us your story.

Leaflet – Job Services Australia: Profiting From Punishing You

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Check out one of the leaflets the Dole Action Group has been distributing at Centrelinks (JSA Leaflet PDF). Please feel free to print it out and share it with others in your area. If you would like support to organise leafleting at your local Centrelink, get in touch with us!

Job Services Australia: Profiting From Punishing You

jsa

What are Job Services Australia Providers?

‘Job Services Australia Providers’ (JSAs) are private companies that are supposed to help unemployed people find work. They are what used to be called Job Networks, and soon will be called the ‘jobactive’ scheme. Some of the JSAs operating in Victoria are ‘MAX Employment’, ‘Tracy: The Placement People’, ‘Matchworks’, ‘Sarina Russo’, ‘Job Prospects’ and ‘Wise Employment’. Centrelink forces unemployed people to attend regular meetings with a JSA, or be kicked off the dole. JSAs require claimants to attend boring and pointless appointments, fill out paperwork and attend “training courses”. Throughout Australia they’ve become notorious for being ineffective and worthless and it is no accident that they are this way. JSAs are not designed to help the unemployed – they are designed to punish us and make huge profits at our expense.

 These schemes don’t work and they know it

The government claims that JSAs and other measures that punish the poor are intended to ‘build skills’ or ‘motivate’ the unemployed to obtain one of the plentiful jobs that supposedly exist. They speak of ‘dole bludgers’ and ‘job snobs’, of ‘lifters’ and ‘leaners’. Politicians and shock jocks blame the unemployed for being unemployed, but what do they know of trying to live well below the poverty line? Have they ever worked for minimum wage in a precarious job, often far away from where they live, with little job security and no long term prospects?

They are being deliberately dishonest. They know that there simply aren’t enough jobs. In September 2014 there were 156,000 job vacancies in Australia. At the same time there were at least 750,000 people out of work. If you include those who are under-employed, an estimated 920,000 people in 2014, there are ten job seekers competing for every job vacancy in Australia.

How can these JSAs find work for us all when there’s more than ten people for every advertised job? How does sitting in an office for half the week help anybody to build the skills they need to get back into the workforce?

Paying the rich to punish the poor

The federal government spends about $1.3 billion dollars a year on funding JSA providers.

Fraud is absolutely rampant in the world of unemployment services. A recent Four Corners program (23 Feb 2015) described unemployment services as “a system open to abuse where the unemployed have become a commodity. Some agencies bend the rules, others break them.” JSAs have forged signatures and paperwork, altered contracts after they’ve been signed, and even billed the government for work they never even intended to do.

This theft of public resources is overwhelming in its scope. A 2012 report from the federal government’s Department of Employment found that only 40% of fees paid to JSAs over the period examined could be verified as legitimate. No government has done anything to punish the offending organisations – but we can!

One of the most popular rorts at the moment is forcing jobseekers to undertake ‘training courses’ provided by other divisions of the companies contracted as JSAs. Between 2010-2013, these companies billed the government more than $600 million dollars for running these training courses, but if you’ve ever taken one, you know very well that they are a waste of time.

The government pays providers according to how ‘disadvantaged’ the jobseeker is. In other words, the harder your circumstances, the more money there is to be made off of you. This means people looking to get back into work have to go it alone whilst significantly disadvantaged people spend half their lives fulfilling dehumanising participation requirements so the JSAs can keep cashing government cheques.

If the government really wanted to help people into work, they’d make these funds available to pay apprentice workers properly, reverse the massive cuts to TAFE, and fund proper training for jobseekers.

This situation is going to get worse

In the UK, where “austerity” has been in place for five years, a similar but much worse situation already exists. Staff in employment services are pressured to meet quotas of claimants ‘sanctioned’ or denied access to a payment they are eligible for. Thousands of job seekers and disability support pensioners across the UK have suffered as a result of this institutional cruelty, with thousands forced onto the streets, and millions relying on food banks just to survive. At least 69 disability support pensioners have died after being cut off from their welfare payments, like David Clapson who had diabetes & died in 2013 due an acute lack of insulin. He had recently had his welfare payment cut off due to missing two appointments and had been unable to afford the electricity bills to keep his insulin refrigerated.

JSAs already possess similar powers in Australia – cutting off your payment is called ‘breaching’ – but the Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, has signalled that he would like to extend the power of JSAs to discipline and punish the unemployed.

What we can do about it

Given the amount of control JSA providers have over our lives, this is not a struggle we can engage in alone. It’s easy for a JSA provider to breach one unemployed person who dares to speak up but if there are hundreds who stand up to defend their rights, it becomes a major scandal.

The best thing we can do is talk to other unemployed people about what is going on, to speak up about our experiences, and start organising ourselves to fight back together. We are at a tipping point. The current government wants to make life even more difficult for us, as well as attack the pay and conditions of people in work. They see us as a soft target, as people whose rights can be trampled to win votes. It’s time for us to organise and show them that we’re a force to be reckoned with!

A number of new organisations have formed in response to these ongoing attacks, such as the Dole Action Group (Melbourne) and the Anti-Poverty Network (South Australia). These groups seek to bring together pensioners, students, single parents, disability support pensioners and unemployed workers. If you want to find out more, or how to get involved, get in contact. We need to know how JSA providers have been treating you, then work together and do something about it!

Contact us!

Problem with your Job Services Australia Provider?
• Dispute with Centrelink?
• Cut off from your payment?
• Being coerced into Work for the Dole?
• Wasting days on pointless ‘job-skilling’?

The Dole Action Group and others are fighting to end the exploitation of the unemployed and their families. Join us and help us help you!

Dole Action Group (Melbourne)

Email: doleaction@gmail.com
On the Web: http://www.doleaction.org
Facebook: facebook.com/doleactiongroup
Twitter: @doleaction

Anti-Poverty Network South Australia

Email: antipovertynetwork.sa@gmail.com
On the Web: http://www.antipovertynetworksa.org
Facebook: facebook.com/antipovertynetworksa

Resources

The Four Corners investigation can be seen here: abc.net.au/4corners (Past episodes, The Jobs Game)

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/03/victims-britains-harsh-welfare-sanctions

blacktrianglecampaign.org

Government encourages short term job rort

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One of the things that Four Corners highlighted in their recent expose on Job Services Australia was the way in which employment agencies were churning people through short term jobs in order to game the system:

LINTON BESSER: Another way the system is exploited is through the use of wage subsidies, where the Government pays companies to take on the unemployed. It’s an effective tool, because employers are suddenly offered cheap labour.

But the problem is this: when a person’s subsidy expires, they can be simply replaced. And so the cycle begins again.

CATHERINE O’ROURKE: And they will well and truly shaft that person and say, “Well, you know, see you later” and, and then apply for the next person. So they can do that because, you know, it’s, it’s a trial period. And that’s why the milestone is 12, you know, or 26 weeks.

LINTON BESSER: And they’ll, as in your words, “shaft that person” because the next person has a wage subsidy?

CATHERINE O’ROURKE: Correct. Correct. But, you know, to, to, pump them in and pump them out: it was, it was just so sad when you’d have them on a high and all of a sudden it’s: “Sorry, we haven’t got the hours anymore.” And, and, you know, that- it would be like popping a balloon and be deflating them. And tha- and that was really sad.

The federal government has announced the next job services contract, this time re-branded Job Active. The $5 billion scheme seems designed to encourage the short term jobs scam:

From the Australian:

Mr Abbott said that in the past the government had paid for only 12-week and 26-week outcomes, but there was a lot of short-term jobs available, particularly in reg­ional Australia. “There are jobs that are seasonal and these are often the start of someone’s renewed connection with the labour market. That’s why an important innovation in this new jobactive system is the four-week outcome payment,’’ he said.

Four weeks work. That’s all a scum-bag job agency has to arrange in order to get paid. We all know what’s going to happen. Job agencies are going to cycle ever larger numbers of job seekers through four week bullsh-t jobs.

We need real incomes, not four weeks garbage and then back on the dole.

Things ABC Gympie missed from this Work for the Dole article

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ABC in Gympie filed an article reporting:

Some unemployed Gympie residents are helping to repair the flood damaged Gympie Music Muster site in southern Queensland.

The not-for-profit organisation Skill Centred is using work-for-the-dole recipients to help repair fencing and other damage caused by flooding at the site on the weekend.

The ABC reported that ‘work for the dole’ participants were repairing fencing, walk ways and the stage, but they failed to report a few other key facts about the situation.

The ABC failed to report that these work-for-the-dole participants are forced to do this work, or they will be cut off their meagre dole payments.

The ABC failed to report that in working for a dole payment, these work-for-the-dole participants were working for nearly six dollars less than the minimum wage.

The ABC failed to report that fencing work normally pays well above the minimum wage.

This puff piece for the work-for-the-dole free labour scam reads like the ABC copied and pasted a media release from a Job Services Provider. Maybe if the ABC wants to maintain a shred of journalistic integrity in its rural coverage, it should consider all of the key facts when reporting on indentured-service-for-the-dole.

Ricky Muir – Unemployment sucks and it’s not young peoples fault

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Accidental senator Ricky Muir has gone on the record about his experience on the dole:

When I left school in 1996, I was really desperate to find a job. I needed money to put food on the table and pay the rent, or I would have been out on the streets. I applied for many, many entry-level jobs – including abattoir work – near where I lived in Gippsland, but I couldn’t catch a break for a long time. It was soul-destroying. At times, tears were shed. I did not have the financial support of my parents who were facing their own challenges, so I had to rely on Centrelink payments for more than a year.
…
I want to put it on the record that I completely object to the idea that “young people are lazy”. That’s a lazy stereotype and does not fit the young unemployed people I talk to. Of course, it’s really important to focus on trying hard to find a job, but much more than a “good attitude” is needed these days to land even an entry-level job. I tried hard, but I still found it tough to get work as an early school-leaver without work experience, qualifications or personal contacts.

Full article at the SMH.