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AUSTRALIA: THE WORK-FOR-THE-DOLE SCHEME IS NOT
INTENDED TO GET PEOPLE WORKING. IT NEVER WAS.
How not to get people into jobs
It was recently announced that the work-for-the-dole
scheme would widen this year to include drug addicts and the homeless.
You don't hear much about the scheme these days, but there it is, still
running. It remains the Federal Government's major response to youth and
long-term unemployment - the flagship of their mutual obligation policy.
So why do I hate it as much now as I did when it was introduced, nearly
eight years ago? Let me count the ways.
Work for the dole is a flawed and cynical program. A
piece of populism masked as policy. A cruel hoax played on unemployed
youth by a comfortable generation of politicians more concerned with
winning the support of taxpayers than with doing anything to help the
jobless. It is an odious exercise in creating scapegoats. A program
designed purely to appeal to us, the employed, which fails even in its
limited aims to help those without work. I could go on. But work for the
dole is not about to be scrapped. I may be out of step with popular
opinion, but I'm not naive. Once you've introduced it, there's no going
back. No government would dare. But we should know what we're stuck
with. Work for the dole sounds OK. Reasonable, even. That's the secret
of its success. Unemployed people are asked to give something back in
return for their benefit. What could be wrong with that?
That depends, I suppose, on what we want from programs
aimed at the unemployed. I would have thought most people — from hard
right-wingers to bleeding hearts like me — would want a program that
actually helps the unemployed get jobs. That helps them get off
benefits. Well, here's some news: work for the dole has never had any
success in this area. Indeed, research by the Melbourne Institute
(commissioned by the Government itself) found work-for-the-dole
participants were 12 per cent less likely — repeat, less likely — to
find a job than unemployed people not in the scheme. The institute
blamed the stigma attached to the scheme, and the fact participants had
less time to hunt for real jobs. The research warned of possible
permanent scarring effects on participants, and found that the program
had significant adverse effects in getting people into work. We can
interpret our backing of such a program, then, as tacit support for
keeping people on the dole rather than helping them off it. According to
data from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, only
21.9 per cent of work-for-the-dole participants were in jobs three
months after finishing the program. (Most of these jobs were part-time.)
By comparison, three months after completing Jobstart — the program that
was scrapped to make way for work for the dole — 59 per cent of
participants were in work.
In other words, the Government trumpets a program with
little more than one-third the success rate of the program it replaced.
In any other area of public policy, this would be met with outrage. But
hey, it's just the unemployed, so we not only let the program's
architects get away with it, we pat them on the back. The Government has
an interesting response when it is pointed out how unsuccessful work for
the dole is in getting the unemployed into work. It blithely states that
work for the dole was never meant to help people into employment. And
the incredible thing is, it's true. The scheme never had as one of its
objectives helping the unemployed get real work. So the Government
ditched a program that had some success in moving the long-term
unemployed into work, and replaced it with a program that doesn't even
aim to do this — and so, of course, fails to. Someone please explain how
this makes any sense. I mean, if work for the dole isn't about helping
people get a job, what the hell is it for? As we cheer on this pointless
parade, the jobless have every right to shout that the emperor is
wearing no clothes.
What the long-term unemployed need is real training in
real jobs, backed by intensive assistance tailored to them, as
individuals. What do they get instead? Hoops to jump through. Scarring
roles in a circus. Sure, occasionally the Government will make a big
song and dance about some work-for-the-dole project that could at least
loosely be described as interesting and challenging. Call it the anomaly
that heads the media release. But to read down the list of
work-for-the-dole projects on the Government's website is indicative,
and almost funny if it wasn't so distressing. Certain words and phrases
keep jumping out: gardening, revegetation projects, weed eradication,
grounds maintenance, improving the environment. Who would have thought
there were so many ways to describe weeding? There's nothing wrong with
weeding, of course. We should all do some. And maybe in 1950s and '60s
Australia, when our leaders' views were being formed and then hardened,
a commitment to such odd-jobbing was enough to land you a paid job,
perhaps even start you on a career. But in 2005, in an economy as modern
and ruthless as ours, and with youth facing work challenges their
parents can't even imagine, having weeding programs as a response to
unemployment is a sad joke.
And just as sad is that we continue to support such a
program.
Simon Castles
11 January, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/How-not-to-get-people-into-jobs/2005/01/10/1105206046029.html?oneclick=true
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