Category Archives: Announcements

AUWU Launches its Green Jobs Guarantee Campaign!

Today, there are three million people looking for work in Australia.

The AUWU demands the government address this crisis by implementing a Green Jobs Guarantee, first in regional areas, and then nation wide.

You can read the outline of our Green Jobs Guarantee for regional areas here.

Everyone deserves a right to dignified employment and social security.

The proposal was written by Connor Jolley (RMIT University) and Professor Rob Watts (RMIT University), in consultation with the AUWU.

If you would like to get involved in our Green Jobs Guarantee campaign, sign up to volunteer here. 

The AUWU has no funding or political affiliations and relies entirely on donations and the work of our unemployed volunteers. Become a monthly contributor here. Not amount is too small.

 

We Just Gave Sarina Russo With Golden Demerit Award

We just presented Sarina Russo with the inaugural ‘Golden Demerit’ certificate of suffering for his services toward the deprivation of unemployed workers’ dignity!

Here is AUWU President Owen Bennett handing over the prestigious gong to Sarina Russo’s Victorian Manager Adrian Jenkins at yesterdays ‘award ceremony’. Video to come shortly!

Due to the hard work of Adrian and his team, the majority of AUWU members who called our hotline over the last month ‘nominated’ Sarina Russo for the Golden Demerit Certificate of Suffering.

Congratulations Adrian!

How to Nominate
If you missed your opportunity to vote in last month’s Golden Demerit, don’t worry – the voting for October’s Golden Demerit is now open.

You can nominate your job agency by telling your story on the AUWU forum here.

Join the Campaign

If you would like to present a Golden Demerit Certificate of Suffering award to your local Sarina Russo office, please sign up to our campaigns team here or send us an email here.

Support the Campaign

The AUWU is a volunteer organisation run by the unemployed for the unemployed with no paid staff or political affiliations. To help the AUWU continue the work it is doing, we would greatly appreciate a donation through our website here. No amount is too small.

Golden Demerit Profile: Sarina Russo

A lot of people come to the AUWU for help with their difficult jobactive / DES agencies through our advocacy hotline and we keep tabs on which ones we hear about the most. In 2018-19, private job agencies like Sarina Russo processed 2.3 million payment suspensions. According to the Guardian, one in five are later found to be incorrect.

Sarina Russo wins the prize for the most dishonourable mentions (well, actually it was a close tie between Sarina Russo and Max Employment and Sarina wins the coin toss). Sarina Russo represented 13% of cases we dealt with on the advocacy line. The agency is currently celebrating 40 years of operation, which means 40 years of making millions on government contracts to be the parole officers of the unemployed.

The way the job agency system is set up, private agencies are incentivized to punish for profit. Some agencies take this to extreme lengths. The JobActive and Disability Employment Service agencies have at their fingertips the ability to cut people off Newstart – effectively forcing people into dire poverty and potential homelessness. There is no oversight by the government, and unemployed workers have no right of appeal.

With the flick of a button they like to send people into financial panic – too many times this is because of a mistake made by the agency or because the claimant didn’t meet some absurd expectations of ‘compliance’. These agencies make enormous profits from government contracts, for example Sarina Russo’s 2015-2020 contract is worth $606M. For all that money they do very little when it comes to genuinely helping people find suitable work – its money wasted on a bureaucratic wormhole of meaningless activities that we’re forced to participate in. We can’t let them get away with this anymore. Let’s make an example of the worst offenders. They exploit us, bully us, force us into poverty and bore us to death but together we can shut them down!

Data from our hotline:

38% of complaints on our advocacy line were due to a failure to provide basic services
36% were about Job agency bullying
94.2% reported that job agencies had not explained their rights to job seekers.

Very Common problems with Sarina Russo include:

Bullying from staff
Being forced to attend a ridiculous amount of appointments or activities
Basic privacy not being respected
Being unfairly forced into work for the dole
Being denied reasonable notice for appointments and activities
Medical conditions not being recognised.

Last Chance to Submit to Newstart Senate Inquiry

The Senate has just extended the due date for submissions to its Newstart inquiry!

Submissions will now close on Monday September 30.

Writing a submission takes no longer than 2 – 3 minutes. The more submissions received, the more pressure there will be on the Morrison government to commit to an increase.

Join the growing movement for an increase to Newstart by submitting on the government website here!

You do not have to be receiving Newstart to make a submission. All you need is an opinion on the adequacy of the Newstart payment.

It can be hard to know where to start with a submission. To help, we have prepared some some prompts to guide you here. This will help you to respond to the terms of reference of the inquiry.

We recommended submitting:

  1. Online on the government’s website
  2. By email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au or seniorclerk.committees.sen@aph.gov.au
  3. Please send simone.casey@auwu.org.au a copy of your submission as we are collecting stories for the case studies in our submission (we will contact you for permission before we do this)

For more information on the Privacy of your submission, please click here.

If you need any other information, please contact Hayden Patterson at sa.auwu@gmail.com or on (08) 8035 4213.

Finally, the AUWU is a volunteer organisation with no paid staff or political affiliations. To help the AUWU continue the work it is doing, we would greatly appreciate a donation through our website here. No amount is too small.

Newstart Senate Submissions Close This Friday!

The Senate has launched an inquiry on Newstart and related payments.

This inquiry – titled ‘Adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia’ – gives us an great opportunity to tell the government about how the low rate of Newstart has been affecting our lives.

Submissions close this Friday the 13th of September. It is due to report on 27 March 2020.

You do not have to be receiving Newstart to make a submission. All you need is an opinion on the adequacy of the Newstart payment!

It can be hard to know where to start with a submission. To help, we have prepared some some prompts to guide you here. This will help you to respond to the terms of reference of the inquiry.

We recommended submitting:

  1. Online on the government’s website
  2. Email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au or seniorclerk.committees.sen@aph.gov.au
  3. Please simone.casey@auwu.org.au a copy of your submission as we are collecting stories for the case studies in our submission (we will contact you for permission before we did this)

For more information on the Privacy of your submission, please click here.

If you need more information, please contact Hayden Patterson sa.auwu@gmail.com or on (08) 8035 4213.

Finally, the AUWU is a volunteer organisation with no paid staff or political affiliations. To help the AUWU continue the work it is doing, we would greatly appreciate a donation through our website here. No amount is too small.

Join Our Free Weekly Advocacy Mentorship in Melbourne

AUWU advocacy services are a life-line for unemployed workers. For many in the employment services system, there is nowhere else to turn.

As an unfunded advocacy service run entirely by unemployed volunteers, responding to every advocacy call and email is a challenge. Over the past few months, there has been an unprecedented demand for our service.
Join our Melbourne advocacy mentorship program and help us make sure everyone who contacts the AUWU advocacy services gets the support they need. Every Tuesday at the NUW Offices in Melbourne, experienced AUWU advocates have been mentoring Advocacy volunteers and helping them get the skills they need to help unemployed workers deal with the increasingly punitive employment ‘services’ system.

AUWU Volunteers at Mentorship Workshop held at NUW offices in Melbourne, 28 May 2019

The mentorship will consist of a workshop at NUW offices in Melbourne designed to help AUWU Volunteers prepare to call back people who left messages on the AUWU’s advocacy hotline – all under the supervision of an experienced team of AUWU advocates. The aim will be to run these sessions every fortnight on and on-going basis.

These sessions will be run every Tuesday in at least May. Please check the AUWU facebook events for more information and to RSVP to an event.