“Forcing the Unemployed to Work for the Dole will help them get Jobs”
According to the employment data, 20 per cent of people who had done Work for the Dole had found a job three months later. Of those that had, two thirds were in part-time work. This makes Work for the Dole actually the least successful of all Newstart job training programs. Statistically speaking, specialist training programs, voluntary work and unpaid work experience are all much quicker pathways to work. So why implement it?
The reasoning behind the Work for the Dole policy is closely tied with Myth #4, that anyone can get a job if they try hard enough. In fact, the whole welfare system is based around this piece of fiction.
However, when this myth is exposed, the whole idea behind Work for the Dole – namely, punishing the unemployed by forcing them to do unpaid, pointless, menial jobs – quickly crumbles. In a society where there are 19 Job Seekers for every job vacancy, it is clear that Work for the Dole serves only as cruel and unusual form of punishment for unemployed people.
The only group to benefit from this harsh policy, that forces unemployed people to do menial labour for no pay is… you guessed it, business! Confronted with Work for the Dole, unemployed people become more willing to accept any work they can to escape this punishment, no matter how bad the wages and conditions. Consequently, the declining rate of wage growth is directly linked to the Work for the Dole program, a program which is quickly expanding along with the unemployment rate.
Instead of addressing the real problem facing Australia, the chronic lack of good, liveable-wage job vacancies, the government has instead announced an expanded $5.1 billion Work for the Dole program to being 1 July 2015. Under this plan expanded scheme, Job Seekers under 30 will have to work for the dole for 25 hours a week for six months a year, while those between the ages of 30-50 will be required to work 15 hours a week for six months a year.
(This is due to change again, on October 1, 2016)
Back to Myth Busting campaign.
The floggings will continue until morale improves.
(Or in other words, we really haven’t moved all that far from our penal colonial roots, have we?)
I am a great believer in voluntary work as an effective pathway into employment. In fact it has worked for me on many occasions. I am now 63 y.o and am currently on New Start. The last few years I have found that my age has been a serious obstacle to getting back into the work force for reasons I believe to be obvious.
Voluntary work is effective, i believe, for the following reasons
1.it allows the person to back into the habit of working, being punctual, getting on with work colleagues etc
2.Networking in your chosen field and finding like minded people.
I´m sure there are many more that others can think of.
But, forcing a young person, or anyone really, to work in an environment where they are not respected, not valued and where their health, safety and well being is continually placed at risk serves no other purpose than to demoralise and humiliate them and to satisfy the whims of those incapable of coming up with better solutions to an obviously increasing problem.