Unemployed workers are forced to do all sorts of unfair and unsafe Work for the Dole activities, and are ridiculed and humiliated while they do them.
This page is a way to collect all these stories. If you have an experience, please email us on contact@unemployedworkersunion.com or post it below.
Story #1
“Afternoon I’m new here and just have a question regarding wftd. I waked on mine after four days since I was ridiculed and demeaned whenever possible and insulted before I finished what little I was asked to do this morning and left. I called my jsa and she said I need wait for her manager to be in so I can do a statement however I’m extremely worried centrelink will be stopped since I walked. Is that legal if I do get cut since I left before I broke and with what little dignity I had?? I live alone and my home is the home my kids come to during holidays its hard enough to survive I can’t risk not getting paid even just once. Thank you for allowing me to rant.”
As we go into the new political year, I am putting out a request to our sitting leaders: the Australian “innovation nation” desperately needs some innovative policy.
Our stagnant political environment has got to respond to a changing economy by looking at radical ideas and trying new things.
I have one such idea. Let’s trial an Australian basic income.
An Aussie version of the universal basic income would be a payment made to every citizen, no matter how rich or poor.
At $1000 a month, it would cover one’s primary needs and create a floor for living standards. It would be netted off from existing government programs such as the pension and Newstart, as well as from the tax deductions received by the rich.
Such a program would really make a meaningful difference to the lives of people struggling in the new world of Uber and the changing nature of work.
Growth in the so-called “gig economy” — driven by changes in technology and shifting demand and supply relationships in the labour market — means that thinking about unemployment and welfare needs to change.
Employment is becoming increasingly unstable, with a growth in casual, part-time or short-term roles.
The ABI would allow everyday people to continue to plan and engage with the labour market, to make the economy grow strongly and fairly for decades to come.
Australia needs this because our welfare system is broken. It’s well known that means-testing welfare payments warps the incentive to work.
For every dollar a jobseeker on Newstart earns over $102 a fortnight, they are penalised 50 per cent via reductions in their welfare. Above $252, it is 60c in the dollar.
This is a higher effective rate than that paid by the richest in the land. It’s little wonder that people get stuck on welfare.
While removing the disincentive to work, the ABI also allows the unemployed to take risks and engage fully in the fluctuations of the gig economy. It would promote economic dynamism and individual responsibility, and break dependency cycles.
Importantly, with such a program in place, people will be able to start businesses or join start-ups knowing there is a safety net there during the no-income early phase.
The payments allow people to participate with dignity in society. Evidence from Britain is that this radically improves the engagement of those at the bottom of the social ladder and brings people back into employment — it does not get them to sit on the sofa watching television.
This idea has a history of support by some on both the Left and Right and has been gaining traction recently in Canada, Switzerland and The Netherlands.
The biggest splash came from Finland, where a trial is being implemented next year.
We cannot wait for the rest of the world to take the lead on this. To begin with, we should trial our own version of the program with a group of 50,000 people in Tasmania or South Australia.
Such a trial would tell us how such a scheme could provide for a uniquely Australian context.
By creating the momentum for change, it would give us a chance to overhaul the Australian concept of welfare.
And it would allow us to show the world we are the innovative nation we claim to be.
The real problem with the ABI is its cost: even on a net basis, the ABI undeniably needs a major increase to tax levels. Where would the money come from?
As I have advocated before, changes to negative gearing, land taxes, superannuation, GST and company tax would all be good places to start.
Australia is one of the world’s wealthiest countries, with some of the lowest rates of taxation. We are in a unique position to try out a truly new idea, and make it our own.
For too long, Australian politics has tinkered with tax and transfers as though our democracy were powerless to make a change.
If the Prime Minister wants an innovative economy, he’s going to need the innovative policy to match.
Mark Carnegie is an investor and founder of MH Carnegie & Co.
In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across the country, old wounds are being reopened. Many of our people are being forced to revisit the past trauma of income management and stolen wages.
The federal government’s Healthy Welfare Card has created great concern and contention, as the measure will disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and claw back our hard-won rights and freedoms.
The government, with the support of the opposition, has passed legislation, without any amendments and with very little consultation, to control the finances of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in three trial sites, beginning with the South Australian town of Ceduna next month. The third proposed site, of Halls Creek in the Kimberley, rejected the idea out of hand, with the shire president Malcolm Edwards saying it had adopted the position of its Aboriginal advisory committee to reject the plan.
“At the last meeting, they voted against having the card. They thought it was a bit unfair because it targeted everyone,” Mr Edwards said.
All welfare recipients in the trial areas will have 80 per cent of their welfare quarantined to a bank card. Only 20 per cent of their welfare payment would be available in cash, which the Assistant Minister for Social Services, Alan Tudge, has himself admitted could leave some welfare recipients with as little as $60 in their pocket each week.
It is deeply troubling that the government is “contemplating how to proceed should the trials prove successful” before any trials have even begun.
It begs the question — have the trials been structured in such a way the results have already been predetermined?
What is most perplexing is the government’s apparent fascination with controlling the finances of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Our mob are once again the guinea pigs in a trial program lacking any evidence base.
As I outlined in my 2015 Social Justice and Native Title Report, where people have experienced benefits as a result of income management, the results have been modest when compared to their stated objectives. For many, income management results in few or no benefits, and a “sense of loss of control, shame and unfairness”.
Any possible benefit of the card must be weighed against the sense of disempowerment our people already face. It must be weighed against the stigma our people continue to face, and the restrictions placed on our basic rights and freedoms we fought so hard for.
We are told by the government that the measure will tackle the serious issue of alcohol and drug abuse within our communities.
There is no doubt that alcohol and drug abuse are contributing factors to creating dangerous and disruptive communities; and all children have the right to grow up in safe, nurturing environments — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are no exception.
We have no evidence to support the prediction that a restriction on cash payments will curb an individual’s addiction or their ability to provide a safe environment for their children.
According to Mr Tudge, restricting supply is an effective measure to address these problems. But in the same way that people with serious addiction can circumvent restrictions on supply, they will undoubtedly find innovative ways to circumvent limits on their capacity to purchase.
The role of government is to provide effective policy, based on the best available evidence. In the case of the Healthy Welfare Card, there is no conclusive evidence that it will effectively address issues of alcohol and drug abuse, and encourage good parenting.
Our people do not need a compulsory blanket approach to tackling these issues. We want to work with government to develop long-term, effective solutions to the challenges we face.
I agree with Mr Tudge when he says, “collectively we have to get control of the alcohol abuse that destroys communities and threatens the next generation”, but I disagree that the card is “the solution”. Serious addiction requires thoughtful treatment options rather than punitive measures and silver bullets.
The hardest part of this proposal to accept is that yet again the treatment of our people will be different to mainstream Australia, and it is this differentiation of treatment that we have fought so hard to bring into the open.
Mick Gooda is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner.
Sarah Martin, 20 January 2016 Assistant Minister for Social Services Alan Tudge is overseeing the rollout of the cashless welfare card. Picture: Stuart McEvoy
A cashless welfare card aimed at stemming alcohol abuse would be rolled out across the country under a welfare reform the Turnbull government is considering taking to the election.
As regional trouble spots line up to be chosen for trials of the government’s new Healthy Welfare Card to begin next month, The Australian understands the Coalition may seek an election mandate to extend the card to welfare recipients across regional Australia if they achieve positive results.
Under the new system — proposed by mining magnate Andrew Forrest in his review of the welfare system in 2014 — 80 per cent of a person’s government payment would be quarantined to a bank card that could not be used to buy alcohol and gambling products, nor converted to cash.
The remaining 20 per cent could be accessible as cash.
Last year, the government successfully passed legislation to allow the card to be trialled in three test sites, affecting up to 10,000 welfare recipients, beginning in the far-west South Australian town of Ceduna next month, and the East Kimberley in northern Western Australia in March.
The Australian can reveal that since the East Kimberley trial site was announced in November, up to seven West Australian shires have contacted Liberal MPs seeking to take part in the trial of the card, predominantly from the Mid-West and Gascoyne regions.
Melissa Price, MP for the vast regional seat of Durack, said the councils had contacted her because they were struggling with social dysfunction arising from alcohol abuse that was not being curbed by existing programs.
“There is a sense of urgency, certainly in my patch of regional Western Australia, where in some cases we have got alcohol management plans that have worked to a certain extent, but people want to see the Healthy Welfare Card implemented alongside the alcohol management plans,” Ms Price said.
“Without a doubt, if you don’t have a community that is abusing alcohol, it is better not just for the individual but for the community itself.”
Ms Price is pushing for the regional centre of Geraldton to become the third trial site.
This would allow the government to test the card in a city where the majority of welfare recipients are non-indigenous and provide a blueprint for how the card could work in metropolitan areas.
“Obviously it is subject to the results of the trial, but it is very interesting to see how this could get rolled out in a major city as this is not just a problem in the bush,” she said.
If the card were rolled out across all regional communities in Australia, up to 100,000 people on government income support could be captured.
It could include more people if the Basics Card in the Northern Territory were replaced, or if metropolitan trouble-spots currently subject to income quarantining were also included.
Assistant Minister for Social Services Alan Tudge, who is overseeing the rollout of the card, is hopeful trials will prove the measure can be the “solution” to alcohol-induced social harm.
He says that if the trials are successful, the government will want the card to have a broader application.
“Offering the card to other regions would a logical next step, beginning with those Western Australian locations that have already shown initial support,” Mr Tudge writes in The Australian today.
“Others have suggested that the card could have wider application.
“It is early days, but one thing is clear: collectively we have to get control of the alcohol abuse that destroys communities and now threatens the next generation.
“The cashless welfare debit card may be the solution.”
