Category Archives: Announcements

In the wake of the release of the budget, we at the Australian Unemployment Union believe it is a good time to reflect on the question of unemployment in Australia and what exactly the government is doing about it.

Today, there are 769,500 (or 6.2%) unemployed Australians – up from 453,100 in 2008. The level of underemployed people has also skyrocketed over this period – from 657,300 in 2008 to 1.069 million today.

When the rapid decrease of job vacancies is considered, the full extent of Australia’s unemployment crisis can be clearly observed. According to the most recent Government statistics, the amount of job vacancies today is 158,200 – almost half of the 2008 figure.

Altogether, this bleak picture means that there are 11 job seekers competing for each one of these job vacancies.

Given this alarming lack of jobs, it is unsurprising that long-term unemployment has reached unprecedented levels in Australia. Last year it was found that long-term unemployed had reached 500,000 – a figure that has almost doubled in size since the global financial crisis. Job seekers over 55 account for over 200,000 of this number and represent the fastest growing age group.

Currently, the Newstart Allowance is about $123 a week below the poverty line for a single adult. As a result of this low rate, all Newstart recipients are driven into poverty and the relentless financial struggle to survive as prices continue to skyrocket.

Given this clear unemployment crisis, what steps has the Abbott Government taken in this budget to fix this growing problem?

In the 2015 budget, the Abbott government announced they would commit over $330 million (or .0007% of total budget expenditure) on “targeted spending on new jobs initiatives aimed at employers and young job seekers to support the transition to work.”

This is a drop in the ocean and will not even come close to the sort of Government-led job creation needed to help the unemployed and underemployed to work.

If the government complete inaction on job creation was not enough, in 2015 they have also pledged to introduce several measures attacking the unemployed:

After being introduced, this raft of punitive policies will:

(1) subject all Newstart recipients who fail to attend their ‘Job Search’ appointments to stronger penalties which will result in a portion of their Newstart payment permanently withheld unless a ‘reasonable excuse’ is provided;

(2) require all ‘job ready’ Newstart recipients to Work for the Dole after only 6 months of receiving Newstart benefits (formerly 1 year);

(3) increase Work for the Dole requirements to 25 hours per week (formerly 15 hours) for those aged under 30;

(4) require around 37,000 mostly Indigenous job seekers in remote areas aged 18-49 to undertake Work For The Dole activities for 25 hours a week, five days a week, for most of the year.

(5) subject more Newstart recipients to the punitive Income Management scheme

(6) force all Newstart applicants aged under 25 to a one month waiting period, and finally

(7) crackdown on Newstart recipients collecting an incorrect payment

Contrary to what the Government says, these measures will only push the unemployed further away from work and into poverty. Join the AUU and lets fight for the dignity and rights of the unemployed and underemployed.

To see the Minister’s grossly inadequate response to this letter, click here

20 April 2015

The Hon. Scott Morrison, MP
Minister for Social Services
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Minister,

On behalf of the many Australians who believe in the importance of a fair and equitable welfare system, we the undersigned write to voice our strong objections to the harmful and damaging legislation currently before the Senate, which would introduce a 6-month waiting period for unemployment benefits for people under 30.

We also wish to highlight our concerns over the Government’s decision to introduce harsh requirements from 1 July 2015, which will:

(1) subject all Newstart recipients who fail to attend their ‘Job Search’ appointment to stronger penalties which will result in a portion of their Newstart payment permanently withheld unless a ‘reasonable excuse’ is provided;

(2) require all ‘job ready’ Newstart recipients to Work for the Dole after only 6 months of receiving Newstart benefits (formerly 1 year);

(3) increase Work for the Dole requirements to 25 hours per week (formerly 15 hours) for those aged under 30; and finally

(4) require around 37,000 mostly Indigenous job seekers in remote areas aged 18-49 to undertake Work For The Dole activities for 25 hours a week, five days a week, for most of the year.

6 Month Waiting Period for Newstart

We are united in opposing the Government’s proposal to introduce a six-month waiting period for many Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients under 30 years of age. Considering that the Department of Social Services has set aside $229 million in ‘Emergency Relief’ to assist job seekers under 30 with money for food and shelter should the legislation pass, it must be obvious that this measure is anticipated to cause severe and extreme hardship for many job seekers under 30.

We believe the proposition is so bad that it should be rejected and no compromise proposal accepted. No set of complex ‘exemptions’ will make this policy acceptable to the Australian community.

The extra strain this policy will place on the already over-burdened Emergency Relief services will be felt strongly across Australia. We strongly oppose this punitive approach to the unemployed and urge the Government to raise the level of the Newstart Allowance to ensure all Newstart recipients can, at a bare minimum, live above the poverty line (defined by ACOSS to be $400 per week for a single adult).

Currently, the Newstart Allowance is $280 per fortnight below the poverty line. Clearly, care must be taken not to push the already disadvantaged deeper into poverty and further away from entering employment.

Strengthened Compliance Measures

The Government’s plan to financially penalise Newstart recipients who fail to attend ‘Job Search’ interviews without a ‘reasonable excuse’ – which passed the Senate in December 2014 with Labor Party support – will effectively take money out of the hands of Australia’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable. This we cannot accept. Going by the current rate of Newstart recipients being breached for failing to attend ‘Job Search’ interviews, this change will financially penalise approximately 1.4 million Newstart recipients per year after it is introduced on 1 July 2015. Disturbingly, it is the privately owned and operated Job Service Providers who will be responsible for breaching job seekers and reporting them to Centrelink.

We point out in the strongest terms that placing more powers in the hands of Job Service Providers contradicts the Australian Government’s ‘Guide to Social Security Law’, which clearly states that “Employment Services Providers do not make compliance decisions under social security law”. The perverse economic incentives offered to Job Service Providers under the Abbott Government’s $5.1 billion ‘Employment Services 2015’ system further weakens the position of Newstart recipients in their dealings with Job Service Providers.

General Concerns

On a broader note, we are deeply troubled with the Government’s harsh overall attitude toward unemployed Australians. Considering the many difficulties facing the unemployed today – from the fact that according to Government figures there are 11 job seekers for every job vacancy, to the reality that the Newstart benefit is only 64% of the poverty line and has not been increased in real terms since 1994 – the Government’s decision to direct further punishments against the unemployed is a policy that will only serve to push them deeper into poverty and further away from entering employment.

The nation-wide expansion of the Work for the Dole program scheduled to commence on 1 July 2015 is yet another example of the punitive approach to unemployed people that fails to create one single job for unemployed Australians. We point out in the strongest terms that the only real lasting solution to Australia’s growing level of unemployment – currently at a 12-year high and widely expected to increase further – is Government-administered job creation.

We ask you, for the sake of the 850,000 Australians currently receiving Newstart or Youth Allowance, and for the good of Australian society more broadly, to withdraw the legislation proposing a six-month waiting period for unemployment benefits for job seekers under 30. In its place, we demand the Government conduct an extensive program of consultation with those with lived experience of unemployment and their advocates to create the best and most effective policy to meaningfully support unemployed Australians into secure and fulfilling work.

Sincerely,

Anti-Poverty Network SA​
Australian Unemployment Union
Fair Go For Pensioners Coalition
March Australia
Radical Women
Stop Income Management in Playford (SIMPla)
Shelter South Australia
Victorian Trades Hall Council

Thank you to all groups who agreed to sign our open letter to the Minister of Social Services. Please share throughout your networks. If you are in an organisation and would like to support our open letter, please message us at contact@unemploymentunion.com.au and we will add you to the list of the signed.

To see the Minister’s grossly inadequate response to this letter, click here

The Australian Unemployment Union is launching Branches in both Melbourne and Sydney.

The next Branch meeting in Melbourne will be:

When: 8th of May, 2015

Where: Trades Hall

All are welcome!

The next Sydney Branch meeting will be:

26th of May in at National Union of Workers building in Granville (3-5 Bridge Street)

click here for more details 

If you are interested in attending these Branch meetings, or would like to work toward starting an AUU branch in your local area, contact the AUU at contact@unemploymentunion.com.au for further details.

Its time to fight back!

As I’m sure many of you are aware, currently Australia is in the middle of an unemployment crisis.

Going by the official figures, around 750,000 people in Australia are unemployed, which marks the highest national rate of unemployment for 12 years.

But this figure does not tell the whole story.

1. It does not show that over 200,000 unemployed people are over the age of 50 – a 40% increase since 2010
2. It does not show that there are one million under-employed people competing against the unemployed for jobs
3. It does not show that today there are only 145,000 job vacancies. This means that on average there are at least 10 job seekers for every job vacancy.
4. It does not show that the rate of unemployment benefit is about half of what is needed to live above the poverty line, or that Newstart has not increased in real terms since 1994.
5. It does not show that one in four people collecting unemployment benefits have a significant disability and have over the last few years been pushed onto Newstart from the Disability Support Pension or that there are 100,000 single parents who have also been forced onto the starvation rate of Newstart
6. It does not show that Youth Unemployment is more than double the national rate, in some places, triple
7. And lastly, it does not show that long term unemployment has over the last 6 years doubled to 500,000 – or that the average time spent unemployed, according to the Australian Council of Social Services, is 4 years

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The Australian Unemployment Union has just learned that from next Monday (15th September), the Commonwealth government will give Job Service Providers (JSP) the power to directly suspend the welfare payments of its unemployed clients. Previously this was the responsibility of Centrelink and its staff, who as public servants were subject to a number of government regulations that ensured welfare recipients the right of appeal.

By privatising this process, the Government will be placing the lives of all JSP clients into the hands of private companies. As these private companies are less transparent than government-administered institutions, under this new system Job Seekers will find it much more difficult to hold their providers accountable for their decisions. This is a clear attack not only on the unemployed, but also on the Australian welfare state more broadly.

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