Keywords: Underemployment
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 03 April 2019
13 Comments
The much trumpeted projected budget surplus is built on the backs of people who are left out and often made to feel that they are left over, surplus to the economy: people on low pay or no pay, young people, sole parents, people experiencing homelessness, people living with a disability.
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ECONOMICS
- John Falzon
- 21 January 2019
22 Comments
Inequality is not an aberration that comes with neoliberalism. It is the foundation of neoliberalism, along with its partners in social crime: patriarchy and colonisation. As Sharan Burrow, the Australian General Secretary of the ITUC, puts it so poignantly: 'We live in a fragmented world.' The excluded form the majority across the globe.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Lizzie O'Shea
- 05 June 2018
1 Comment
Many people, including on the left, talk about the centrality of work to our sense of purpose and dignity. Work is commonly understood as the method through which we acquire income, a sense of identity, make a contribution and find community, but for many, it has also become an extremely unreliable source of these things.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 01 May 2018
12 Comments
The Turnbull government holds the view that tax relief for companies and middle-income earners is necessary to improve the economic prosperity of Australia, offering a financial hand up to households struggling to pay their bills. For those on Newstart, though, those same increased costs of living are being all but ignored.
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AUSTRALIA
- Amelia Paxman
- 23 October 2017
9 Comments
Increasing the feelings of shame of being unemployed and restricting freedoms doesn't create more jobs and only grinds down a vulnerable group who are subsisting on a meagre payment. But the government is yet to show any meaningful concern over the significant risks of these draconian welfare policies.
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ECONOMICS
- Frank Brennan
- 18 October 2017
10 Comments
The promise of riches from the trickle-down effect is at best patchy for many Australians, and non-existent for others. Continuing with the same economic and social policy settings will exacerbate the already growing divide between the rich and the poor and eventually damage the economy to such an extent that it has a detrimental effect on everyone.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 11 September 2017
2 Comments
The real call of Everyone's Business is to move beyond them and us to admitting that there is only us. If we are truly to build an inclusive and sustainable economy, it can't be just those in full time paid employment who are part of that economy. We take seriously the principles of neo-liberalism, letting the market decide. But we set limits on the market for the common good.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 29 August 2017
10 Comments
In an age of 'budget repair' when both sides of politics are trying to contain the welfare budget, the search for savings and silver bullets is relentless. If Ministers Porter and Tudge are really seeking 'a way of assisting people to get off drugs and back into work', they should convince their cabinet colleagues of the need to increase the Newstart and Youth Allowance so that it might provide a real start for assisting people to survive with dignity while preparing for and getting back into work.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 21 June 2017
15 Comments
In the latest Essential poll, the primary vote for Pauline Hanson's One Nation lifted to 11 per cent. It does not bode well when competence is no longer the baseline; though in a leadership vacuum, 'someone else' holds a natural appeal. In any case, there can be worse things than incompetence. There is timidity. Mediocrity. Running up the cost of doing nothing at all. In so many ways, the Australian political class is holding us back. That is the crux of nearly every policy impasse over the past several years.
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ECONOMICS
- Rachel Kurzyp
- 15 May 2017
3 Comments
Kids these days. We can't hold down a job, we expect to be promoted before we've proven ourselves and we put our career needs before the needs of an organisation. We're the largest age group, making up 37 per cent of the Australian workforce, yet we're expected to shut up and wait our turn. What is it about millennials that has everyone scared? People claim the stereotype is based on generational cohort, not age. But for young Australians in the workforce, they are one and the same thing.
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AUSTRALIA
It would be nice to believe, as the Treasurer wants us to, that better times are around the corner. But while wages stagnate and company profits surge, inequality is at its highest since the 1950s. This is not going to get any better any time soon. By 2019, the highest income earners will have received an effective tax cut of 1.5 per cent compared to all other taxpayers who will be paying an extra 0.5 per cent. For young people especially, Budget 2017 boosts inequality instead of building a better future.
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ECONOMICS
- Veronica Sheen
- 13 December 2016
5 Comments
Over the last two decades we have seen a process of job polarisation. There has been growth in high end jobs, but mostly in low end jobs, the outcome of which has been the hollowing out of middle level jobs. This hollowing out of the middle also relates to greater wealth polarisation, as French economist Thomas Piketty has brought to light. The labour market is under a lot of pressure from many angles, so what does this mean for the project of women's equal opportunity in employment?
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