A Senate inquiry is peeling back the façade of Australia’s purgatory for unemployed people, showing the harm, the futility and the infuriating uselessness of jobactive, the latest incarnation of our privatised employment system.
Instead of helping people get work by taking the time to work through their problems or actually listening to unemployed people, they are subject to a wide range of compliance measures, to ward off their purported dole bludging tendencies. They must do hours of Work for the Dole (WFTD), attend useless training, take drug and alcohol tests, not have access to cash, go to parenting classes, all regardless of their skills, interests or other responsibilities, all administered by various job agencies, now known as jobactive.
Since the 90s, Australia’s income support system and employment services have shifted to an ever harsher regime of compliance and penalty, while failing to find work for hundreds of thousands of people.
These 65 private job agencies receive $7.3 billion over the five year period of jobactive. The problem here isn’t the amount of money — in fact, Australia spends half of the OECD average on people who are unemployed — but that it’s not money well spent.
I was a pretty damaged kid when I first engaged with the CRS Australia, the former public disability employment agency, my illness and disability were almost the least of my problems. I was angry, isolated and arrogant (as one youth worker told me in frustration). I’d worked as a cleaner, or a kitchen hand and a waiter, relying on my body to earn a living. The early 90s recession arrived at the same time as my illness, leaving me unemployed, bones aching and skin raw.
I was referred to the CRS while I was on the dole. As well as recommending I apply for Sickness Benefit, my case worker sat down and asked me what I wanted and needed.
I had no idea and very few people had ever asked. Gradually, she was able to tease out the tenuous ideas I had about study, work and even helped me get some driving lessons. I started a TAFE course, learning about this new-fangled stuff called Windows and Word.
"The world of work has radically changed, with fewer and fewer jobs available for those without skills or education which are expensive to acquire. Anglicare’s Jobs Snapshot found that close to 111,000 people are competing for 26,000 available low-skilled, entry-level jobs."
I saw her regularly over the next few years, slowly starting to trust that she really wanted to help, and that trying these weird new things wasn’t as scary as I feared they might be.
Not everything worked, or was the right thing for me, but I didn’t face harsh sanctions or have my income support cut if I couldn’t do them. Eventually, I was ready to work in an office, and I got a wage-subsidy for six months for an admin assistant job.
The latest figures show that of people who found jobs through jobactive, only 23.3 per cent were full time, 55 per cent were casual and 41 per cent who were placed in work still had a job six months later. Less than a quarter were employed after doing volunteer work, and of the most disadvantaged, only 27 per cent found a job after three months with jobactive.
Emma Dawson, of Per Capita, told the inquiry that 'full time placements have gone from 44 per cent in 2004 to 23 per cent today. That's the number of people who have actually been put into long-term work … We know that jobactive staff now spend over a third of their time — 34.6 per cent of their time — on compliance measures and administration related to compliance and only 10.3 per cent of their time working with employers'.
Since then, the world of work has radically changed, with fewer and fewer jobs available for those without skills or education which are expensive to acquire. Anglicare’s Jobs Snapshot found that close to 111,000 people are competing for 26,000 available low-skilled, entry-level jobs. Anne Maxwell, from the Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU), told the inquiry that 'we are stigmatised as dole bludgers and leaners and it is happening in the context that there are simply not enough jobs for everyone'.
For people who are sick and/or disabled, there have been big changes too. About a quarter of people now surviving on Newstart are sick and or/disabled — they too are subject to the jobactive system. ACOSS’s Faces of Unemployment report says that 'many find it harder to secure a job because they belong to a group that’s often discriminated against in employment, including 13 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background, 18 per cent from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and 22 per cent with a disability'.
In his submission to the inquiry, Mick Smart, a person who was severely injured while on a WFTD program, and is on Newstart said:
'I have had my payments suspended many times in error, received a debt while bed ridden and unable to challenge it, was forced to attend the office of my jobactive provider and fill out a new Job Plan while under medical exemption, up until recently I still had the threat of being placed in another WFTD activity regardless of my health condition, in and out of hospital, disabled enough for a parking badge, to be a fall risk in hospital, but not enough to qualify for DSP (Disability Support Pension) since my injury is neither treated nor stabilized, so I am forced to apply for work I cannot do, while unable to afford medical treatment or proper housing, and keep receiving contradictory paperwork from multiple departments as to my assessed work capacity.'
At the first hearing in Melbourne, he told Senators that 'in my experience the Work for the Dole scheme is a slave labour program as a business incentive'.
In his submission, Jeremy Poxon says that 'from my perspective, no "mutual" obligation actually exists within jobactive. I’ve certainly got obligations at my end (apply for 20 jobs, participate in work for the dole, etc) but there doesn’t seem to be any obligation on the side of the job agent to actually do anything to help me achieve my outcomes'.
The Centre for Policy Development agrees, saying that 'a big, standardised system churning through the unemployed and rewarding short-term placements with individual payments will not help produce a skilled, entrepreneurial, resilient workforce. Nor will it help the most disadvantaged'.
So what’s the answer? One, put forward by the public sector union, the CPSU, is to return to having a public provider. They told the recent inquiry that 'there was a lot of client satisfaction with the services provided by CRS Australia … having a public provider would in fact lift the standards in employment services. There would essentially be something that other providers would seek to emulate'. That was certainly my experience with the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service, the CRS.
In the current system, is there any room for this kind of long term trust-building or for trying and failing, without the threat of losing the few dollars people have to keep a roof over their head or pay for food? I think about how my case worker rang me regularly, and how she reminded me that I could do this, and that I had every right to be in this fancy office, just like the other people.
This kind of support made a significant impact on my ability to both have an income, but also to start to heal from trauma and adjust to being disabled. I wasn’t used to trusting adults, or anything really, so having someone willing to take the time I needed to build that trust was essential. So when I think about the angry, hurt, sick kid I was, I know I wouldn’t have survived the current harsh compliance regime.
The AUWU believes that people in the system, people who have experienced jobactive, Work for the Dole, sanctions and long-term unemployment need to be involved in fixing this broken system. Their submission recommends that 'there is a great deal of value to unlock from employment services users, by working with them to co-design services'.
I agree. It’s time for a change that stops punishing people who are out of paid work.
El Gibbs is a freelance writer specialising in the area of disability and social services and has over 15 years experience in the community and NFP sector, as well as politics. Find her on Twitter @bluntshovels.