Unemployed workers distraught over budget failures
The AUWU calls for a caring and meaningful response to economic crisis
The Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union is disgusted by the coalition government’s federal budget, which flaunts a lack of care for the needs of people who rely on income support and everyone who was vulnerable before or because of this recession.
This budget has produced an outpouring of despair from AUWU members.
Weeks ago the government launched its campaign against poor people, spurning us by announcing it would refuse to address the most important social policy question facing it: the rate of income support payments.
While there are hiring incentives for business, this trickle-down project is not the game to play in an economic and global health crisis. What unwaged workers and the whole community desperately need is the certainty, security and safety that can only be achieved through direct financial support.
We cannot be dependent on the whims of the market to determine who gets thrown the crumbs of low paid work and who gets to starve.
The flagship policy purported to be for unemployed workers in this budget is the chance of a winning lottery ticket to a job in the precarious workforce through the JobMaker hiring credit. The scheme is so inadequate that people working in government-subsidised jobs will still be reliant on unemployment payments, meaning they will continue to be subjected to monitoring and punishment by job agencies.
The failure to protect people from poverty by permanently increasing JobSeeker and related payments displays the coalition government’s contempt for unwaged, underemployed and insecure workers.
At this pivotal moment in history we are bereft of leadership, strategy or a coherent vision that will enable people to find their feet, regain confidence and feel secure.
Instead the government’s “plan” is to thrust us into unsuitable work so it can temporarily inflate the number of people it counts as employed – all so it can return to the disastrous debt and deficit rhetoric and austerity measures that were failing long before now.
There are four actions the government can immediately take to avert the looming housing and mental health catastrophe faced by millions of people, both in and out of work:
Permanently increase income support payments to above the poverty line.
Abolish mutual obligations and private job agencies, and replace these with meaningful services to support people into sustainable employment.
Expand public training and education – reverse the cuts and stop subsidising designer schools that only benefit those at the uppermost echelons of society.
Create meaningful jobs in the chronically underfunded care sector and ensure they are fairly paid, recognising its value to our communities by investing in this and other currently unwaged work.
Racist policies that target First Peoples and migrants, vicious cuts to homelessness funding and prioritising tax cuts will not benefit unemployed workers, and just further entrenches inequality in a cruelly unequal nation.
We call upon all political parties to include us and all other grassroots groups who advocate for and defend the rights of the most vulnerable members of society. Allow us to help you formulate meaningful policy. Acknowledge that unemployed people are people, not economic units or political pawns.
It is time for more creativity in policy making by including those affected by government decisions – the people they are intended to serve – and reducing the involvement of technocrats and those who have had undue influence for too long.
The government responded to a global health crisis by reducing inequality to its lowest point in 30 years. There must be no snapback.
Media contact: media at auwu.org.au
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