By Jon Land
The federal government's May 10 budget and white paper package looks set to continue attacks on young people and the long-term unemployed. A key feature of the white paper is the introduction of a training wage for all long-term jobless and the merging of unemployment benefits and Austudy for under 18s into a youth allowance.
In December, the Committee on Employment Opportunities released a green paper which recommended a training wage for the long-term unemployed. Principally targeted at the 19 to 25 age group, the central thrust of the proposal was that the government would provide subsidies to employers who employ people who have been out of work for an extended period. These people would be paid a "training wage" which is lower than the award wage.
Following submissions over the last six months from employer groups, community organisations and unions, the white paper was developed by the government as part of $5 billion grand plan to reduce unemployment to between 5% and 7% by the year 2000.
Dr Michael Keating, secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and chief architect of the green paper, told a Business Council of Australia summit in Sydney on March 10: "The long-term unemployed do need, we believe, special assistance. The basic notion there is that they should be prepared through various training programs and then all given a job offer. That does not mean in the public sector; the notion would be a combination of subsidy and training wage in private sector jobs."
To the many community and social welfare workers who have to deal with unemployment, this notion is absurd. "This is another piece of fantasy writing", Ken Clift, community worker at Fairfield Community Resource Centre, told Â鶹´«Ã½. "The extent of the structural problems with unemployment will not see large numbers of the long term unemployed gaining permanent full-time work. These proposals will just recycle the unemployed."
Youth unemployment in the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield hovers around the 40% mark, according to official figures.
Natasha Leigh from the Fairfield Liverpool Office of Labour Market Adjustment committee explains: "The Liverpool-Fairfield area has a very high population of people from a non-English speaking background, and this is one of the main reasons for high unemployment. On top of that, a lot of these people have qualifications that are not readily recognised in Australia and that adds to the unemployment barriers that they have to hurdle."
Last year the Department of Employment, Education and Training spent $20 million on English language classes in south-western Sydney alone, yet demand for these courses far exceeded what was available.
"Certain safeguards need to be incorporated into the [training wage] policy by the government and by the agencies running it", added Leigh. "The employers have to give genuine training to improve future job prospects of those taken under the scheme. There needs to be some sort of commitment from the firms to continue to employ these people once their period of training ends".
The proposed "jobs compact", drawn up by employment minister Simon Crean, was agreed to at a special meeting of the ACTU Council on March 10. Crean told the union heads that the government was planning to extend below award training wages to the long-term unemployed and that this should be viewed as a "transitional" wage in recognition that training was taking place. ACTU president Martin Ferguson was quoted in the March 10 Australian as saying that the training wage "was a potentially workable course of action".
Despite claims that conditions and awards will not be undermined, rank-and-file trade unionists, welfare workers and youth activists are not so optimistic. The training wage is seen simply as a rehashing of the failed Newstart scheme. Only 3.1% of people who attained a job under Newstart maintained their position after the government subsidy had finished.
A study by the Democrats also found that funding for the jobs compact is likely to come from cuts in other areas of the budget. The study predicted that the 50,000 jobs expected to be created by the jobs compact would be reduced to 19,000 by job losses elsewhere.
A survey reported in the April 30 Sydney Morning Herald found that 60% of employers were not prepared to take on the long-term unemployed, even if they were offered subsidies with no conditions attached.
Joe Magri from the Young Christian Workers in Sydney told Â鶹´«Ã½, "The concept of the training wage is unjust because it's below the poverty line and doesn't really answer the question of how to get people back into employment. Talking to young people, it's just more of the same. Nothing has really changed, and it's not an adequate response to the unemployment crisis."
There are also fears of tough conditions and reprisals for people who refuse to do training or drop out of training, including loss of payments, said Magri. "It will not only add to the financial hardship of being cut off, but also to workers' frustration. Why should people be trained when they have skills or are trained already? We hear about the record profits in the last quarter — these should be redirected into job creation rather than the government handouts to the bosses so they can exploit workers more."
Demonstrations and actions have been organised across the nation by campus, community and welfare groups prior to the release of the white paper and the budget. A rally in Sydney organised by the Cross Campus Education Network on the April 28 included in its demands: no training wage, no cuts to unemployment benefits for under 18s, and a livable income for all. Other rallies are also taking up education issues such as up-front fees, cuts to funding and voluntary student unionism.
Michael Rafferty, from the Political Economy Department of Sydney University and co-editor of the labour journal Solidarity, told the rally, "One thing that we should dispense with straightaway is this word training wage. It's not a training wage; it's simply a way of exacting a pay cut from young people.
"The basic problem is not that young people are being paid too much or don't have the right skills; the basic problem is a lack of jobs. And this isn't just an Australian problem — there are about 30 million people across the advanced capitalist countries who are unemployed ... the youth wage will not fix unemployment, but what it will do is help keep wages down. This strategy is about targeting the least powerful and the least organised and making them pay for their own jobs."
Natasha Marr, a student from Street Kids Access Tertiary Education (SKATE), spoke of the problems surviving on Austudy. She said the training wage is just part of the attacks on everyone's living standard. "They're going to cut the Jobsearch allowance. Are they going to stop there? Are they going to cut the old age pension? Are they going to stop welfare payments? Are they going to stop helping immigrants? What else are they going to do? They've already cut funding to hospitals and education ...
"The federal government should be able to guarantee every person a job which is socially useful and decently paid, not slave labour, and that is what were asking for here. We have a right to an education and a decent living."
"The training wage is just another subsidy for business from the ALP government", explained Sam Lazzaro, from Resistance. Since they came to power in 1983, corporate tax has dropped from 49% to 33%, while at the same time wages and conditions have gone down. The stifling of unions' ability to defend wages and awards through the Accord process has shifted some $300 billion from wages to profit.
"We need real job creation policies that involve massive investment in the public sector — in education, health care, public transport and restoration of the environment. We need a political alternative to campaign for these demands, to actively mobilise and involve people in the fight for better living conditions."