By Sean Malloy
Although they use slightly different rhetoric, the ALP and the Liberal Party appear to agree that young people's wages need to be reduced, either directly or the institution of a "training" wage.
Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly spoke to a number of people who work in social services about the proposals coming from the ALP and the Liberal Party.
Sue Bull, who works with young people in Fairfield in Sydney's west, said that "the summit should include a genuine representation of young people, not a token delegate.
"Young people's needs are not being addressed at the summit. Proposals that direct people into ongoing training and education does not create jobs, it just postpones the problem."
Bull said the government was "placing the burden of the recession on working people, particularly young workers". Instead, it "should place the burden on big business to pay for training and job creation.
"Cutting young people's wages doesn't create jobs for them. During the 1930s Depression, wages dropped dramatically, but that didn't create jobs. In Third World countries the same applies: low wages do not equal job creation.
"There has been an outcry against the Liberals $3 per hour proposal, and rightly so, but what is just as disturbing is the ALP/ACTU proposal of $3.07 per hour ($117per week). This proposal has been clothed in buzz words like 'competencies', 'skills experience' and 'training', but it is still a proposal that means working for wages under the poverty line", she said.
Bull thinks that part of the solution to unemployment will be a shorter working week, cuts to military spending and increased taxes on big business dedicated to job creation in health, environment and other public sectors.
Michael Raper of the Welfare Rights Centre believes that "the youth summit itself will not solve anything. It is one day of political grandstanding. If anyone thinks you can get a solution out of one day like the Liberals tried to do out of their jobs summit, they are kidding themselves.
"The problems are complex and the solutions are not simplistic; sloganeering will not solve the problem", he added.
Raper welcomes the focus and attention on the problem of youth unemployment that the summit and the ensuing media discussion have generated. On the issue of wages, Raper says, "We do not accept there is any basis for age-based discrimination; we oppose age-based discrimination in the social security system. Social security payments for 16- and 17-year-olds are ridiculously low and in fact do not constitute anything like a living income."
Raper adds that he doesn't see payments based on competency as a problem, provided that the lowest pay rate "is accompanied by a training scheme which provides people on the lower rate with the opportunity to increase their competencies", and that those on low rates have "access to a proper training scheme that provides full rate wages and they are not kept on a lower rate".
Raper thinks that wages and benefits for young people "ought to be rational ... ought to be based on a study of living costs" and "related to the poverty line".
John Tomlinson from the ACT Council of Social Services said, "It is a government responsibility to create jobs and to ensure that those without jobs have an income maintenance system capable of sustaining them above the poverty line.
"It is nonsense to tell workers to spend so that others can have jobs when this government has deliberately run down the economy and refuses to use its own resources to boost job creation. This is just an attempt to shift the blame for unemployment from the government to workers."
Tomlinson also said that the Liberals' youth wage proposal was "a false debate ... which suggested that a youth wage of $3 or $3.50 is better for young people because it is higher than the youth dole. Such a debate is based on the presumption that the youth dole is sufficient to sustain young people.
"The suggestion that young people should work for $3 per hour or $114 a week (when they can get full-time work) has to be put alongside the real rate of the poverty line. There are no youth food prices, or youth housing prices or youth fares."
As part of a solution to unemployment, Tomlinson supports a 12-month moratorium on increases in superannuation levies, a 1.25% income tax levy on dedicated to job creation and a shorter working week to create more jobs.
Karin Sowada, Democrat senator from NSW, said the rhetoric from the Labor and Liberal parties was a "smokescreen for turning young people into an impoverished, second-class labour force.
"We risk creating two underclasses of youth: those without a job and those who work for slave wages.
"With both Labor and Liberal parties promising to slash minimum youth wages to the level of the dole, many young people will see little point in searching for scarce jobs. Sowada said such youth wages "will also be a disaster for mature age workers. Many employers will simply sack older workers and replace them with cheap youth labour, instead of creating new jobs.
"Those who are pushing for these cuts cannot explain why young people have the highest unemployment rate of any group, when their wages are already the lowest", she added.