Welfare reform: in whose interests

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Welfare reform in whose interests?
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The Context of welfare reform

• Framing the problem welfare dependency
  (pathological theories of unemployment)
• Policy transfer, the OECD active citizens
• Labour market restructuring
• Changing demographics - ageing population.
• Undoing the Australian Settlement the new
  nexus between work and welfare
• Redefining the goals of the social security system

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Australias welfare to work model

• Mutual obligation Work for the Dole (late
  1990s)
• Contracting out employment services (1998)
• Work Choices legislation (2005)
• Welfare-to-welfare (2006 changes)
• The Job Network is the central plank in
  implementing welfare-to-work policies

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Criticisms of Australias approach

• Tough sanctions are counter-productive
  (psychological toll of churning, compliance)
• Limited evaluation framework (policy success)
• Too much focus on supply measures (attitudes,
  behaviour of the unemployed), not enough on
  demand (job creation, productive employment)
• Work-first principle problematic (right job, not
  any job)
• Problem of capacity at the front-line of W2W

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Alternatives strategies evolutionary or
revolutionary change?

• Assert the rights of the unemployed (social
  protection, advocacy, information)
• Paradigm change (job guarantee schemes, basic
  income models)
• Recognise that the Job Network is not working (in
  the case of the long-term unemployed)
• Assert an ethic of care and justice, alongside
  work ethic
• Public sector must become a model employer

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Quotes from long-term unemployed people about W2W

• The job network centres are degrading because
  there is no control over your own job hunting
  ability. You jump through hoops without too much
  input from yourself.
• Its psychologically destructive, its sort of
  punitive so that if you if youre hanging
  around, basically, you get the impression, well
  put up with you for six months but if youre
  still here after that were just going to screw
  down tighter and tighter. So I think its
  terribly harmful for people.

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Redefining policy and practice

• Too much talk about welfare, not enough talk
  about how work is organised and poverty produced.
  
• It is time to stop obsessing over the malingerer
  or the shirker and to address the needs of the
  majority of the poor (Handler and Hasenfeld,
  200715)
• If we want social justice and dignity in work and
  welfare we have to reduce the importance of
  having paid employment
• - The less intimidating the threat of being
  unemployed, the more employers will have to make
  their jobs attractive. Also there is no
  justification for large inequalities of earnings,
  so the smaller the part played by earnings in
  peoples standard of living, the more just is the
  society (Barry, 2005 208).

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