Unemployment

We need full employment

The Official Bureau of Statistics figure for the Unemployed and Underemployed people combined is 12.2% nation wide. This figure does not include spouses with working partners, youth forced now to go on at school and study and those who are not registered with Centrelink. We can create full employment by expanding the public sector. In Australia we had Full employment for 30 years, from 1945 to 1975. During this period there was increased employment in the public sector. Some of the public sector jobs included work in the government shipyards, the water conservation and Irrigation commission, the government printing office, the Eveleigh and Civic Railway workshops and the Snowy Mountain river scheme among many others.
The communist alliance supports full employment by increasing the government sector.
For the immediate introduction of human rights for the unemployed.

If elected we will introduce a bill to abolish the mutual obligation requirements for the unemployed and close private for profit Job centres in favour of public employment services.

Why everybody should support full employment.

Employers use The threat of unemployment to force people to accept poor working conditions. Many people feel insecure in their employment because they can easily be replaced by an unemployed person and they may not be able to find other employment. This has a negative effect for those who want job security and also for the larger economy. When people are not certain of their future, or they are underemployed, their spending capacity decreases which has a negative flow on effect for the economy as businesses especially small businesses – close.

Unemployment forces wages down and undermines the union movement

Bosses use the threat of unemployment always hanging over workers’ heads to undermine the union movement as desperate people are less inclined to struggle for better wages and improved working conditions.
Unemployment and underemployment causes unnecessary hardship.
New Start allowance is a minimal amount of money that often does not even cover rent or mortgage payments, yet these poorer families are forced to buy food and transport costs, as well as rent and mortgage out of this minimal allowance. Children are often the overlooked victims of unemployment as their parents can not afford even to feed them nutritious food. Other disadvantages such as being unable to pursue out of school activities like Art, Music, Tutoring or Sport further disadvantage the children of the unemployed and underemployed.

Unemployment increases crime

A society that cannot provide work for its citizens has failed. The unemployed are victims of that failure. Is it any wonder that some of them turn to crime for, constantly pressured as they are by the capitalist system to measure their personal worth in terms of possessions turn to crime for the things that they perceive they are missing out on.

Many of the programs currently adopted by Centrelink appear to be mainly focused on punishing and humiliating our unemployed people.

Despite the Howard government having been ousted in favour of Labor, Centrelink appears to be maintaining Howard’s policy of bashing the unemployed, as though their inability to find paid work is their own fault. It does not appear to matter if you have been a trades person, a teacher, a manager or other professional, who has already has accumulated many skills and experience, unemployed people are forced (under pain of losing their meager entitlements) to attend pointless, humiliating and largely inappropriate programs and classes of a low educational standard which almost never lead to employment.
Unemployment is completely unnecessary in Australia. We had full employment for 30 years under an expanded public sector. Let’s re-allocate our Commonwealth Government funds and give these people back their dignity by employing them.

Authorised by T Pearson, 74 Buckingham St, Surry Hills 2010