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4 comments

  • Kaz Newton says:

    Is this proposed employment paid at Award rates? Who would pay these wages? I support this concept as work ready skills are essential.
    Working in the Disability Employment Services industry for a total of 10 years, I see a lot of people who would and do struggle with working for an employer. Not that they are bad people, they are strong willed, would be very self driven and often entuprenurial and want self determination.
    Small business or collective small business set ups would be far better for them. There are Lots of programs for small business but no grants… they have to apply for bank loans. DES providers feel discouraged as pressure is for people to get any job, which often doesn’t suit certain personality types or these alternative thinkers from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
    Rather than pour heaps of money into wage subsidies why not use this to support these strong, outside the box thinkers to start their own business with support from small business programs with realistic mentoring and a network of support including their DES provider. Oh and reduce how much they need to earn – $560 per week for Centrelink to consider they don’t have to job seek and accept any job. So many opportunity for small business enterprise with online being a global market.

    • Stephen Power says:

      In Australia, the jobs would be at the minimum wage set by the fair work commission.
      In America, they’re proposing raising their minimum wage to $15 / hour as part of the program. Here’s the link to the study by Kelton et Al: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_4_18.pdf
      You don’t need to read the whole thing, just the exec summary & intro sections. This should be enough to show that’s it’s more than viable and better than unemployment benefits.

  • I can make a few observations within this sphere from personal experience. I was employed full time from the age of 17 to 32 in both retail and call centre roles. The call centre closed in 2013 and redundancy ensued. Living in a regional area it is not a case of being able to just to “get a job”. After the redundancy I had interviews for customer service positions but was unsuccessful as I was up against mainly school leavers. I paid for a security licence of my own pocket but was only able to find casual work. I had a mortgage but due to a relationship break up and the redundancy I had no choice but to sell up. So with only getting sporadic shifts and with dwindling savings I had to apply for newstart at the end of 2014. Finding rental housing is very costly and hard without full time employment so I have had a few periods of homelessness and couch surfing. My security licence expired and I did not have the funds to go through the costly rigmarole of doing it from scratch so then I was at the complete mercy of these “job providers”. I did a certificate in individual support and found casual work in an aged care home but after six months I was only getting one shift a week so it is once again very difficult to make ends meet. Being on newstart you have no discretionary funds, no savings and no funds for emergencies. Presumably even if you can find rental housing you are paying 2/3 of your stipend on rent and thats even with rent assistance. When you are pushing forty and in this scenario it really isn’t as easy as just take a job any job unfortunately.

    • Kaz says:

      Check with different employment service providers and ask if they have funding to assist with paying Licences, relocation allowances and move to ne that does. Regional is hard to get work… even services that market employers directly struggle. If you can get relocation allowance it would help. The allowance is not just the cost of transporting your things.


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