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More about mutual obligation In Australia’s , currently the obligation is on job seekers to look for work. At face value this seems OK. But you’d think, ipso facto, that government would then take on at least some responsibility for providing said work. This is not the case. Rather, employment figures for workers within government are either stubbornly low or even falling. Considering the fiscal vulnerability of this group, punishment should not be possible and

The moral mess of mutual obligation The new contract for Disability Employment Services (DES) will not bring. Government will scratch its head, blame the economy and people with disability, talk about educating employers and spend money on more consultations before coming to the conclusion that people with disability must meet more stringent ‘mutual obligations’. Let me tell you what I know about ‘mutual obligation’ as understood by Government funders. From the jobseeker side: The Disability

Casualisation of the workforce There is no incentive for finding job seekers full-time work. In fact, incentives fall the other way. The entire employment industry is rewarded for splitting full-time positions into part-time positions. This is how it works: –       A full-time job becomes available –       As an employment service provider I have a choice: offer the one job to one job seeker or split the job into two, three, four or five part-time jobs,

Five problems with the current incentives Having complained about the perverse incentive arrangement for Disability Employment Services (DES) , I feel the need to explain the numbers behind the complaint. Bear with me. It’s complicated and unbelievably silly. Problem 1: DES providers are not necessarily rewarded for finding full-time work, no matter how the job candidate. We’re rewarded according to the number of jobs found. This creates the next problem. Problem 2: The benchmark for provider

The commercialisation of poverty Farming out the care of our own to others doesn’t work. Why would we think it could? When governments award contracts to from overseas, who is the main stakeholder in the deal? Not the employers, not the job seekers, not even the local economy. It’s shareholders. And in the case of several large Disability Employment Service (DES) contracts, it’s shareholders from overseas. People who know me understand that I have not a

Malingerers and their hip pockets I’m sick of conservatives in power basing their treatment of job seekers at least in part on the idea that ‘these people are malingerers’. Surely this is the reason for the providing more of a stick than a carrot with demerit points lost for ‘misdemeanours’, such as missing appointments. Have they ever asked themselves, seriously, how they would go if they found themselves in the position of being largely ignored during