© AUWRC, June 1998

Debate around the community wage is showing some disturbing trends from the point of view of our organisation. This article is an attempt to engage with those who believe there are positive aspects to the scheme and would like to see community organisations embrace it.

It is important to us that people taking part in this debate are able to state their biases, to put their arguments in the context of their own positions and experiences and admit to the benefits they or their organisations would gain if they were to support the scheme. [kr1]

AUWRC was formed as the result of a meeting of some 120 unemployed people and supporters in Auckland in 1983. Although our organisation is best known for its advocacy and political activism around unemployment and poverty related issues, it is also active within "the system". For example, AUWRC founded the Peoples Centres in Auckland, Manurewa and Mangere which have a paying membership of some 4,000 mainly beneficiary families (some 12,000 people). AUWRC does not pretend to speak for every beneficiary in Auckland, but we are in daily contact with many, and can legitimately claim to reflect the opinion of a significant number of those who will be forced onto the community wage.

The Peoples Centres could have gained significant financial benefit by becoming a Community Brokering Organisation (CBO). Both The Peoples Centres and AUWRC have been placed under some pressure by beneficiaries who are volunteers for us wanting us to give them "protection" by putting them on to Community Task Force. Since the Community Wage was announced we have been approached continually by members seeking protection.

Through the Peoples Centres and AUWRC each day we come into contact with many beneficiaries who see the community wage quite simply as a form of slavery [kr2]. Even those who come to us seeking protection are bitterly opposed to it. To do anything other than try to derail the whole scheme would be [kr3], and would be seen to be by our members and supporters, an act of betrayal and cowardice by AUWRC.

We have been part of developing a campaign to encourage community organisations to boycott the scheme and will actively organise resistance and non-cooperation among beneficiaries. However, there are a number of questions and misconceptions which need to be discussed as part of this campaign, because a number of individuals and groups around NZ are putting up arguments as to why we should use workfare rather than oppose it. Some of these arguments include:

1. Work needs to be redefined and the introduction of the Community Wage is a first step towards this.

The Treasurer is quite clear on this one. He is adamant that the CW is about making sure beneficiaries do their bit, that it will ensure beneficiaries keep good work habits and that it can act as a stepping stone to a "proper job". The introduction of workfare is part of an international trend. Nowhere is it being presented as part of a process of redefining work and recognising the non paid work contribution to society we all make. There is no doubt that a public debate on the nature and future of work needs to take place. We have been given the Community Wage instead of the debate, not as part of it. [kr4]

 

2. We should see the Community Wage as a first step towards the introduction of a UBI (Universal Basic Income) which will legitimise voluntary community work carried out by beneficiaries.

AUWRC has supported the concept of a UBI for a number of years, despite criticism from some supporters that it lets the Government of the hook and would be used to further weaken unions. Our support of the UBI has always been on the basis that it should be a basic right of residency, a recognition that we are all stakeholders in society and that it would provide choices and flexibility for people to participate in and contribute to society. The CW is the opposite to our vision of UBI - it is about controlling the lives of people who already have the least, and removing choices.

The idea that we need the state to legitimise voluntary community work is scary [kr5]. Is the next step to make community work that is not legitimised by the state through the CW scheme illegal ? At the most, the scheme provides recognition of work done by community organisations that are prepared to cooperate with the application of "sanctions" to people who do not carry it out in a satisfactory manner. [kr6]

 

3. The Community Wage will provide a means for beneficiaries to gain self esteem by providing benefit to the community.

Voluntary work has long been one of the few ways beneficiaries can regain and build self esteem by feeling they are contributing to the common good. For many, taking on voluntary work has also been the first step back into paid employment. Forcing people to take on community work devalues it so that it becomes like periodic detention, a form of punishment. [kr7] We think it unlikely that people carrying out periodic detention gain in self esteem or a sense of participating in and contributing to society.

 

4. We should use the Community Wage and subvert it for useful purposes.

We have heard this one before! Over the years Governments have introduced many different work schemes, each more exploitative than the last. Each time a new scheme has been introduced communities have justified their "buy in" by talking about subverting the scheme for the benefit of the unemployed and the community. We have seen many community organisations grow and prosper through the use of schemes. We have seen the number of poverty industry jobs grow. We have not seen any organisation (including our own) subvert schemes. [kr8]

The best that has been managed is minimising exploitation and assisting a few individual unemployed people. The Government is experienced at getting compliance from community organisations and there is no reason to suppose it would not succeed in doing so again this time. Once community organisations have a stake in the new scheme they will do as they are told.

Workfare already exists on a large scale overseas, especially in the US, and we are in regular contact with fightback groups there. We have yet to hear of a group successfully 'subverting' workfare. In our experience when community organisations start talking about subverting a scheme it is the beginning of a process of rolling over and complying with the latest attack on beneficiaries. [kr9] There is often a strong conflict of interest between the interests of community based poverty industry bureaucrats and the unemployed (see Dave Tolich's article in the last issue of Common Ground for more on this).

 

5. The Community Wage is not workfare because it is only part time.

Some argue that the CW is not really workfare because participants only have to work part time, and therefore earn the equivalent of the minimum wage of $7 an hour, thus making people on the community wage the same as any other worker. However, people on the CW will not have the same rights and protection as other workers, as the Government has made it clear there will be no 'employee-employer relationship' for CW workers. For example, they cannot negotiate a pay rise and are subject to a range of sanctions that do not apply to other workers. Nor do CW workers have access to the other limited protections currently granted members of the employed workforce. [kr10]

Secondly, a part time wage equivalent to the dole, even topped up by $20 a week, is nowhere near a liveable wage. We believe that if people are to be forced to work, the job involved should be at least full time and at the minimum wage. [kr11] Even this is barely liveable in a city like Auckland.

People forced to work for wages which do not meet their basic needs and without the protection of labour legislation are little more than slaves.

 

6. We could offer our volunteers protection by putting them on the Community Wage.

No matter how tempting this looks, we believe it is dangerous to sign up even one person on the CW scheme. Once you have done this, you have become part of supporting workfare. [kr12] Don't we truly value our volunteers more if we continue to take on beneficiary supporters as genuine volunteers, supported with bus fares etc where possible, rather than colluding with the Government's slave labour scheme?

Offering to take volunteers on the CW to protect them is a very individualistic solution to a problem that affects tens of thousands of people. In a slave owning society should those opposed to slavery own as many slaves as possible and treat them well, or should they refuse to own slaves and fight against slavery?

 

7. The Community Wage is just a mad idea of Peter McCardle's and will never be fully implemented - therefore we don't have to worry about it.

Workfare has been introduced in a number of countries and has actually been functioning in NZ as Community Task Force since 1991. Mr McCardle has been a driving force behind its extension into a mass scheme this year. He may be seen as naïve and silly, but he is not alone in supporting it. Winston Peters has supported work for the dole for many years. Jenny Shipley has a deep hatred of the poor and will do anything to put the boot in. Tau Henare openly applauds workfare.

As the economic situation deteriorates beneficiaries become even more important as scapegoats for policy failures, as we can see through the current shocking advertising campaigns. Some organisations have already committed themselves to using community wage slaves, under both CTF (Community Task Force) and the CW. It will take a determined effort to stop the scheme. It will not collapse of its own accord. The Government plans to have 63,000 beneficiaries on the CW this coming year - this is hardly a tiny programme which can be ignored in the hope that it will go away. [kr13]

 

8. It's negative to oppose workfare - why not take a more positive approach.

AUWRC has always worked hard to put forward many positive solutions to unemployment, and plays and active part in grass roots initiatives which support local economic development and job creation [kr15]. Our ultimate goal is full employment and a living wage for all, and this is what we have always worked for. [kr16]

However, this does not mean that when it comes to the crunch, we should sell out unemployed people and beneficiaries by trying to find the 'positive' within a programme which forces people to work for their meagre benefit or face Government-imposed sanctions. This is a time when we must all choose whose side we're on. [kr17]

___________________

AUWRC,
PO Box 3813,
Auckland 1,
  Ph 302 2496, Fax 377 4804,
  Email <auwrc@ihug.co.nz>

Keith Rankin, 18 June 1998

1. My biases are those (i) of someone who was recently on the Unemployment Benefit, and (ii) someone looking to a future with a Universal Basic Income, and therefore wanting to exploit any opportunity to broaden public support for some kind of universal cash payment from the social wage. I am a member of the Auckland People's Centre. [back]
2. There is no doubt that certain forms of workfare are tantamount to slavery. I do not however believe that the Community Wage, as devised by Peter McCardle, is such a form of workfare. Furthermore, a concept defined by certain persons in authority in a certain way does not prevent others redefining the concept. I see both the terms "workfare" and "community wage" as covering a diversity of specific propositions. Although the two concepts clearly do intersect, each nevertheless has meanings that are separate from the other. The term "workfare", which is muddied by the problems be have defining "work", serves adequately as a neoconservative buzzword. The term "community wage" needs to be claimed by social liberals however, as the term "social wage" is. [back]
3. To persevere with the railroad analogy, I favour shunting the scheme onto another track, rather than derailing it. That means, among other things, using the term "community wage" in a progressive way. Language is too important to leave to conservatives to define. [back]
4. We are treating the CW as a grenade with the pin removed. In fact, the pin's still there. We can defuse the grenade, and lob it back. Who cares what the Treasurer's definition of the community wage is. Opponents of workfare should be telling the world what they think the community wage ought to be. Such an approach requires an emphasis on our social obligations to the unemployed and other unpaid citizens, and a lesser emphasis on the obligations of the unemployed. The debate can never move out from a "far left" political ghetto if the opponents of workfare insist on (or are seen to be insisting on) no obligations at all from the unemployed. An important part of the philosophy behind Universal Basic Income is the belief that social obligation is innate in the vast majority of humans, and therefore requires no formal enforcement. [back]
5. We don't need the state to legitimise voluntary work. But if the state does legitimate voluntary work, we should oppose that. In fact, given our "Protestant work ethic" heritage with its entrenched bias to market work, legitimising voluntary work as being something more than a second class contribution - in the minds of many (perhaps most) citizens of capitalist nations - is an extremely difficult task
      There may be a problem here in the interpretation of the word "legitimise". For me, it means a near consensus of public acceptance; and it has nothing to do with legality. For me, legitimacy is about "lore", not "law". [back]
6. This approach still seems to be following the model of employment in which employer and employee are two separate parties. What about creating situations of community self-employment, and community cooperatives, where recipients of the community wage are simply members devising their own projects? [back]
7. The problem at the moment is that we actively discourage Unemployment Beneficiaries from taking on community work. They are supposed to be spending their time "actively seeking work". The use of unpaid work as an alternative to paid work is, legally, benefit fraud. [back]
8. I believe that achieving a situation in which CW recipients are effectively their own employers, and in which they determine what is appropriate community work, is very much a subversion of the neoconservative workfare concept. Furthermore, a fiscally conservative Government is likely to be happy if communities with high unemployment "do their own thing" under the auspices of the CW. That is cheaper than running a CW police force. I would like to see communities act to deprive Government of ownership of the community wage. [back]
9. Nevertheless, fighting workfare may not be successful. It seems that every few years we fight to save the scheme that we fought against a few years earlier. It seems sensible to me that, if workfare does exist, and we oppose it, then it is better to subvert it than to not subvert it. In the end it's about winning hearts and minds within communities, not in Wellington. If community workfare bureaucrats are acting as agents for Wellington interests and against the democratic will of the communities themselves, then its up to communities to replace or reform such government agencies. [back]
10. I believe that we should avoid any attempt to make it look as if community workers are in the paid workforce. The distinction between paid and unpaid contributions is an important one and should be preserved. The community wage is a benefit, not a labour wage. [back]
11. It seems to me an odd proposition to claim that 40 hours of forced labour is less than 20 hours of forced labour. What I think is potentially good about the CW proposition is that it can promote community acceptance that people should be able to devote 20 hours to activities that are neither paid work nor unpaid work. From my own point of view, I would be happy to do 20 hours of community work, and spend the rest of my 40 hours worktime writing, and networking through the Internet. I see the relaxation of the fulltime requirement as a major breakthrough in the direction of a Universal Basic Income. [back]
12. If the CW scheme can be subverted to the point where beneficiaries can make 2 or more advances while occurring a single cost, then is it not a change, on balance, for the better. I would go so far as to generalise, by saying that much social progress in practise has involved tradeoffs. Do we always oppose all schemes that have something we do like but also something we don't like? I believe that any such scheme should be subverted so as to maximise the good bits and to minimise the bad bits. The subversive approach is ongoing, so any inappropriate conditions imposed on beneficiaries through the CW scheme can continue to be opposed. [back]
13. Surely all Unemployment Beneficiaries and Sickness Beneficiaries will be on the CW after 1 October? That will be many more than 60,000. The extent to which any or all of them will be threatened with loss of benefit due to non-compliance remains a moot point. My suspicion is that there will be little additional insecurity. (My own UB was temporarily cut off in February this year without warning, because a form posted to NZISS had not been marked on their records as received.) [back]
14. Nevertheless, opposition is always more effective if there is a clear alternative proposal, and the opposers are actively promoting their alternative(s). I don't think that implicit support of the status quo is sufficient as an alternative. [back]
15. I think that the AUWRC has done a great job as both advocates for beneficiaries and advocates for political change. [back]
16. "Full employment" is itself an ambiguous concept. It is supported at least as strongly by the New Zealand Business Roundtable as it is by the AUWRC. In one interpretation, it amounts to full-time slavery to the labour market. That scares me much more than the community wage. The technically correct definition of full employment is that everyone who wants a job at the prevailing wage rate should be able to have one. That's something I favour. In conjunction with a Universal Basic Income, more people will be in a position to want less paid work. That's progress. I don't want to be forced to do more than 20 hours per week of paid work. [back]
17. Does life always have to be an adversarial battle? Even Marx's dialectic saw progress as coming from a synthesis, and not through a victory to either the thesis or the antithesis. I see subversive compliance as a means of working towards a synthesis that is not a sell-out. [back]

Community Wage | | UBINZ | | GeoCities