From The Jobs Letter No 82 (17 July 1998), published by the Jobs Research Trust

* Economist Keith Rankin in recent months has been challenging 'the Left' in NZ to look again at the current debate on the Community wage and consider other options to treating the proposal with cynicism and threats of non-compliance. He believes the Community wage equates to the concept of "participation income", and is worthy of greater support.

The Community Wage requires certain beneficiaries to give up as much as 20 hours of their time per week to non-market work. Rankin points out that the present requirement is that such beneficiaries seek full-time market employment, a commitment of 40 hours of a person's or a family's time to the market economy. The Community Wage idea requires no commitment at all to the market economy. It requires only a half-time commitment to what is now understood as the "voluntary sector".

Rankin: "The fact that the Community Wage was not formally conceived as a "participation income" does not mean that it cannot be received by our communities as one. The Community Wage has the potential to legitimate a lifestyle which involves transforming the 40 hours we sell to the market into a combination of leisure and non- market work. That would be a major advance from the twentieth century obsession with the labour market."

"The Community Wage can do more than legitimate non-market work. By making the unemployed into community employees, it also makes it possible for them to become community employers. Community employment can be the cornerstone upon which we rebuild our local economies."

* Rankin advocates a form of "subversive compliance" with the Community Wage programme: "Let's make the Community Wage into a form of participation income that has some of the characteristics of a Universal Basic Income. And let's do what we can to use the community wage fund to create local employment cooperatives -- organisations, set apart from the global market economy, that enable otherwise unemployed people to become community-sector employers."

From Paul Callister, economist from Paekakariki, to Keith Rankin

I read a summary of your views in the latest jobs letter and agree with them. I have been reading overseas articles equating workfare with "slavery' but your slant as to how it could be seen is much better. Last year we had a local person, Maori sole mother with three kids, who initially spent all her time at home blasting out the stereo. Then she was dragged into helping at the local Kohanga by one of the elders and it helped her get her life together, simply getting out for about 20 hours per week, doing something useful for a wider community, plus started learning Te Reo (and gave her neighbours some quiet spells from the stereo). I am not at all convinced that having people home all day on benefits is good for many of them, but working 40 hours per week seems a difficult contrast especially if you have young children.

From Keith Rankin, economist from Auckland

I see that much of the problem is that most people want to depict particular stereotypes of beneficiary as being general of all beneficiaries; it's just that the Left and the Right use different stereotypes.

As Paul Callister suggests, it seems clear to me that some persons who are unemployed or "not in the labour force" can benefit from an income support regime that involves a requirement to make a part-time "community" contribution (eg Callister's example). It is preferable that such a regime should be subject to light-handed administration rather than heavy-handed bureaucracy. The agency implementing the scheme (eg WIA - the Work and Income Agency) should be understood to be as much under contractual obligation to supply suitable community work as is the beneficiary to accept it.

Other types of beneficiary are self-starters who are contributing and do not need the help of any government agency. They are best left to "work for the dole" in their own way. They are not subject to loss of self-esteem, and they can and do get up in the morning. Perhaps the biggest danger of the Community Wage scheme is that people already working without pay while receiving a benefit or people studying for a student allowance may be forced to give up such activities where they have not received government approval.

Community Wage | | UBINZ | | GeoCities