Mayday
Appeal
Unionists, unemployed, activists in the left and labour movement. StandUp! wishes to draw your attention to a serious attack on all of us -- work for the dole.
We were assured that unemployed would not be forced to work in areas where employed workers would normally be employed. This has been shown to be a lie!. Under work for the dole, unemployed have been forced to carry out: concreting tiling, landscaping, repairs and renovation, painting, gardening, landscaping, nurses and teachers aid work. The pay for this is ten dollars on top of normal dole payments. The extra pay, in many cases, hardly covers the fares to and from work. Under work for the dole you may be forced to travel ninety minutes from your home. This is indeed legal slavery.
We know of examples where the safety has been inadequate and the unemployed person has been injured. There is no workers compensation with work for the dole. There are few rights and these are difficult to enforce.
But as well as being an attack on unemployed people, work for the dole is an attack on workers. People were once employed painting school fences. Now you don’t have to employ. All you have to do is make the appropriate arrangement with the work for the dole provider and get the labour provided for almost nothing. Work for the dole is not a way of creating jobs it is a way of destroying them. Some unemployed feel more confident from doing it. But do they get work? No they don’t! A survey has shown that unemployed doing work for the dole are less likely to be employed and not more!. Both employed and unemployed have an interest in uniting to stop work for the dole. Make no mistake if things continue at this rate if you are unskilled or semiskilled your job could be lost to slave labour -- some unemployed person forced to work for nothing!
StandUp! is campaigning against cheap labour schemes. We want to expose organise and fight the slavery. We ask for your solidarity. But more than that we ask you to fight work for the dole within your industry, your union, community organisation or in the institution within which you work. Staff at schools should make it clear to the Education Department what they feel about slave labour.
Every union should have clear policy and a programme of action. Let’s have real jobs paid with real wages. Let’s stop this legal slavery now!
Phone 95992717 (Fridays)
Mobile 0423 670 417