Can you trust a private job network agency? No you can't! A friend of ours is registered at MTC Marrickville. This agency has a practice of forcing unemployed to fill out preparing for work agreements. Of course they didn't offer him any work! So why was he cut off the dole? CentreLink had not received his Preparing for Work agreement and assumed that he didn't have one! MTC is too slack to tell CentreLink but it is the unemployed person who suffers the serious inconvenience.
Another unemployed person we know suffered a similar inconvenience. His job network agency told him to do a course at TAFE. But when he handed in his form at CentreLink stating his student status, his form was rejected. Why? Because CentreLink hadn't been informed.
Of course it is the unemployed person who has to run around from Job Network to CentreLink proving that his agency agreed to his training, which it had. We pay for their bureaucratic errors.
There is a lot of government rhetoric about "the efficiency" of the private sector but it is efficient at penalising us, not when it comes to serving us.
Being private enterprise and independent you cannot complain through the Ombudsman.
You can complain through the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWERS) which is what we recommend that you do. However there is nothing more effective than a united workers and unemployed campaign to fight the private agencies.
This is what StandUp! Is committed to organising. If your agency abuses you, tell us! We want to promote so we can fight the private agencies.
standup@hotmail.com
Phone 95992717
Fridays Mobile 0423 670 417
By StandUp! 4 June 04
Related:
Work for the dole? $10.00?
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.
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Shoplifting and homelessness
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Social Services small change? Or wast the money on WAR!
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EX-PRISONER UNEMPLOYMENT: SENTENCED FOR LIFE
Name removed by request served time in prison decades ago. Shes still being punished today. According to commonwealth and state legislation, ex-prisoners applying for jobs must declare any conviction that fits into the following categories: less than 10 years old, more than 10 years old but served more than 30 months in prison.
Unemployed farm postings would cost jobs: AWU
The Australian Workers Union has rejected a proposal to place work-for-the-dole participants on drought-affected rural properties.
Tough luck! Kicks the poor to death
Australia is urged to adopt a United States-style welfare system, [?] cut welfare spending [social services spending] and encourage people to help themselves in a book on poverty published today.
Economy benefiting from non-profit institutions
Non-profit institutions are contributing $30 billion a year to Australia's economy. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has found about a third of that comes from volunteers who worked free for more than 550 million hours in 1999/2000.
NSW prisons - primary industry bailed up!
In many quiet regional centres around NSW there is a new primary industry shaping up. It has something to do with Bail but not with bales. The minister for Agriculture Richard Amery who also has the prisons portfolio is now committed to farming prisoners.
Robin Egan
Two thirds of fines are never collected because they go beyond the means of the defendants and because in lots of cases people do not see that they are responsible. Especially where people know their in the right and no fine ought to have been a penalty.
