Monday, May 2, 2005

Work for the dole and prison industry slavery

Government and Corporations to cash in on free labour

Work for the dole certainly offers a lot of variety. The impression given by the government is that most unemployed do creative and helpful work assisting the community.

Yes, there are-some work for the dole projects like this but even these type of work for the dole projects displace community and social workers. However, a large proportion, perhaps the majority of projects are not fun. They do not enhance your personality. They don't even count as training or as work experience.

Several examples are as follows:

In Guilford you can assist in repairing, renovating and repainting the local community centre.

In Bankstown the activity is landscaping and the bush regeneration.

In Bass Hill your work options include gardening, child care, general office duties and administration.

In Western Sydney you can be involved in landscaping, redesigning and revamping sections of the public housing estate.

And all the above should be carried out by fully paid unionised workers.

Work for the dole is the unemployed being forced to work for nothing. Councils, community organisations, schools, hospitals and others cash in on this free labour. They don't have to employ and pay proper workers. This is slavery.

Unionists should not merely oppose work for the dole because it is oppressive against unemployed people - which it is. They should oppose it because it deprives workers of jobs and is a bosses weapon to drive down wages and break down conditions.

We all have an interest in smashing this oppressive programme supported by both Liberals and Labor Parties.

If you agree with this, contact StandUp by e-mailing standup_@hotmail.com or, phone: (02) 9516 4486.

United we can defeat this reactionary scheme.

Prisoners

Prisoners are also a source of cheap labour. Prisons represent new jobs and the infusion of new money into some rural communities previously suffering from economical depression.

Not only is there money to be made in private prisons, there is money to be made out of prison labour.

In Victoria prisoner labour brings in $5.5 million per year. In Queensland prisoners are working in the River of Gold Slate Mine. They get $5 a day, with a productivity bonus of $2 a day. The contractors certainly have a river of gold with those sorts of labour costs.

They also take away jobs from the community like the electrical trades where workers in prison are being paid 10 cents an hour compared to say $20 and hour if it were a job taken up by a contractor working outside the prison.

Encouraging the government to spend more money in the right areas will ensure less people go to jail.

There should be more alternatives to prison, more support to the community from government-initiatives like education, TAFE, outreach centres, mentoring, drug rehabilitation and education, all of which prevents crime and will stop people being used as slave labour and taking away paid community work.

By StandUp and Just Us 2 May 2005

Illustration: Work for the Dole

Making young people responsible or blaming the victims.

What will be the consequences of the scheme?

There is a genuine concern that the Work for the Dole scheme will provide a pool of 'free labour' to replace existing jobs. Those who are most vulnerable to losing their work are low paid, part time and casuals and those with insecure tenure. These are often the unskilled; women and people from a non- English speaking background.

Given that the fastest growing sector of employment is low wage employment there is the possibility that Work for the Dole will further depress wages and conditions.

This could occur because low paid workers are essentially competing with unpaid workers for the same work. The changes in industrial relations legislation and the incremental deregulation of the labour market serve to exacerbate this.

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Corporate Welfare

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Unemployed:

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Work for the dole? $10.00?
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Prison Industry

RESTORING TRUE JUSTICE:
Australian prisons are fast becoming the new asylums of the third millennium. The prison industry is booming, while Australia spends far less on mental health services than similar countries.

State of the prison system
The prison industry is in the process of an even more dramatic expansion. Private firms now own prisons and utilize their inmates as a labor force. This source of cheap labor is fed by harsher prison sentencing and mandatory incarceration under the "Three-Strikes law." As prisons become a bigger business, it's easy to see how convenient and lucrative such laws can be for those who own the prisons and its prisoners.

Three-Strikes law mandatory sentencing
Private firms now own prisons and utilize inmates as a source of cheap labor. Prisons also represent new jobs and the infusion of new money into some rural communities previously suffering from economical depression. In addition to jobs, prisons fuel a variety of high- and low-tech industries, including surveillance and electronic monitoring, food service, medicine, supplies, health care, drug treatment programs, telecommunications, lenders, architectural firms, and the construction trades (including masonry, fencing, barbed wired, etc.) as the prison industry continues to boom.