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Musing on Sydney's news

12 March 2003

To seek or not to seek?

It was reported on 702 radio today that a recent study of long-term unemployed found that those who have given up looking for work are in considerably better mental and emotional shape than those still hoping against hope of finding that job.

Perhaps it's because they, having reached a point of acceptance of their situations, now feel some degree of control and consistency in their lives instead of swimming upstream in that treacherous river known as the labour market? The permanently non-employed need never worry about being flavour of the month one day and old rubbish the next.

You could even say they are pioneers. Either that, or they figure that sleeping in, getting stoned and watching videos is a tad more fun than wasting precious hours of life crammed into public transport or kowtowing to some mini-Hitler of a boss who expects total commitment to mind-numbing, dehumanising tasks.

Ok, I'm not being fair here. Plenty of unemployed people do productive things with their time - performing community work, being creative or dreaming up new business ideas. Once upon a time the dole was basically an arts grant. Australia's balance of payments has benefited from at least one very major rock act, whose early career was subsidised in this way (without naming names). And in England, I think we all know what a UB40 is - and who UB40 is.

This government doesn't like unstructured approaches. They cut "esoteric" scientific research to favour business-related projects, even though the vast majrity of important scientific breakthroughs are serendipitious. The government tries to push people off the dole, despite the obvious contribution "dole bludgers" have made to the Aussie arts scene. Its approach to both science and welfare suggests that they are wedded to safe mediocrity over risky inspiration.

Utopian visions

Hands up those who remember the 70s? Ms Methuselah here does! Remember how they fed us the line that computers and robot technology would create a utopian world where the only people who would have to work would be those controlling the robots? The rest of us just have to learn how to live with unlimited leisure time (oh shucks). Guilt free leisure time. You wouldn't be called a dole bludger, just another citizen benefitting from our technological advances. That was the justification for replacing human staff with electronic gizmos. Never mind that gizmos don't require superannuation contributions or payroll tax. Better still, when they depreciate through overuse they can be written off on tax rather than make workers comp claims. We fell for that one good and proper, didn't we? The whole idea sounded great, but they never factored in competition and greed, as though the human race would miraculously change its basic nature in the face of this promised Utopia.

I believe the term is "sucked in" applies here. I would imagine that's how our current crop of retrenched middle aged unemployed feels. Instead of being seen as pioneers of this Brave New World, they're on the scrap heap. Welfare recipients being a drain on the economy. Redundant. Where's that darn euthanasia legislation when you need it?

Thanks to computer technology we now have the means to do so much more (and make lots more money), and so much more is expected of us. Those who work are now working longer hours. Those out of work have less chance of finding work. Just as it's easier to find potential suitors when you have a boyfriend (or girlfriend, if that's your thing) it's easier to find a job when you already have one.

Age discrimination

And if you're on the wrong side of 40 and looking for work, well, you'd better lie about your age, colour those telltale greys and have a facelift, if you can afford it. Of course it's illegal to discriminate in NSW on the basis of age but, sadly, it's a white elephant feelgood law. After all, who's going to know if an employer says, "Sorry, someone else was better", or that old chestnut, "It was highly competitive field ....". The reality is that the market rules and the market says young is better.

I wonder about the logic. Employers seem to think that they can mould young workers into their preferred form, and believe ye anciente workers are too set in their ways to adapt.

However, if you hire someone young and bright and mould them to your way of doing things, the chances are they'll leave you in a couple of years for greener pastures - and take your way of doing things, and maybe your clients, with them. If you hire a 40 year old, you can squeeze at least 20 years service out of them, since they know they'll be hard-pressed to find anything else. So doesn't this youth bias mean companies are just adding to their recruitment and retraining costs, not to mention disrupting their services? I suspect just that we oldies simply don't look as appealing.

But I digress. The point is that there is, and always will be, a pool of unemployed. The Post-Industrial Undesired.

Should we make everyone work?

Further, there will always be people who don't want to work. Human nature again. We're not all the same. Some people want to work. Raise families. Donate huge mortgage payments to the banks. Then put what's left over in the kitty so they can grow old in peace on the north coast, a reward for all their effort (if they and their savings haven't disintegrated, given the world's increasingly instability).

And yes, others just wanna sit in front of the video and get stoned, and bugger tomorrow. Or do something creative with themselves to self-actualise rather than sweep floors, wash dishes, sew buttons or dig ditches. Not every one can be a CEO, lawyer, doctor, rock star or politician, despite what the life coaches may tell you.

So why punish these people, threatening to take away their $260 pw pittance, as it stands right now, for not deluding themselves that digging ditches will one day lead to them to one day becoming CEO of the ditch digging company (complete with a multi-million dollar golden handshake as a reward for screwing up)? How often is talent rewarded? It seems that the best way to get to the top these days is to mix in the right circles and be ruthless as hell. That's why we are having a crisis of poor leadership and bad management, both here and overseas. Jump in, cut everything, get good quarterly figures, pick up another job on the basis of those figures, leave the messy job of repeairing your infrastructure damage to your successor, then do the same thing with a new company. Works every time.

Whatever, the days of working your way from the ground up to the top are pretty well over, one's chances being roughly the same as going from busker to Hollywood diva. Current recruitment practices are so mechanistic that if you don't have the right letters after your name, then you are deemed a lackey, a dodohead. Who can blame a "dole bludger" for not wanting to jump onto the treadmill?

So I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to work. I don't share their approach but I can understand it. So why not just pay them their pittance and stop wasting our taxpayer dollars in hassling them?

Let them sit there, wasting out with their hydro and watching the latest Arnie flick, if that's what floats their boats. Or let them work towards becoming the next INXS, Midnight Oil or Andrew McGahan, using their tiny subsistence money to keep them afloat. Let's pay them to have the time to write or to serve meals to the growing number of homeless people. Or write the Great Australian Novel. Or dream up innovative business ideas. Dole bludgers all.

To quote the CEO of the US Industry Association: "In hard times companies are forced to cut back on staff, leaving thousands of former employees free to pursue their dreams, to innovate and to create new companies".

Unemployment benefits make savings in policing costs

What's the alternative? Should we be like the USA (as we are in almost everything) and cut people off unemployment benefits if they don't find work after nine months?.

Ask yourself, how would you survive if you have no money and not in a position to pursue your dreams ... or even put food on the table ... or even have a table or a room to put the table in?

You might sell drugs. Or yourself. Or beg. Or hold up a petrol station. Or if you're game you might roll some rich bastard on the street who has what you don't. You may become so unruly that the middle class will need to build walls around their homes and put bars over their windows to protect themselves and their assets from you, imprisoned in their gilded cages.

The money the US government saves on welfare payments is chewed up with extra policing, medical and security costs, not to mention lost productivity of, and trauma issues with, crime victims. We won't count quality of life because that's not part of the budget and therefore unimportant.

On the other hand, yes, some young people need a prod to get them motivated. To tear themselves away from their videos and pot, or at least enjoy them after a day's work. It's a balancing act. But at the bottom of the issue lies the hard fact that, the way our economies are structured, there must always be a pool of unemployed and it makes sense if those unemployed people are the ones who don't want to work.

One thing I do know is that making them feel like garbage for not being part of the Almighty Workforce won't help. Young people need to develop a sense of self worth. Being sneered at or being looked down upon when they admit to being unemployed won't help anyone, except stroke a few egos that don't deserve stroking. Everyone has their own unique role to play in this life - from PM to welfare recipient.

In the end, most unemployed people desperately want work, but a minority don't. Human diversity guarantees this. These people do us the service of withdrawing themselves from the labour market, so that there is room for those of us who do want to work and get ahead in life.

Would you want to hire someone who doesn't want to work?

After all, if you're an employer, do you want to hire someone with no work ethic but pretends to be interested to keep Centrelink onside? The chances are that, if you do hire one of these faux workers, you could be wearing a workers comp claim that will put your business through the cleaners. That's what people who don't want to work sometimes do to get by. Pay them their pittance to do their own thing and let them be, I say. By the same token, is there any benefit in harassing discarded members of the over 40 club, forcing them to attend interviews with some pimply Centrelink clerk whose idea of life experience is being stood up at the school prom? Perhaps the Government could try promoting the benefits of experience in the workplace, not in their usual tokenistic way with the odd throwaway line to the media. The should be educating us as fervently as they promote serious issues by, say, sending out fridge magnets. That would at least be a start.

It's time to treat unemployed people with as much respect as anyone else (which is usually not asking a lot), and realise that they too fulfill a role in society, all too often unwillingly. I could talk about shorter working weeks here, but that would take us back to the greed, competition and human nature problems all over again. It looks like a lost cause.

For each unemployed person who's given up on the labour market, there is a bit less competition for those who want that mortgage or are looking for that dream job. Those who have removed themselves from the workforce deserve our gratitude for sacrificing any prospect of owning a home or owning all those fab gizmos the media tells us we need so that we may prosper.

Now, please excuse me while I watch a DVD to watch with a glass of cheap plonk.

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