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This working life

28/9/2019

17 Comments

 
PictureIllustration Ralph Ammer
Low pay, irregular hours, no job security … welcome to the precarious world of work for an increasing number of Australians.

By Kaz

I HAVE been in the workforce for 32 years, longer if you include the babysitting and cleaning jobs I did as a high school student. Despite two university degrees in education and the arts, most of my professional working life has been shaped by short term contracts, casual employment and small gigs such as running workshops as a sole trader.

I have spent irregular periods on and off unemployment benefits, sometimes more on than off due to working conditions and an erratic income.

There are thousands of workers just like me. Many of us are educated women with considerable professional experience and skills to burn, who have been relegated to a lifetime of under-employment due to industrial changes over the past 35 years. Salaries, permanent and steady work, work with decent conditions underscored by union support are not uniform conditions across the sectors and many workers need to access unemployment benefits to make ends meet, sometimes regularly, often periodically.

It is so glib for politicians and conservatives to say things like “If you have a go, you’ll get a go” while painting a picture of destitute sociopaths sucking on ice pipes and managing money badly. Most of us just don’t have enough ongoing work paid at a rate that enables us to live above the poverty line.

Before obtaining qualifications, I worked in retail, processing, cleaning, food, hospitality and library services. These jobs were contract, part time and casual. Only a few had benefits such as sick leave, overtime or time in lieu attached to them and the casual rates were never fair compensation for workload expectations, the irregular hours and the lack of job security. There is no safety net when work is scarce except unemployment benefits.

I currently have enough work to keep me from having to claim unemployment benefits. I have three jobs to make ends meet. Last year I earned a total of $37,000 across my three jobs which take all my time to manage and all my work is subject to yearly funding considerations so there is no guarantee that I will have any of this good work at the end of 2020.  If any of the balls in the air happens to fall, I will be in need of benefits again – any major health issue, natural disaster or economic crash will put me right back in the dole queue.

I worked for a large, reputable university for seven years straight but remained a casual due to a range of industrial relations loopholes. Contrary to popular perception, casual professional staff in the university sector are not well paid. Even if you manage to work a full year you are only actually paid for around eight months of work.

It is easy for politicians to paint generic pictures of the availability of work across Australia. Any view of working conditions for Australians depends on where you are. It is not as easy to relocate as some might surmise, especially if the job you relocate for does not pay particularly well and is in an expensive city.  I have relocated many times for employment. It cost me $10,000 to relocate for two years work in Auckland where I earned just enough to pay my rent, bills and food. When I had returned to Australia, I found myself completely broke. The position I returned for had fallen through and I was back on a treadmill of underemployment for another three years.

I should also mention than in my entire working life I have enjoyed only two years where I was able to earn in excess of $55,000 a year and that was in New Zealand. My HECS debt is burdensome and indexed so it only ever gets bigger. People who had the benefit of a free education devised that little gem of economic bondage!

People who have to rely on Newstart for more than six months are insufferably poor, at risk of losing whatever housing and belongings they have and suffer the stress of being ostracised from the local community. The expectation that unemployment recipients should rely on food bank and community services to meet basic needs, and be grateful for it, is unrealistic and derogatory.  

I have around $30,000 in superannuation. Even if I applied to access this sum under hardship exemptions, I would lose almost half of it to administration fees.

I don’t feel good about farmers and construction workers in mining and power stations losing their jobs to climate change and changing times, but governments have so far supported them far better than they support everyday people who lose their precarious wage jobs to economic rationalism or illness. Most jobs I have lost simply because they were designed to be short term by people who earn far more than I ever will. There were no pay-outs, support systems, media campaigns, bank loans or authorities funded to ease a transition into a new workplace. I just join the back of the dole queue with all the other joes.

Australians who don’t regularly live beneath the poverty line are good at putting the boot into the joes and insisting that we are living like kings and queens. Frank Hardy wrote about this cultural trait in the mid 1900s when he was discussing the appalling conditions of jobless joes who were eventually required to build the entire country’s infrastructure in exchange for food parcels.

The real story is that there is a diminishing safety net for some Australian people. It’s been chipped away at ever since it was implemented, and I suspect will continue to be dismantled until we are back to susso labour.

Aged 48, Kaz lives in a regional town in Gippsland. She works in the community services and education sector and runs a very small business. 
​

* The writer’s name has been changed as she does not want to jeopardise any of her three jobs. 
17 Comments
sunny
27/9/2019 03:54:24 pm

Thank you for sharing, I never realized it was so bad, the working conditions of Australians need a shake up before we end up like the USA where many are working but sleep in their cars due to not making enough to pay the rent. CEO's are making too much money at the expensive of workers lower down the rung. We need a universal base wage as a safety net, then pay tax on what you earn above. The gig economy, contract and temporary work is being also counted in the unemployment numbers so it looks good for the Government but is not realistic.

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Lorrie Read
27/9/2019 04:05:07 pm

Such a well written article, so sad, but so true. How can the Goverment justify spending millions to support the Americans in their Space Program and make no increase to Newstart, not to mention improving working conditions.

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Pamela Jacka
29/9/2019 09:42:08 am

It would help you to understand what the Government is doing to "support the Americans in their Space Program" if you read the news reports. The money is being spent, over five years, to support Australian companies, repeat Australian companies, to participate in the space programme. That means the Government is helping Australians to participate. The money is not going to the Americans.
The answer to Newstart is to create more jobs, which investments of this type will do.

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Kaz
29/9/2019 01:59:41 pm

Jobs creation is the answer. The issue is jobs are not being created. Most industries downsize as much as possible and require workers to maximise output. This was well documented in the findings of the recent aged care review which exposed a chronic shortage of staff required to do the work of three people over their shifts. How many jobs do you think an Australian version of NASA will create? There are plenty of sectors in need of staff which are chronically underfunded. The space race is an old chestnut, its has been traditionally funded most when governments require a popular distraction from wars and famines as demonstrated through USa and Russian history.

Kaz
29/9/2019 02:15:51 pm

Just to add to my previous comment - paying America to participate in trade with them is questionable. The US economy dwarfs ours and it will be interesting to see if any jobs at all are created through this transaction or if it is a cut and dried global export deal which will boost GDP figures through big share market profits while making minimum employment opportunities on the ground. Can you find out the finer details of this transaction so we can really assess its worth as an investment?

Felicia Di Stefano
27/9/2019 05:53:21 pm

Your story reminds me of George Orwell's excellent book 'Down and out in Paris and London', written close to a century ago. Yet our society still lacks a just distribution of wealth where COEs earn millions yet some work at three jobs and can barely survive and our Government sends debt collectors to society's most needy!

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Kaz
29/9/2019 02:40:48 pm

Its worth going to Australian economist Bill Mitchelles website to read about the way the economy is manipulated by business politics, particularly notions of 'surplus' and how austerity economics is preventing real growth in the jobs market. Its a big website to explore, starting with the daily quiz could be fun: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/

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Pamela Jacka
30/9/2019 08:50:28 am

Here's the link that may help you understand the "transaction" https://www.industry.gov.au/news-media/australian-space-agency-news/australia-to-support-nasas-plan-to-return-to-the-moon-and-on-to-mars

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Kaz
30/9/2019 12:58:10 pm

Hi Pamela, thankyou for the link, I see it is a government industry news media promotion piece and as such contatains a lot of rhetoric. I am not against investment in future industries which promise employment, my own digging suggests 20,000 jobs will be created in 10 years time- where the jobs will be located is unclear although by the tone of the media piece I reckon they will be for technically educated peoples such as engineers and scientists. All good for futures techs and science grads but it makes little difference to me and thousands like me who are fundamentally broke from a lifetime of being short shifted, which begs the question of what is being done now to assist those of us with no super, or no stable housing or who are facing chronic illness who are are still likely to live into old age for another 30 or so years and what happens to those young people who are currently growing up in a highly casualised workforce who are unlikely to get space jobs in 10 years. Underemployment is growing, not reducing, 10 percent of women in todays workforce are underemployed out of around 1 million underemployed people. We need solutions right now, not in 10 years time.

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Pamela Jacka
30/9/2019 06:23:10 pm

Ah well, you've made up your mind and there is nothing that will change that or even perhaps make you think that perhaps there are some good things happening.
You and I have a very different attitude to life's opportunities. I don't whinge about the walls I've had to scale during my working life (nearly 50 years until early redundancy and the loss of potentially 200,000 in superannuation) but make the most of what I've got. When things get tough, I revert to one of my motto's, "a problem is an opportunity for a solution" or I pour a glass of red (cask) and move on.
Good luck in your future endeavours.

Kaz
30/9/2019 06:55:41 pm

Thanks Pamela, good luck in yours too. Maybe you should have a whinge every now and then though, alot of people are sharing the same boat and our problems
are social policy problem which can be addressed politically. I will take a liberty and assume your superannuanion loss was a result of the stock crash in the early 2000's? That was a man made catastrophy which was entirely the fault of neoliberal economic policy and is tied in with poor employment opportunities and the casualised workforce. I reserve my Australian cultural right to whinge out loud and clear and so should you.
😁

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Kaz
30/9/2019 07:14:55 pm

Just an afterthought, caling people who rely on welfare to make ends meet whingers is an example of the Australian cultural trait observed by Frank Hardy during the susso years, its a way of getting the boot in!

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Phyllis Papps link
1/10/2019 07:55:08 am

I have read and re-read all the comments replying to the excellent article written by Kaz and it re-affirmed my very strong belief that:
we are all entitled to have different points of view regarding broad issues related to Australia, U.S.A., China, the economy, politics, government, the environment, religion, gender, race, sex, the legal system, jobs, unemployment etc. etc.
Then on a more personal level which is:- how to financially survive on a day-to- day basis and over the next few years, whilst still contributing to our community.
It's broad issues versus specific and personal issues.

If anyone is so passionate about the issues raised in the article please feel free to apply for the Bass Coast Prize for Non-fiction. Link attached: https://basscoastprizefornonfiction.weebly.com

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PeeBee
1/10/2019 08:32:31 am

Katz, precarious employment is a scourge as you story shows and I wish it wasn't the case. I notice that wage and super theft is now a crime that can be committed with little sanction. I also notice there is a push by the government to steal superannuation increases from workers. The logic is that people should get the proposed increases as wage rises now rather an increased super balance. Hollow promise with wage rates have been stagnating for 5 years and will continue to do so.

Working people are slowly by surely being done over and nothing seems to be able to stop it.

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Kaz
1/10/2019 10:37:01 am

Hi PeeBee, superannuation seems to be a really slippery fish these days, its really complex and there are so many clauses you need a lawyer or a financial advisor to help understand your rights regarding managing it. Changing jobs can alter clauses and costs too. It is so much more confusing than a State provided pension system which could see everyone pay super into a well managed Government fund and the wealth redistributed equally across all retirees and low income workers to ensure a basic living standard for all of us, bit like a basic living wage. Its pretty shocking there are more than 100, 000 homeless people right now in Australia and that a good proportion of these are youth and elderly people. The Bob Hawke era goal of 'no child in poverty' in Australia really tanked and now those children he was talking about are getting old!

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Kaz
1/10/2019 10:46:31 am

.....I have to unsubscribe now because this blog is becoming an obsessive compulsion for me.....thanks for reading my article. Write to your local MP if you feel strongly about poverty in Australia. Anti Poverty week is in a few weeks time and peoples stories are important as are food donations to St Vincents DePaul, Neighbourhood houses and other charities who have been left carrying the can for the social responsibilities which were once the defining reason for having a Government at all.

Jeff Sim
7/10/2019 12:53:34 pm

Kaz, this article will go a long way in explaining why you (and many others) can't earn a living wage.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/10/enslaved-foreign-garbos-sink-aussie-economy-to-barrel-bottom/

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