ACOSS aims wide
"At least initially, someone will have to reduce their disposable incomes if job opportunities and working hours are to be shared more widely and the needed expenditure measures financed." That sounds familiar: is it another "belt tightening" statement from Paul Keating or the Business Council of Australia? No, unfortunately, it comes from the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS).
ACOSS is proposing that the federal government discourage overtime and increase taxes on the employed to provide funds to ease unemployment.
"Most people in secure(!) employment with reasonable incomes and adequate housing expect that their fellow Australians should have a decent standard of living and reasonable opportunities to participate in society", says ACOSS president Robert Fitzgerald. Those who enjoy such conditions are a narrow group indeed; it is not reality for most workers. The current recession is exacerbated precisely because people have had their disposable incomes reduced and any spare cash is saved because there is no job security.
Many workers are forced to work overtime, or to find part-time jobs, simply to compensate for reduced wages in an effort to pay for their "adequate housing". It is working people who are already paying for this crisis, a crisis not of their making. They pay for it when social services are cut and when their living standards are reduced; they pay even more dearly when they are sacked for no fault of their own. Why demand more?
It is unfashionable to mention the word "class", but reality cares nothing for fashion. We live in a divided society, a class society. A continual struggle exists between the owners of capital and working people over the level of wages, conditions and jobs. This is not an exotic theory, but real life.
A recession is not some natural disaster that is visited upon the earth every few years; it is a product of the profit system. This is a system in which some profit from declining living standards and high unemployment — that is, from the suffering of others. Those who so profit are the leading 200 Australian companies, which have increased their profits by an average of 28% this past 12 months, and the hundreds of others that did very nicely, thank you. It is here where the money is to be found to create more jobs and pay for a decent social security system.
Unless such realities are grasped, well-intentioned but misguided schemes that work against the interests of the very people they aim to assist will continue doing the rounds of organisations, like ACOSS, which are in the front line of dealing with capitalism's victims.