How to create real jobs
Howard's youth work-for-the-dole scheme won't make a dent in the 30% youth unemployment rate. But that is not its real purpose, which is to whip up public hysteria about "dole bludgers" once again.
The blatant politics of divide and rule has become a hallmark of this government. First it stirred up racism against Aborigines and Asian migrants; now it is the turn of the young unemployed to be scapegoated.
It says to young people: you have no right to the dole if you are chucked on the unemployment heap. It lowers the expectations of a severely disadvantaged section of the population — as did the work-for-the dole schemes in Aboriginal communities introduced earlier by Labor.
But it is also aimed at all unemployed people, and even those of us who have jobs, because job security is a thing of the past for most workers. Work-for-the-dole schemes reinforce the reactionary belief that people are unemployed because they are lazy, useless or expect too much pay — a claim belied on the day Howard announced the scheme by a queue of 1000 young people in Sydney for 250 jobs in a chain of restaurants.
Why do the numbers of unemployed seem to rise continually? The "normal" functioning of the system constantly tends to destroy jobs.
Decisions to hire or sack staff are made by the owners of business on the basis of what is good for their profits, not what is good for society generally. Ordinary month-to-month and year-to-year increases in productivity mean that the same amount of goods, and the same or larger amount of profits, can be produced by fewer workers.
Even in periods of economic growth, jobs can stagnate or decline because the employers are taking the entire proceeds of increased productivity. In fact, increased growth, when it is entirely controlled by the bosses as it is now, can result in more jobs being automated out of existence.
If greater productivity were instead used to reduce the working week with no loss in pay, more jobs — real jobs — would be created by any increase in production.
The employers and their toadies, in parliament and elsewhere, say we can't reduce the work week because that would make their businesses "uncompetitive". Being competitive is great — for owners of companies. But one of the chief ways in which companies compete is by reducing their work force. The most competitive company — or country — is generally the one that puts the most workers out of a job, and pays the remaining workers as little as possible.
Working people don't need that kind of competition. What we need is a massive increase in public spending on socially useful and environmentally urgent projects, a living wage for the unemployed, real training or education for those who want it, and a reduction in the working week with no loss in pay.