By Maree Sutton
A survey by the Australian Youth Institute, a private think-tank funded by Pepsi Cola and Arthur Andersen & Co, hit the headlines last week with claims that young people support some type of work for the dole.
While the establishment media immediately jumped upon this issue, other concerns also highlighted by the AYI survey but not given publicity included young people's lack of self-esteem and worries about the prospects for full-time and secure work. Interestingly, 69.3% of those surveyed agreed that the federal government was doing nothing or responding unsatisfactorily to the unemployment problem.
Other, more comprehensive, surveys of young Australians, such as the "Lost Generation" report prepared by the Australian Youth Foundation in 1993, found that young people have been the victims of structural changes in the job market. The report noted that youth want to make a worthwhile contribution to society but feel that they are being denied this right.
Young people surveyed by the AYF last year were also very critical of the $3 youth wage being suggested in different forms by both the Liberal and Labor parties.
Concerned about how the debate was being framed by the media, the radical youth organisation Resistance participated in a discussion hosted by Derryn Hinch on Channel Nine's Midday program on March 9. The panellists were Carla Gorton from Resistance, right-wing commentator Stan Zemanek from Radio 2UE and John Cornwell from the Australian Youth Foundation.
Zemanek was isolated, as the majority sentiment was against slave wages. Even Hinch, who, the participants were told, supports work for the dole schemes, was reluctant to state his position.
"Progressive activists oppose work for the dole schemes for three principal reasons", Carla Gorton explained to Green Left. "Firstly, because it doesn't address the real problem of poverty being experienced by young people. Secondly, because it would affect the wages and conditions of other, particularly young, workers currently in employment. And thirdly, because it offers no long-term solution, which in the end could only come from job creation."
Gorton concluded, "It is criminal that the Labor government is colluding with private enterprise to take advantage of the high levels of youth unemployment by attempting to get them to work for less than award wages.
"Young people have to organise together to demand decent jobs with decent wages. We managed to swing the tide of public opinion against a $3 an hour youth wage last year, but this is still a threat. More of us have to get active and join groups such as Resistance to create a better future for all."