‘One Fundamental Value’: Work for the Dole participants’ views about mutual obligation

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of a Doctor of Philosophy

Hilary Sawer B.Ec. (Soc.Sc.) Grad Dip Arts (App.Phil.)

School of Social Science and Planning Design and Social Context Portfolio RMIT University March 2005 ii

Declaration

I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the thesis is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; and, any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged.

Hilary Sawer 1 December 2005 iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to my supervisor, Associate Professor John Murphy, for his advice and encouragement over several years. A number of other staff of the School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT, also provided assistance; in particular, Professor Rob Watts and Dr Iain Campbell provided helpful advice on an early draft, as did Dr Jenny Chalmers on a later draft. Dr Tony Eardley of the Social Policy Research Centre and Professor Mark Considine of the University of Melbourne provided constructive suggestions on the draft survey questionnaire. My mother, Marian Sawer, referred me to some useful sources and she and Jim Jupp helped me with copy-editing in the final stages. I would also like to thank RMIT for awarding me a RMIT Postgraduate Research Award, and the School of Social Science and Planning for a grant to meet the costs of payments to interview participants and interview transcriptions, and for the provision of a Flexible Scholarship during September 2002. Finally, I would like to thank Susan McDonald and other staff of the Victorian Department of Education and Training for their support for the study leave which has enabled me to undertake and to complete this thesis.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of tables vii List of appendices ix Summary 1 Introduction 4

1 From rations to reciprocal obligations: Income support for the unemployed in Australia 8 What kind of welfare state? 8 From ‘susso’ to social security 11 The return of high unemployment and the rise of the New Right 15 ‘Work for the Dole’ for indigenous Australians 17 Reciprocal obligation 18

2 From entitlement to contract: Theories of conditional income support 23 Citizenship and welfare rights 24 Market liberalism 27 New paternalism 29 Communitarianism 33 ‘The Third Way’ 35 Policy change 37

3 The debate over mutual obligation and Work for the Dole 41 The Job Network 41 Mutual obligation and Work for the Dole 44 Rationales for mutual obligation 47 Critiques of mutual obligation 53 Community views about unemployment 62 Community views about mutual obligation 70

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4 Methodology 77 Methodological approach 77 Stage one 80 Stage two 85 Data analysis 88 Participant characteristics 90

5 ‘In control of your own life’: Experience and expectations of work 94 Previous employment 94 The value of work 98 What type of work? 104 What kind of job? 106 Selectivity 123

6 ‘A big void’: Being unemployed 129 Previous research 129 Experience of unemployment 133 Looking for work 144 Barriers to gaining work 147

7 ‘Playing the game’: Job search requirements and ‘breaching’ 157 Job search requirements 157 Assistance provided by agencies 175 The breaching regime 179 Experience of breaching 181

8 Activity, company and compulsion: The experience of ‘working for the dole’ 191 Previous research 191 ‘Volunteers’ and ‘conscripts’ 195 The benefits of participating 200 Dislikes about participating 205 Supplement level 210 Differences between groups of participants 211 vi

9 ‘After I’ve done this, it’ll be just the same as before’: Employment outcomes from Work for the Dole 214 Relevance to work goals 214 Training: One size fits all? 217 Perceived effect on job prospects 226 Findings of follow-up survey 229 Other outcomes research 230

10 ‘It’s important for everybody to work’: Rights and obligations to work and income support 236 The right to work 236 The obligation to work 243 Who is responsible for preventing unemployment? 250 The right to income support 262

11 ‘They tell us to jump, we say “how high?”’: Perspectives on mutual obligation 275 Views on compulsion 275 Autonomy orientation 283 Disciplinary orientation 291 Outcomes orientation 296

Conclusion 302 Appendices 306 References 338

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1: Stages of fieldwork 79 Table 5.1: Months survey participants had paid work in last three years 95 Table 5.2: Months survey participants held last paid job 95 Table 5.3: Main reason survey participants left last job 96 Table 5.4: Reasons interviewees left previous jobs 97 Table 5.5: Benefits of work for interviewees by sex, skill level and age 99 Table 5.6: Work sought by survey participants 105 Table 5.7: Work held in last three years and work sought by interviewees 106 Table 5.8: Characteristics interviewees sought in jobs by sex, skill level and age 108 Table 5.9: The most important factors making work a positive experience 111 Table 5.10: Factor most contributing to job satisfaction 111 Table 5.11: Characteristics interviewees would not tolerate in jobs by sex, skill level and age 113 Table 6.1: Survey participants’ time unemployed in last three years 134 Table 6.2: Perceived impact of unemployment on interviewees by sex and skill level 135 Table 7.1: Views of interviewees about job search requirements by sex, skill level and age 161 Table 8.1: Mean scores on attitude to WfD scale by sex and whether voluntary/ coerced 193 Table 8.2: Proportion of mutual obligation participants agreeing with statements about mutual obligation activities 194 Table 8.3: Reasons survey participants who ‘volunteered’ wanted to take part in their WfD project 196 Table 8.4: Reasons survey participants who were ‘conscripted’ did not want to take part in their WfD project 198 Table 8.5: Overall feelings of survey participants about doing WfD project 201 Table 8.6: Aspects survey participants liked about their WfD project 202 viii

Table 8.7: Perceived benefits for survey participants of undertaking WfD 203 Table 8.8: Aspects survey participants disliked about their WfD project 206 Table 9.1: Association between perceived relevance of WfD project and perceived benefits of the project 216 Table 9.2: Aspects of WfD training survey participants found useful 219 Table 9.3: Perceived effect of WfD on job prospects (survey participants) 226 Table 10.1: Attributions of responsibility for preventing unemployment by sex, skill level and age (interviewees) 252 Table 11.1: Survey participants’ views on the obligations of the unemployed 276 Table 11.2: Survey participants’ views on the negative effects of compulsion 279 Table 11.3: Survey participants’ views on government-funded employment and training 279 Table 11.4: Survey participants’ views on work motivation 279 Table 11.5: Association between support for compulsion and participant attitudes and characteristics 280 Table 11.6: Survey participants’ orientations towards compulsion 283 Table 11.7: Views on the obligation to work of interviewees with different orientations to mutual obligation 295 Table 11.8: Views on responsibility for preventing unemployment of interviewees with different orientations to mutual obligation 295 ix

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix A: Additional tables Table A.1: Explanations for high unemployment (%) 307 Table A.2: Views on the responsibility for solving unemployment (%) 308 Table A.3: The role of government in solving unemployment 309 Table A.4: Support for activity test requirements (% agreeing with each requirement) 310 Table A.5: Support for mutual obligation requirements by respondent characteristics and unemployed group 311 Table A.6: Attitudes towards social security and the unemployed 312 Table A.7: Support for Work for the Dole 313

Appendix B: Stage 1: Work for the Dole participants’ questionnaire 314 Appendix C: Stage 1: Focus groups: Main issues for discussion 326 Appendix D: Stage 1: Differences in the characteristics of the initial survey sample and follow-up telephone survey sample 327 Appendix E: Stage 2: Research questions 329 Appendix F: Stage 2: Work for the Dole participants’ questionnaire 330 Appendix G: Stage 2: Interview questions 333

SUMMARY

This thesis contributes to the literature on the Howard Government’s mutual obligation policy by investigating the perspectives of those who are subject to it: specifically, those required to undertake Work for the Dole. To date, research on participants’ perspectives has been limited to a few predominantly quantitative studies, most of which have been commissioned or conducted by government departments. This study provides a more qualitative and independent perspective on participants’ experiences and their views about their rights and obligations as unemployed people. It considers the extent to which these experiences and views are consistent with or conflict with the rationales for mutual obligation.

The study included a survey of 87 participants in nine Melbourne and Geelong-based Work for the Dole projects conducted in 1999, eight focus groups conducted with 59 of these participants, and 37 in-depth interviews conducted with a new sample of Work for the Dole participants in 2002. Unemployed participants in the study had a strongly positive orientation towards work and many had substantial experience of employment. They viewed work as necessary to fulfil human capacities and needs, and often believed that they should work for their own well-being, as much as to contribute to society. Far from expressing any distinctive values of a ‘dependency culture’, participants appeared to share many of the work values of the wider community. However, many also had substantial experience of unemployment and faced significant barriers to gaining ongoing work.

This thesis provides evidence that Work for the Dole provides short-term benefits for many such unemployed people: most study participants enjoyed taking part in the program and felt that they gained benefits from participating. They clearly endorsed some kind of work placement and skill development programs for the unemployed. Given the Howard Government’s abolition of a range of previous programs of this type, Work for the Dole is now the only such program available for many participants and was often preferred to doing no program at all.

However, more than four in ten survey participants did not enjoy doing the program overall, and a fifth actively disliked taking part. Further, the program’s impact on employment prospects appeared to be either negligible or negative—which was not surprising given the scheme’s focus on the unemployed discharging their ‘obligations to the community’ and 2 overcoming a ‘psychology of dependency’, rather than on job outcomes for participants. However, this thesis argues that there is very limited value in a program which provides benefits at the time of participation but does not help in achieving the main aim of the unemployed: gaining work.

The study analyses the Howard Government’s three central rationales for the mutual obligation policy: that it ensures that participants fulfil the requirements of the ‘social contract’ by requiring them to ‘contribute to the community’ (the contractualist claim), that it deters the unemployed from being ‘too selective’ about jobs (the ‘job snob’ claim), and that it benefits participants by developing their capacity for autonomy and self-reliance (the new paternalist claim). These three rationales are assessed in the light of participants’ responses.

With regard to the contractualist claim, the study finds that most participants shared the widespread community belief that only ‘genuine’ jobseekers deserve unemployment payments, but many did not share the community’s support for the requirement to work for payments. While a third of survey participants supported this requirement, almost half opposed it. Most believed the government was not fulfilling its obligations to the unemployed to provide appropriate employment and training opportunities which were relevant to the jobs they were seeking. Many viewed the mutual obligation ‘contract’ as a one-way set of directives imposed on them and believed that the breaching regime which enforced these directives was unreasonably punitive and unfairly administered.

With regard to the ‘job snob’ claim, study participants largely rejected an expectation that they should be required to accept any job, and most had substantial concerns about the specific form of the job search regime. They did not agree that ‘any job is better than no job’ and objected to the pressure under mutual obligation arrangements to apply for jobs which they considered inappropriate. They were not willing to be forced into jobs in which they feared they would be unhappy and which they were likely to soon leave; rather, they wanted assistance to help them to find sustainable work.

Finally, with regard to the ‘new paternalist’ claim, many participants believed that compelling recipients to undertake certain activities or to apply for unsuitable jobs unreasonably restricted their freedom of choice, undermining rather than increasing their autonomy. As argued by Yeatman (2000b), recipients may benefit from a program, or from a case manager who assists 3 them to develop their capacities, but compulsion to undertake activities that are not related to individual needs and goals is likely to undermine capacity-building. The evidence of poor employment outcomes from Work for the Dole adds further weight to this view. The provision of a greater range of program types in place of Work for the Dole—including those which combine work with accredited training and those providing subsidised placement in mainstream jobs—would address many concerns held by participants in this study. However, compulsion to participate in a labour market program would remain problematic in a society which generates far fewer jobs than are needed for full employment.

The thesis concludes that the mutual obligation principle privileges the obligations of the unemployed over their rights to autonomy and to work. Its associated requirements have further added to the already considerable constraints faced by unemployed people who are attempting to identify and meet their own work-related goals. Ironically, a policy which is portrayed by the Government as promoting active participation in society, in reality requires many payment recipients to passively obey government directives—instead of actively participating in shaping their own future.

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INTRODUCTION

People treat you differently…because I’m unemployed they see me as if I’m a bad person, as if I’m uneducated. (John, aged under 21)

I feel like, you know, people are looking down on me…and it makes me feel very uncomfortable and…criticised. (Steve, early 20s)

…there’s always a sense of guilt when you’re fully able to work, to be employed full-time and you just can’t find any…It’s just the stigma that people are subject to…the expectation that you’re a bludger, you’re not trying hard enough, and you’re wasting your time. (Stefano, early 20s)

Unemployed Australians are accustomed to having their character and abilities questioned; the suspicion that they are ‘work shy’ has a long history. But in 1997 a new way of addressing these suspicions was introduced—or rather, an old way was re-introduced—Work for the Dole and its associated policy principle, mutual obligation. During the Depression, ‘sustenance doles’, or food rations, had been introduced for out-of-work people employed on public works. Under the new progr