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Work for the Dole Participants' Views About Mutual Obligation ‘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. iv 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 v 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 vii 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.
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