Revolt Against Jobs Jolt !

Government Attacks Beneficiaries ! Jobs Jolt is an attack on our civil rights! Jobs Jolt removes the exemption for 55-59 year olds from having to seek work. It threatens to cut benefits of beneficiaries moving to the country to escape the appalling conditions created by high rents and low benefits. It requires some job seekers to undergo drug tests and drug education. It pressurises single parents, and selected groups of sickness and invalids beneficiaries. All these groups will be intensively case managed, reducing people’s rights manage their own affairs. In some cases this will be subcontracted to private enterprise.

An Attack on Beneficiaries is an Attack on Wage Earners. Jobs Jolt continues to subsidise employers who pay low wages, whilst scapegoating beneficiaries.

Jobs Jolt is not about reducing unemployment-it will not create any new jobs. It is really about increasing the number of people seeking jobs, which enables employers to keep wages down.

Jobs Jolt is not really about helping people up-skill for employment, it is about shuffling statistics. The upskilling is likely to be very limited, and most beneficiaries are expected to take any menial job that they are offered.

Jobs Jolt is Beneficiary Bashing, Persecuting, Victim Blaming, Intimidating, Coercive and Scapegoating.

WHAT NEXT? Jobs Jolt panders to the right. More attacks on all beneficiaries and workers are likely to follow.

WE DEMAND:

A living wage for all workers and beneficiaries.!
Freedom to live where we choose. Retain the work test exemption for 55-59year olds. The right to choose our own employment. Real Jobs. The right of mothers to choose when to enter the workforce . Recognition that mothering is work. Education and Training to the level of our potential. No Drug Tests for workers or beneficiaries! Drug Tests for the bosses! No handouts to employers. No privatised employment specialists . A 30 hour working week to eliminate unemployment. Free Childcare. A Ban on all overtime

WORKERS AND BENEFICIARIES UNITE AGAINST THE JOBS JOLT! Join your union and demand that it opposes Jobs Jolt! Join UNITE, the union for beneficiaries and low paid workers! 08002UNITE unite.union@clear.net.nz

Join our pickets!

PICKET OUTSIDE WINZ, 3/450 QUEEN ST, CITY. WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 24 AT 11.30 AM TO 12.30 PM.

Information about further actions: 6278655 , 021-2685978, dpb_action@yahoo.co.nz

The "Jobs Jolt" package will: threaten to cut benefits for jobless people who move to remote areas with little prospects for paid work. require unemployed people aged 55-59 to be active and available for work. make those who lose potential jobs through a positive drugs test undergo drug and alcohol education. contract intensive specialists to focus one-on-one with those people who have been without work for eight or more years. intensify employment programmes for solo parents link industries with labour and skill shortages, while giving training to long-term joblessness. introduce employment coaching for skilled and work-ready jobless people. put a greater Winz presence in eight remote areas, in order to promote better links between local job seekers and employers. intensify case management for sickness and invalid beneficiaries. extend programmes aimed at getting people with disabilities into work.

Social Development or Beneficiary Bashing?

Minister of Social Development and Employment, Steve Maharey, says that Jobs Jolt recognises that with low unemployment and labour shortages, the New Zealand economy needs as many working age people to be active in the labour market as possible, and that people’s lives are best improved through work and community participation. Employers, however, know that labour shortages give unionised workers the chance to demand and win the improvements in wages and conditions through which people’s lives are best improved, and require a constant pool of unemployed to resist union demands. “Active in the labour market” means serving employers’ needs by competing with other workers in a way that keeps the price of labour power down according to the capitalist law of supply and demand. In removing exemptions from the obligation to seek work as a condition of eligibility for a range of benefits, the Jobs Jolt satisfies the needs of employers, which Maharey deceptively equates with the needs of “the New Zealand economy.”

When the economy is in recession and unemployment is rising it is in the government’s interest to disguise this fact by placing as many unemployed as possible on alternative benefits-Sickness, Invalids, DPB etc. Conversely, when unemployment is falling, it is in the interest of Government to deny the same people the work-seeking exemptions that these benefits offer. Far from being devised to satisfy the needs of workers and beneficiaries, as Maharey claims, the Jobs Jolt is transparently tailored to meet the needs of employers and the governing party.

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