Dying for the dole

Five hundred trade unionists took to the streets of Toowoomba in Queensland this May Day to pay tribute to a young unemployed worker killed performing forced labour.

Eighteen-year-old Josh Park-Fing, who had been forced into the government’s work for the dole scheme, died while working at the Toowoomba Showground on 19 April. He fell from a flatbed trailer.

Josh was just one of the 187,000 people across the country forced to work for the dole. Workers engaged in the 25-hour per week compulsory labour scheme work for free to access Centrelink payments. They are denied the rights afforded to workers under the Fair Work Act, federal occupational health and safety provisions and workers’ compensation.

As a result, Josh’s family are eligible for less than half of the $517,000 normally paid as part of workers’ comp after a workplace death.

Ged Kearney, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, called for an end to work for the dole. She said unemployed people were treated as “second-class workers”, performing labour that should be paid at the going rate.

Owen Bennet, secretary of the Unemployed Workers’ Union, was a keynote speaker at the rally. He pointed out that not only was work for the dole punitive and humiliating for those subjected to it, but that the purpose of the scheme was to undermine the conditions of those workers with a job.

“That has always been the name of the game”, he said. “What the government is effectively doing is making those who are looking for work so desperate, so distressed, that they would be willing to accept almost any work at any conditions.”

Bennet ridiculed the notion that unemployed workers deserve such measures by pointing out that three million workers are currently either underemployed or unemployed in Australia. Yet there are just 160,000 job vacancies advertised each month – one for every 18 job seekers.

Bennet ended his speech with a call to arms against a political and social system in which unemployment is wielded as a weapon against working people.

“There would be no time more fitting than today – the day we celebrate the international working class movement – for all workers, unemployed and employed, to unite in common struggle for a fair and humane society for all.”