Fred Argy questions the commonly held belief that we can increase GDP by allowing businesses to increase profit.

In effect the government is shooting the messenger when it punishes the unemployed

1. fudging the unemployment statistics makes those who are working feel righteous and lowers the self esteem of long term unemployed. 'What's wrong with you, why can't you get a job, everyone else is working?'

2. On ABC 774 this morning a single mum was told that she would have to do 15 hours employment under mutual obligation. She is a trained teacher who does casual relief teaching. She was told to work for 15 hours a week for 52 weeks of the year. Single mothers on mutual obligation can't take a holiday, so their kids are unsupervised during school holidays.

3. Since 1992 the Victorian government has casualised teachers. They work flat out in term time but are not paid holiday pay. Most casual teachers get a lot of work in winter and very little work in Occtober and November. Why has it become acceptable for state governments to pay wages that are less than liveable? Why is it acceptable to find casual teachers applying for the dole in school holidays.

4. its now up to the worker to move to find work and to pay for their training for a job that may have disappeared by the time they finish. Tough Titty you say, but when all types of skilled or trained workers play this kind of roulette we very quickly reduce to a nation of salesmen.

5. We should dispute whether income inequality increases the nation's GDP. I believe that it doesn't.

I waded into Fred Argy's presentation stoicly, expecting the usual economist's dichotomy designed to prove he or she is still alive; as is the discipline thus subscribed to. Hey! Not So. This is a very fair global sample analysis with meaningful results. Fred is on the ball and this is clearly appreciated by Billie, who's comments follow swiftly. Why arn't the Henry Thorntons of this world seeing the same picture? Fred and Billie might enjoy, if that is the right word, stats secured from my own surveys on that delightful zone of prosperity, the Sunshine Coast:unemployed 20%. Incomes: under $15Kpa 54%; under $29Kpa 68%. Meanwhile, every four days, another desperate farmer tops himself. This is not mere economic misinterpretation; it is the ideological cruelty of elitism.

This kind of analysis is welcome. But I remain sceptical about whether all the really relevant parameters enter the equation of analysis. I hope those who govern us come to read and study this stuff, but I hope that they don't think there is a neat formula that can be extracted from comparisons of gross parameters and then applied to our situation. Comparisons between national economies are interesting. But there are many uncontrolled variables. Comparison within an economy over a period of time offers better control over other variables. Fred, could you do the same analysis for Australia retrospectively, say for 1950, 1960, 70, 80, 90, and 2000 - or any array of periods that fit variations in policy.

Tony Ryan:

Welcome to John Howard's world of economic rationalism !

Remember, you get the politicians you deserve.

Very good article. It actually says quite a lot for Graham and the Online Opinion people that they would publish it. This certainly isn't the line that is being pushed by the politicians and the mainstream media.

Inequality is taking place on a world scale as the top 2 percent now own 50percent of the worlds wealth. At one pole of society is the growing, yes increasing accumulation of wealth and at the other the growing poverty. Since the early 1980's (about 1982) the CEO's have had 400 very generous pay rises whilst workers have had no genuine pay rises - repeat no genuine pay rises. In 1985 the ALP/ACTU accord put the boot further into workers taking wage indexation off them. This was the greatest transformation of wealth this whole century from the pockets of workers into the pockets of the banks, big landlords, big oil, and the bosses. At the same time the treacherous ALP/ACTU very actively pursued the casualization and restructuring of the workforce in order to boost the exploitation rate and lower wages.

Is one speaking of "welfare to work" really serious if no jobs but to the best temporary part-time dish-washing kitchen-labourers sometimes demanded?

And what a real ratio between welfare for business and welfare for business slaves in Australia is?

billie,

The Victorian government did not casualise teachers in 1992. We have always had casual teachers, and they have always been paid a loading to make up for the lack of holiday and sick pay. They used to be called emergency teachers. I was employing them as far back as 1978 when I was the daily organiser at Waterdale High School. I think you are confusing them with contract teachers, which we have also had for 30 years. In the 1970s they were called limited tenure; after 1982, they were called extended emergency teachers; they are now called contract teachers. If they are employed both sides of a school holiday, they do get holiday pay. Casual relief teachers get little work in tern four because the year 12, and then the year 11, teachers are released as their classes finish school and take the classes of any teachers who are away. CRTs help manage the changing absences of teacher and are very important to the running of schools. The number of contract teachers, however, should be reduced.

I understand that the share of the national income going in profit is the highest it has ever been, yet there is no comment on this. Instead, we are told to become more flexible, which means working longer hand/or more inconvenient hours as the power shifts from the employee to the employer. But, people get what they vote for.

Chris C I remember that one of my friends who is primary trained elected to be in emergency teacher bank, he was on full salary, played a lot of golf in term one and term four and worked hard in the winter terms. He is now an primary school principal. He cheerfully admitted he was on a good lurk.

These days casual teachers are immediately identifiable in a staff room because they ooze desperation and poverty

I know teachers who were born in 1973 who had to work a cocktail of casual jobs for a decade before they cracked it for a permanent position. Others in the same cohort completed their training then went into commerce. Now the climate is less hostile they are looking for an opportunity in their first choice of occupation. A far cry from baby boomers experience.

If you think the current casual treatment of trained people is acceptable then you have no imagination or empathy or a seriously questionable idea of fair play!

And you. Billie, are talking of native Anglo- speakers, eventually:
“If you think the current casual treatment of trained people is acceptable then you have no imagination or empathy or a seriously questionable idea of fair play!”

billie,

You cannot be an emergency teacher and be on a full salary. Emergency teachers used to be paid a daily rate. Now known as casual relief teachers, they are paid an hourly rate, but must be employed for at least three hours. Decent schools will try to ensure that CRTs get a full day. Your friend may have been a regional relieving teacher, but then I do not understand how he played golf on working days.

The number of teachers absent from school varies unpredictably from day to day, as does the number of classes to be covered. It would not make sense for 10 CRTs to be sitting around in schools every day of the year waiting for the day when they were all needed. I used to employ some on a regular basis for part of the year because I could be confident that we would always have a certain number of absences, but a school cannot afford to employ a large number on this basis. Even with the variation of CRTs, schools still need to give extra classes to their existing teachers when they do not have enough CRTs, but this is limited to once a fortnight on average.

Some CRTs are trying to get full-time jobs and are in financial difficulties, but others are retired teachers or teachers on leave supplementing their incomes.

I think you are using the word “casual” in a confusing way. I have already said that the number of contract teachers should be reduced, but that will not happen until teachers themselves join their union and support industrial action for better pay and conditions. That is how they were won in the first place.

I regard the situation of relief teachers as extraordinary, if the experience of one of my closest relatives is anything to go by. She has just been told that she has to attend work for the dole! She received the top rating possible when she completed her training (the education dept allocates ratings to newly registered teachers). She is often asked for by other teachers going on leave as they know she will do a good job, yet sometimes there is a bureacratic reason why someone else is given the contract. She retrained as a teacher (4 years at university) because she was unable to continue working in her previous job due to injury - I don't think anyone advised her that this particular teaching specialisation was oversupplied until a couple of years after graduation, an education bureaucrat admitted, 'you are doing all the right things but there is a glut'. She often does extra work such as tutoring and marking tests. She loves teaching, children, and is very confident in all the essential curriculum areas. Last year she had a major operation, and had to rely on sickness benefits, then over the christmas holidays, no work (and there's not much early in 1st term) and now being treated in a humiliating way by centrelink even though aside from the period of incapacity, she has not had much more than a month of support - apparently staying registered 'just in case' (as advised by one of centrelink's officers) has now earned their contempt. Her hope was that if she just keeps working relief and getting known, she will eventually get a job in the field she trained for. Hard to imagine that such a person is now to be deployed in a charity shop for a couple of days a week. Seems incredibly stupid use of a valuable human resource. It seems like the aim is to humiliate people into taking a lower paid job (which would mean no hope of paying back hecs and is inappropriate for a person with injuries that preclude certain occupations).

Teahers? In Australia?

Take on more prists and mullahs at schools - anyway, only SPECIAL can have paid jobs in Anglo-racist paradice, and educating the rest is not essencial at all.