Alternative Welfare Working Group Set Up

At last an alternative welfare working group has been set up to counter balance the proposals coming from the government's welfare working group. Hopefully the alternative proposals will be more friendly to beneficiaries. One idea is a Universal Basic Income. This could be good, but the crucial factor would be the amount. I've heard proposals of $200 per week with a few top ups for a mother with a family. This is not enough to live on, and would be similar to a current benefit.


"Less than a year after quitting Parliament, former Green MP Sue Bradford is jumping back into public life with a new group that aims to challenge an official shakeup of the welfare system.

The "alternative welfare working group" will seek public submissions around the country to counter the official welfare working group which has been asked by Social Development Minister Paula Bennett to find ways to reduce welfare dependency.

"They are actually talking about changing the very basis of our social security system, but they are not engaging a wide range of people in the discussion around that," Ms Bradford said yesterday.

"It's very important that other analyses and other solutions are put up."

The six-member alternative group has been set up by the Catholic aid and social justice agency Caritas, the Anglican Social Justice Commission and the Beneficiary Advocacy Federation.

Massey University social policy professor Mike O'Brien will chair it. Other members are Lincoln University economist Paul Dalziel, Victoria University welfare law lecturer Maamari Stephens, Anglican Bishop Muru Walters and Disabled Persons Assembly researcher Wendi Wicks."

read more at:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10657258

Huge Sell Off of State Houses

Housing New Zealand plans to sell or redevelop almost a third of its 69,000 houses in a 20-year plan to meet changing needs and bring private homeowners into state housing enclaves such as Mangere and Otara.

The corporation says it has identified 20,285 homes for "redevelopment, reconfiguration, outright disposal or disposal and replacement".

Whilst it used to provide housing for working families, it seems the focus is now on people with disabilities and the elderly. Thus the current houses where people live are deemed to be the wrong size or in the wrong place.

It kindly plans to get people out of their state homes in high concentration areas in order to help them become "independent".

"We are not saying that every street has to get down to 30 per cent," she said. "But the reason for that goal is that if you are trying, which we are, to help people on their pathway to housing independence, you need to have other forms of tenure that they can move to in the same area."

The corporation planned "one of the biggest reconfigurations of state housing that has ever been attempted".

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10657035

Stop National's Super City, Welfare Cuts

NACT government forcing workers to pay for their big profits

The NACTs [National Party and ACT party - with Maori party in tow] are using the election for the Supercity Council as a test bed for their agenda to make the workers pay for their crisis in the 2011 General Election. The new unified Supercity will have around half the population in NZ so it is the dynamo around which the whole country spins. The bosses want to win over Auckland as a step to winning over the whole country to their new right 'austerity' agenda.

This so-called 'austerity' means that workers suffer a cut in their living standards so that the bosses can improve theirs. It is a gigantic redistribution of income from poor to rich on top of the fact that workers ultimately create all of the nation's wealth.

http://redrave.blogspot.com/2010/06/supercity-fight-is-class-war.html

Privatising social welfare

The NACTs plan to go down to the next level such as cutting benefits and driving beneficiaries into shitty jobs to force down wages further. Invalids will be redefined as sick or preferably workshy and work tested to force them to take these shitty jobs. Solo parents will have to look for part-time work when their youngest child reaches the age of six years.

The Minister of Social Development has said she wants to privatise welfare by making workers set up their own social insurance schemes.She says that work is good for beneficiaries health.

http://redrave.blogspot.com/2010/06/supercity-fight-is-class-war.html

Bosses the biggest bludgers

If we look harder we don't see an 'underclass' living it up on its welfare 'entitlements', we see an 'overclass' living it up on its 'entitlement' to expenses and profits
This is what this charade about the underclass is all about. It tries to hide the fact that the corporate welfare cheats are laughing all the way to the bank with their millions

http://redrave.blogspot.com/2010/06/supercity-fight-is-class-war.html

Working people must mobilise and dump NACT

Working people have to put up a huge fight to stop NACT from winning the Supercity and easing their way to a 2011 election victory

http://redrave.blogspot.com/2010/06/supercity-fight-is-class-war.html

From Class Struggle 89
http://redrave.blogspot.com/2010/07/class-struggle-89-may-june-2010.html

Privatising Schools, Sacking welfare workers, UK

The UK is fast tracking legislation giving school boards the option to apply to become "academies" ie private schools, with no consultation with students or parents.

Sound familiar? Small boards empowered to make make decisions to privatise important public assets without consultation-shades of Auckland Super City?

The NZ national standards will pave the way for this sort of privatisation being offered to the "better" schools here, just as is being done in the UK.

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9901/30-06-2010/academies-fight-the-tories-offensive-on-state-education

Meanwhile UK Jobcentre workers are reeling this week. Having been told how valuable they have been in getting the country out of recession, this week they were told that 4,000 of them are to be sacked within the next few months. This is even though unemployment has started to rise again and, with over 2.5 million unemployed, the recovery is still a long way off.

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/latest/9911/30-06-2010/thousands-of-jobcentre-workers-threatened-with-dole

France, Millions Join Protests

On Thursday 24 June, about two million workers took to the streets in about 200 cities and towns of France in a national day of action called by the main trade union organisations (CGT, CFDT, CFTC, UNSA, FSU and Solidaires) against the pension reforms. This is the centre-piece of the wave of attacks concocted by the Sarkozy-Fillon government, aimed at slashing up to €100 billion from public spending by 2013. Many capitalist voices, in France and internationally, are already pushing for ‘supplementary efforts’, arguing that such a move remains insufficient.

The ‘demographic’ and ‘deficit’ arguments are used as excuses to impose new burdens on working people and attacks on living standards. At the same time, the CAC 40 (the 40 biggest French private companies quoted on the stock-exchange) made €49 billion in profits last year, and bosses’ contributions (social taxes) are being reduced by €30 billion each year (the equivalent of the deficit of the whole social security system). This shows what all the propaganda about the “unaffordable level of the pensions” is really about.

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4383

Share your Stories! NZ and UK

Overheard at the Job Centre is a site for beneficiaries in the UK to share their stories about the hassles they have to go through whilst applying for benefits.

Here in New Zealand you can share your stories too! Go to the Share Your Stories Section of our archive-or email keithhend@gmail.com and we will publish it.

Or share your story in the comments section of this article!

To read the stories of the English see

http://overheardatthejobcentre.wordpress.com/

Hackney Beneficiaries Unite, UK

Their job centres aren't finding them any work, and they attended a national day of action for the unemployed in June this year. They're fighting against the privatisation of the benefit system which would see private companies receiving large sums of government money to force beneficiaries to jump though hoops to qualify for minimal benefits.

http://hackneyunemployedworkers.wordpress.com/

FW: Dr Jim Stanford on the Canadian insurance model for unemployment benefits

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From: t.menezes@auckland.ac.nz
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 11:22:00 +1200
Subject: Dr Jim Stanford on the Canadian insurance model for unemployment benefits

 

Dr Jim Stanford's power point slides and a Press release from the Forum on 24 June:

 

Beware the "Insurance" Model for Unemployment Benefits:

Cautionary Evidence from the Canadian Experience.

 

Are now available here.

 

Thankyou for your contribution to a very topical session.

 

 

Tressy Menezes

Research Administrator & PA to Assoc Dean:Research

Postgraduate and Research Office

Level 1, Room141

Owen Glenn Bldg

Tel: 373 7599 extn: 82628

Email: t.menezes@auckland.ac.nz

 

 

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Spain: Safety Net Frays

Spain, like the rest of Europe faces wage, pension, and welfare cuts and freezes.

The events around the world show us is that liveable benefits, social services, and wages are interlinked-as are attacks upon them. We must all unite-employed and unemployed-against these attacks.

Spanish workers are preparing to strike, but will this be enough? The article below says that they feel betrayed by their government, but they don't know who to vote for.

Can our current worldwide economic system ever truly provide the kind of security that people need? Do we need a different kind of economic-political system that is truly designed to meet people's needs rather than profit?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/world/europe/28spain.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Beware the Two Paulas

A single mother writes:
"Paula Bennett, Minister of Social Welfare and Paula Rebstock, head of the Welfare Working Group, are two women that working class women need to beware of. Their policies are not pro-women. The two Paulas are helping the white male capitalist class, and its National Government- to get rich at poor (including Maori and Pacific) women's expense. Paula Rebstock with her patronising views towards single parents, and how we need to "work"; is helping to provide an appearance of academic legitimacy to Paula Bennett's planned brutal assault upon us. Mothering is work and we should be valued and respected for this, and have a liveable income for ourselves and our families whether or not we are in paid employment."

Beware the Canadian Insurance Model

Jim Stanford, economist for the Canadian Auto Workers Union, recently gave an excellent talk in Auckland about the dangers of the insurance model of benefits, known in Canada as "Employment Insurance" (EI). This model is being considered by the NZ National Government and its welfare panel.
"The unions in Canada agreed to the introduction of this model some decades ago, as they believed it would remove the stigma of being on a benefit, and give unemployed workers a guaranteed entitlement to their insurance payouts, since they would have been paying regularly into the scheme from their wages. Instead, the majority found that they had no entitlement at all ,as they had not worked enough to qualify;and many of those who did qualify received very little; because they had not earned enough. The system produces inequality, and discriminates against the low paid ,casual or part time worker, who is often female. For some middle class professionals, it gave good support for a short time.

Not only this, scandalously billions of dollars paid into this scheme by workers disappeared.

Lastly, these payments are for very limited times, with an absolute maximum of 6 months and most being only for a matter of weeks.

Is this what we want for New Zealanders? A scam where we pay out of our weekly wages into an "insurance" scheme which gives us no guarantee of any payout if we become unemployed, nor to a liveable amount if we do get it; and which ends in a very short time leaving us with nothing? And if we have been unfortunate enough not to be able to get work in the first place-or not enough- then tough cookies for us?

Jim also gave some excellent talks about Capitalism recently and how it works-or doesn't work. Some of his resources can be found in the website
www.economicsforeveryone.com

see also
wwww.policyalternatives.ca for several articles about EI in Candada, including:

Is EI Working for Canada's Unemployed?:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/ei-working-canadas-unemployed

Women Shut out of Employment Insurance:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/women-shut-out-employment-insurance-study

Greece and UK: People Fight against Cuts

The Greeks are on the streets again protesting against cuts to wages and pensions. In Britain trade unions and beneficiary organisations are uniting to fight against the "Bloodbath Budget" which attacks social services, benefits, jobs and pensions, and includes a VAT increase to a whopping 20per cent. Intending to make the poor pay for the capitalist crisis it plans huge job cuts, slashing housing benefits, cancelling youth projects, freezing public sector pay and child benefits, cutting pensions ; at the same time as reducing corporate tax, and miniscule bank levies-bankers pay 2 billion whilst benefits are slashed by 11 billion!
see
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9863/23-06-2010/budget-day-workers-responses

and
http://brightonhovesocialistparty.blogspot.com/2010/06/brighton-socialists-protest-against.html