The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions.

Source: The Saturday Paper.

Imagine a capitalist who, needing two new workers, publishes an advertisement asking for applications. After receiving 470 applications for the two positions, the capitalist feels disappointed. Unemployment benefits are to blame, the capitalist says, because they are too generous. More people should have applied.

What would you say about that person? Would it make any difference if the capitalist were skinny or bald?

Let’s add details. Although the capitalist pays the wage rates prevailing in the labour market for the two positions, that industry pays the lowest wage rates. Say, the legal, prevailing median and  average weekly wages in that industry are the lowest in the land. Would that explain why many other workers, perhaps less desperate than those 470, did not apply for those two positions?

Further suppose one were to reduce unemployment benefits or even eliminate them altogether, so as to increase the number of applicants, in accordance with the capitalist’s wishes. Would that improve in any way the situation of the 470 original and more desperate applicants?

That capitalist needed two additional staff. Let’s say another 470 applicants were pushed to apply for those two positions. Would him/her hire any more employees because the number of applicants doubled?

Let’s stop here. Think well your answers to those questions before going any further. Take your time.

----------

Ready?

I’ve presented that scenario as a hypothetical. It’s not. That story appeared last Saturday in the Daily Mail Australia under the byline of Zoe Zaczek. There is a capitalist who really says that.

That, I’m sure, will not surprise Left-leaning readers. The Daily Mail Australia is the local edition of the ultra Right-wing British rag of the same name. To screw workers is in their DNA. That’s how the likes of Zaczek make a living.

But there are two details that may surprise Left-leaning readers, particularly those of a Liberal/Leftish persuasion. Go ahead, here’s the link to that article. Look at the photos.

That man is our capitalist.

That’s the first detail. Capitalists, just like Australian citizens and permanent residents, don’t need to be white. It’s not the colour of one’s skin that makes one a capitalist. Similarly with foreigner: foreigner doesn’t necessarily mean non-white.

That’s the other side of the racial equality coin the Liberal/Leftish stubbornly refuse to accept and need to be reminded of.

Yes, my friend, I don’t know what thoughts crossed your mind when I presented that story as a hypothetical. What I do know is that whatever you thought of that capitalist before seeing the photos, you must keep thinking after seeing the photos.

----------

Allow me a digression.

Source: 6333.0 - Characteristics of Employment, Australia, August 2019

Source: 6302.0 - Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, Nov 2019.

They may be already a bit dated, but the latest data available all show that accommodation and food services, where restaurants are included, is the lowest paying industry.

To give readers an idea how poorly paid restaurant/hospitality workers are: the highest pay grade in the Restaurant Industry Award [MA000119], corresponding to 20+ yo permanent Cook Grade 5 attracts an hourly rate of $24.77 (Monday to Friday, between 6 am and 10 pm, penalties excluded). Its weekly wage (38 hours) is $941.10 (assuming he/she isn’t underpaid, in an industry where wage theft is endemic). To consistently make the average for accommodation and food services ($1,179.20) he/she needs to do overtime, work weekends or nights or a combination and after all that effort, his/her wages would still be about half the median weekly wage for mining ($2,300).

Those people work hard for their money, as the old song had it. They don’t get much for their efforts. Would a newly unemployed journalist be eager to take on an Introductory Grade position/kitchenhand ($19.49 an hour or $740.80 a week) at a restaurant?

----------

Last March 22 it was announced that the JobSeeker scheme (ranging between $530.40 and $670.05 per week, depending on the circumstances of the applicant) was made available to the unemployed until September. Although it was a great improvement relative to its previous incarnation (the NewStart Allowance) it wasn’t a fortune.

The top JobSeeker rate paid was 90.4% of the lowest pay in the lowest paying industry: kitchenhand. If you were a Cook Grade 5 you were already at least $271.05 short every single week, but your expenses did not shrink correspondingly.

However, on July 21 a cut in JobSeeker was announced (apparently, from September the rates will range between $380.40 and $520.05 per week): that ratio was reduced to 70.2%.

By then, our Cook Grade 5 will be at least $421.05 per week short.

And that leaves aside the notion of “mutual obligation”: the recipient of the JobSeeker allowance is forced to perform a series of tasks at the Government’s discretion, or the payment will be suspended. Among other things, he/she will have to apply for at least 4 positions under threat of payment suspension. If for whatever reason he/she decides to decline a job offer, no more money.

In Australia, when dealing with the unemployed the Government use the stick and the stick approach. No carrots here.

Anyway, that second announcement was expected. Scotty from Marketing and the Murdoch press-titute had already been busily selling the “job snobs” furphy.

----------

After that long digression, readers may be asking about the second surprise. Here it is.

Madeleine Morris published that same day a strikingly similar piece (so much so that she even believes Zaczek “completely rip [sic] off” her story).

Morris is a ABC journalist (Zaczek, I imagine, could say that the ABC is a cultural Marxist propaganda outfit).

But her story wasn’t meant as a hatchet job on JobSeeker recipients, as Zaczek’s evidently was. I doubt Morris wants JobSeeker to be further cut down, as Zaczek may want. Or, more precisely, those weren’t Morris’ main goals. She isn’t a Right-wing nutter (Zaczek could say she is a Social Justice Warrior: more or less what I call a Leftish/Liberal with a strong identitarian bent).

Morris’ main goal was to highlight the plight of “visa workers” (i.e. foreign workers on temporary residence visas: international students, sponsored workers and working holiday-makers – aka backpackers) who received no support whatsoever from the COALition Government.

I have no objection to that. Her intentions are good. Indeed I share her concern. Much more importantly, the ACTU has done its level best to extend assistance to those workers.

But our agreement ends there. An example among others where we disagree: Morris’ presenting a capitalist as champion of visa workers, skin colour notwithstanding. While I find it appalling that she apparently can’t see anything odd in a capitalist “speaking up” for workers, I won’t insist on the subject.

What I really can’t let pass is Morris’ denigrating the unemployed – through a capitalist no less – as a means to boost – by contrast – the case of visa workers. In her effort to help the latter, she is willing to make the former collateral damage.

It’s not just the unfairness of it all, or that it won’t help visa workers, for they need assistance, not that others share in their misery. Nor is it just a matter of the sheer absurdity of the situation: those kids apply en masse to those shitty jobs out of despair, not because they are workaholics whose lifelong ambition is to wash dishes and take crap from entitled customers (assuming theirs is a decent boss).

It’s that it pits workers against workers. That’s irresponsible. That’s dangerous. It may make Morris feel good inside and look good to her peers, but it’s madness.

The fact that Zaczek and Morris used the same materiel should speak for itself. Must I draw a picture? Really?