Worker perspective - Barbara

I work in an area of high unemployment in the western suburbs of a large city. I haven’t always worked here, I was in a more affluent area before, it’s really different here.

I’ve been in employment services about 11 years, I’ve been with this one agency for most of that. My caseload is mixed streams 2-4.

This is the worst it’s ever been. I’ve been through the good times and the bad times with the changes in the contract almost since it began. It’s never been this tough.

There are two main problems. Lack of payments for outcomes and in this area, the barriers of the clients and there’s not that many jobs.

We used to get paid well for outcomes. Now we are lucky to get a few hundred dollars, when it used to be in the thousands, depending on the job seeker. Even on the front line we feel this difference, there is so much pressure on us to get outcomes it’s impossible to get. We used to have a rewards system but that went out the window because it was just unrealistic, hardly anyone was getting the outcomes, so now we don’t even have that to motivate us.  The agency just can’t afford it any more, things have really got that tough. There’s a lot of people leaving the industry, and I’ve been thinking about it too, I just can’t remember a time that’s been this difficult.  Their just not keeping the staff now too either, wages are so low, it’s really depressing.

It’s not even been a year since I was transferred to this high unemployment area, it wasn’t my choice it was part of a restructuring. I have to say I was a bit shocked about how severe the issues are around here. I hadn’t been expecting it and was astounded, even though I’d lived in the area for a while. There’s issues with ex-offenders, literacy, drugs, mental health, you name it. There’s a high population of indigenous, there’s long term unemployment, and there’s intergenerational unemployment, and the young girls you know getting pregnant at 15 and that. So there’s a lot of DHS stuff going on, and I’ve got a high caseload of ex-offenders.  There are work avoiders around here, that’s for sure, like a culture of unemployment, but it is partly a result of the nature of the problems people are experiencing in this area, a catch 22.

It’s really tough work, a lot of people don’t have any hope of getting a job and they know it, once the employers do the police check, that’s it. It’s hard working with people like that day in day out, it’s really emotionally draining trying to keep upbeat about it, when you know basically they’ve got buckleys. And it’s not as if we don’t try, we’re all on the phone reverse marketing our arses of a day a week, because we have to. Employers just don’t want to know, I think they’re oversaturated now, there’s too many of us on the phone they’re sick of it, you’re better of just getting ads out of the local newspaper, but I can’t claim outcomes for those now, unless I’ve run the employer, it’s become way too hard.

I play it by the rule book in terms of doing PRs, I have to do them so I do.  I know it has consequences some times, we get a lot of aggro in our office, especially over work for the dole. I’ve got a few on my caseload of WfD too, they’re never really happy about it. There’s some who are like right, I better a get job then, anything’s better than that, and there’s a few others who might be on cash-in-hand, who just go off Centrelink. Then there’s a whole other group, who just have to go because there’s really no other choice and they just go into some meaningless activity that doesn’t give them any skills, or anything. You know jobs mainly just sorting clothes for opp shops that’s really all there is these days. So it doesn’t help them get a job, and they’re not happy about it.

I’ve got a thick skin so I don’t get too upset by the aggro and I’ve never really had anyone make a direct threat to me, but it’s there day in day out, we have to deal with these difficult clients on top of all the other issues they might have in the first place, why they are unemployed. There’s a fair few clients who have issues with authority in general, you have to tread a very fine line between being too soft or too hard. So PRs work in some cases, not all, and then there’s a problem with some people getting away with it who complain to Centrelink, using their aggression to get there own way, when it’s probably the people who don’t complain who are most justified. There are some who are less vocal who probably need help more, but just haven’t got a life time of using intimidation to get their own way.

I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt the first few times I hear their excuses, until l get a good sense of what’s really going on. There are times when you have to do PRs and you know it’s not really helping people, it’s just part of the process of being on the merry-go-round where the help they needs not there. We don’t have the resources to really help them either, it’s part of a wider problem of lack of investment in social problems, so the work we do isn’t really helping, not in this area.

I had the occasional soft spot, it’s terrible some times that people have participation requirements, you know pregnant women, people with terminal illnesses like cancer. I’ve known a few really bad cases that really upset me, like this single parents who ended up committing suicide because she’d lost her house after she was transferred to Newstart.  Some of the system settings a wrong like the parenting payment thing, because it just means people have been transferred to a lower income that makes it impossible for them to survive, and there’s not really any jobs that fit in with school hours for them to do, and they should have the right to be there to care for their kids around school hours, I firmly believe that. 

I also think they’ve made it too hard to qualify for DSP, I know lots of cases where I think people really should have been on it and they haven’t qualified, the points on the one table thing. Sadly, I had one Indigenous client who died suddenly of chronic liver disease – he had been denied  Disability payment.

Another incident of a man who fell from a ladder and cracked his skull and also damaged his wrist – he would tell me that he thought of taking his own life and that  life wasn’t worth living as he was in constant pain and other complications from operations,  and he was denied Disability Payment.  Recently  I was told by his son that he was suddenly killed in a motor bike accident – and I wonder to this day if it was intentional .

Another job seeker was told that she was diagnosed with last stages of cancer and only had only 6 months to live, she got Disability payment – but,  is that what it  takes now, to be on your death bed before Disability payment is approved?

Some agencies invested too much resources in expanding, and now they’re paying the price. There not making any money so it’s cut back and restructure all over the place. It’s really bad for morale, we all feel so demoralised. It’s shocking.

I think there only answer is to reduce the number of providers. There are five in this area, it’s too many, they have to get the overhead down so they can put the money back into the services and keep the staff. They need to bring the service and outcome fees back up to a reasonable level, otherwise there’s no hope for the services being able to help the people they need to.