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The right to work versus the right to income
Sally Cowling, Bill Mitchell and Martin Watts
Centre of Full Employment and Equity
Contact Email: ecwfm
alinga.newcastle.edu.au
Welfare reform in the USA and Australia has been focused on improving employability by supporting transitions from welfare to work in order to promote self-sufficiency and reduce poverty and social exclusion. Workfare has been introduced in the USA and the coverage of mutual obligation continues to be extended in Australia.
Two other means of achieving these goals are by guaranteeing an unconditional basic income (BI) and guaranteeing employment for those able to work through a Job Guarantee (JG). This paper contrasts the capacity of the approaches to achieve the goals of welfare reform by exploring their impact on welfare dependency, labour market participation and employment, social inclusion and the intergenerational transmission of inequality.
The paper concludes that only the JG addresses the underlying cause of poverty and dependency - the lack of paid employment opportunities due to the spending gap and the abandonment of a government commitment to full employment. Welfare recipients have limited opportunities in an economy that tolerates 6 per cent unemployment.
The paper also specifies how a JG could satisfy the right to decent work. Unlike existing Workfare models, JG jobs promote social inclusion rather than providing a contingent labour force to undertake contingent work.
Paper
Download Information (if available):
Paper188.pdf
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Copyright © 2003 Social Policy Research Centre.
