Photos: RNZ, Newsroom
With unemployment up to 5.1% and a number of people made redundant, the government is now moving to increase benefit sanctions. This is despite there being less jobs than there are unemployed people. Unemployment is necessary to keep capitalism going.
In the latest act of cruelty, the government has increased benefit sanctions by 27%.
“Sanctions strip people of the basics they need to live, with no proof that they help anyone find paid work. The government increasing sanctions on the unemployed when there are little to no jobs is beyond cruel,” said Ricardo Menéndez March of the Green Party.
It comes alongside sanctions against people living with disabilities and controls on how they can spend their money, cuts to disability support, and an estimated cost of living increase of up to $5500 (Fairer Future) for families with a disabled member of their household.
While the Prime Minister declared that “if you can work, you should,” thousands of people were made redundant from government jobs, measures to fire and evict people for no reason were implemented, and the minimum wage rose at less than half the rate of inflation.
There are currently more unemployed people than there are jobs available, with minimum wage positions receiving thousands of applicants.
The government’s approach is not evidence-based, and there is no proof that sanctions work to get people into jobs.
According to RNZ, the number of people on Jobseeker Support has gone up 10% to 216,000 people.
Main benefit cancellations had increased by 6.9 percent to just over 49,000 even though there are “fewer job listings being available for a growing number of people on the benefit.”
It’s important to remember that the system relies on having a large pool of disposable workers, which means having a large number of unemployed people.
Because the government brought back 90-day trials which allow employers to fire employees for no reason within the first three months; raised the minimum wage by 35 cents, and; are removing a number of workers’ protections, unemployment has risen. This was the goal.
Now, with protections gone and 156,000 people unemployed, employers have an almost infinite pool of disposable workers they can pay less than a living wage.
One-third of children are in poverty; Māori make up over 52% of the prison population; half of people in prison weren’t in paid work before; the majority of Kiwis are living payday to payday, and; protection after protection is being scrapped.
Poverty is built into the system, yet those who are unemployed are blamed and sanctioned.
The objective of the ruling class is to refuse workers the right to organise effectively. This means combatting union numbers, increasing precarity, and individualising contracts. If there are no unemployed people, workers can’t be threatened with replacement if they fight back against exploitation.
Labour and National have chosen to uphold a system that puts the interests of profit before the lives of people. They are both backed by the interests of large businesses. Poverty is a political choice and they have continued to maintain a system that requires poverty and unemployment in order to function.
You can’t humanise a system that prioritises human welfare second to profit. Thinking that Labour is the solution is ignoring the obvious.