dsap
Administrator foruma
Pridružen/-a: 26.05. 2009, 16:56
Prispevkov: 59
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Ali je Slovenija (še) socialna država? |
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ALI JE SLOVENIJA (ŠE)
SOCIALNA DRŽAVA? vabilo na javno razpravo
•Javna razprava• •sreda, 14. april 2010•
•Fakulteta za socialno delo• •12.00-15.00,
predavalnica 5•
Nižje odpravnine. Krajši odpovedni roki. Višja upokojitvena sta-
rost. Večji nadzor nad prejemniki socialnih transferjev. Razvred-
notenje delavcev. Brezkompromisna pomoč najbogatejšim.
Ali je to socialna država naše prihodnosti?
Pridružite se nam na javni razpravi, katere cilj je oblikovati
civilnodružbeno iniciativo vseh, ki nam ni vseeno za našo pri-
hodnost.
V razpravi bodo sodelovali:
Gabi Čačinovič Vogrinčič (FSD), Dušan Semolič
(ZSSS),Vesna Leskošek (FSD), Milan Utroša (ZSSS),
Andrej Zorko (ZSSS), Srečo Dragoš (FSD), Goran
Lukić (ZSSS) in ostali.
Postani del sprememb, pridruži se iniciativi! |
09 Apr 2010 00:05 |
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dsap
Administrator foruma
Pridružen/-a: 26.05. 2009, 16:56
Prispevkov: 59
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Pridruži se javni razpravi in nadaljnjim akcijam pod naslovom ALI JE SLOVENIJA (ŠE) SOCIALNA DRŽAVA?
FAKULTETA ZA SOCIALNO DELO 14.4. 2010 PREDAVALNICA 5 12H – 15H
Vse informacije o dogodku: romana.zidar@fsd.uni-lj.si
V soorganizaciji Sindikata Fakultete za socialno delo in Zveze svobodnih sindikatov Slovenije ( VEČ V DRUGI PRIPONKI )
Lep pozdrav!
Ministrstvo za delo, družino in socialne zadeve je pred nekaj tedni sprožilo serijo predlogov zakonodajnih sprememb na področju socialne politike in politik trg dela. Če omenimo samo nekatere – Predlog ZDR predvideva skrajšanje odpovednega roka za osebe z več kot 25 leti delovne dobe iz 150 dni na 90 dni in znižanje odpravnine na enotnih 1/5 osnove za vsako leto dela pri delodajalcu. V spodnji tabeli si lahko pogledate, za koliko se bodo znižal znesek odpravnin glede na leta delovne dobe.
Za koliko se bi znižala odpravnina glede na predlog ZDR? Izračun glede na število let delovne dobe in scenarij bruto minimalne plače in bruto povprečne plače v zadnjih treh mesecih (v €)
cid:image002.png@01CAD4E2.0F466710
Vir: Poje, 2010
Skratka – osebi s 15 let delovne dobe in zadnjimi tremi plačami v znesku bruto minimalne plače 734,15€ bi se po predlaganem scenariju znesek odpravnine znižal za 1.432€. Pri čemer bi z naraščanjem delovne dobe ta izguba zgolj naraščala.
Po drugi strani MDDSZ predlaga nov Zakon o socialno varstvenih prejemkih in Zakon o uveljavljanju pravic iz javnih sredstev. Namen nove zakonodaje je po besedah MDDSZ oblikovanje bolj pravične in dolgoročne socialne države. Preglednejši in bolj enostaven sistem socialnih transferjev bi naj “omogočil, da bi pomoč dobili tisti, ki jo zares potrebujejo in preprečil izkoriščanje ter zlorabo sistema”.
Vse te spremembe so v imenu bolj “aktivacijske” politike socialne države, ki bo prejemnike socialnih transferjev držala tik na površju tveganja revščine in v zameno pričakovala sprejetje vsakršnega dela.
Ali bomo pustili, da bo socialna država postala kadrovski bazen poceni delovne sile “na klic”, ki se bo iz prejemnikov socialnih transferjev spremenila v zaposlene revne?
Kaj pomeni ta konceptualni premik socialne države, nam lepo prikaže knjiga BLAME WELFARE, INGNORE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY (Handler, Hasenfeld, 2008)
Spodaj vam ponujamo nekaj citatov iz omenjene knjige.
Vsaka podobnost s trenutno reformo socialne države je zgolj naključna (ali smo res tako naivni?).
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Iceland and Kim show that when using the NAS poverty threshold, which takes into account work-related expenses as well as near-money benefits, “the proportion of people in full-time working families who are poor increases substantially, from 37% when the official poverty measure is used, to 48%, according to the experimental measure.”
In other words, these families are “playing by the rules” and yet are poor. To put it in a broader perspective, poor Americans (those at the bottom income deciles) work more hours, on average, than their counterparts in Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, and the U.K. Moreover, in the United States, 25 percent of all workers are low-wage workers, as compared with only 12.9 percent, the average of all other industrialized countries. A primary reason those who work remain poor is change in the labor market, especially the deterioration of working conditions in the low-wage sector
Low-wage work is defined as less than 65 percent of the median for full-time jobs. At present, there are simply not enough decent-paying jobs. An increasing number of jobs are part time and lack benefits. In 2000, the Census Bureau reported that the median hourly wage was $9.91. Approximately 3 million people work part time because of the lack of full-time jobs. Because employers do not provide this benefit, 43.6 million people lack health insurance. According to Richard Freeman, how much work one does is the most important determinant of poverty. “For all individuals, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or age, there is a massive difference in the poverty rates of those who work full-time year-round and those who work less.” For full-time workers, the poverty rate is 2.6 percent; for part-time or part-year workers, the rate is 13.1 percent; and for those who do not work at all, the rate is 19.9 percent.
Undoubtedly, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ) has further increased the mixing of welfare and work. From 1993 to 2001, the percentage of recipients in families with a part-time or full-time worker increased from 43 percent to 61 percent. There is considerable participation in the labor force, especially part time, in families of various groups of recipients. The relatively high participation in full-time work in families with children under the age of 5 is particularly noteworthy.
President Nixon, in his State of the Union message (1971), said, “The current welfare system has become a monstrous consuming outrage – an outrage against the community, against the taxpayer, and particularly against the children it is supposed to help.” President Carter, at a news conference in 1977, picked up the same themes – welfare was “anti-work, anti-family, inequitable in its treatment of the poor and wasteful of taxpayers’ dollars.”
Indeed, in their study of variations in post-TANF state welfare policies, Matthew Fellowes and Gretchen Rowe find that states enacting strict eligibility requirements, more rigid work requirements, and less generous cash benefits have a higher proportion of African American recipients, are ideologically less liberal, have a higher-income representational bias, and are dominated by Republican legislators
The “Welfare-to-Work” Approach
Welfare-to-work, which is at the heart of TANF, has generally based on the demonstration model at Riverside County, California. This model, particularly approach to processing clients into the labor market, has become the template for most welfare-to-work programs around the country. Several other states and counties also experimented with similar welfare-to-work approaches (e.g., Arkansas; Cook County, Ill.),but Riverside came to epitomize the new approach to welfare. Implemented in the 1980s as part of California’s Greater Avenues for Independence, Riverside emphasized a strong employment “message,” inexpensive job search, and quick entry into the labor market pursuant to the philosophy that a low-paying entry-level job is better than no job and could lead to a better job. The message was addressed to the staff as well as the recipients. Case managers encouraged recipients even with limited education to try job search first. Similarly, recipients who had attendance problems in basic education classes were reassigned to job search. Typically, recipients were assigned to “job club.” It consisted of a series of sessions on how to prepare a resume, search for a job, and how to appear for a job interview.
It was followed by several weeks of supervised job search that included calling employers and lining up interviews. Case managers were especially recruited for commitment to the mission
of agency and were tightly organized and monitored. The staff engaged in close monitoring of attendance and recipient job performance and provided support services for employment or employment-related problems.
Unique to Riverside, the staff engaged in extensive job development; in fact, workers were specifically hired for this task. The county was able to promise local employers job applicants “that afternoon.” Employers cooperated to save the costs of screening large numbers of job applicants responding to general employment-wanted ads. Staff performance was rated, in large part, on job development and placement. Thus, the staff, in practice, emphasized their ability to find the participants jobs and to offer them needed services to get and keep the job. Although hailed as a “success,” the results of Riverside were marginal. In year 3, the recipients who worked averaged $84 more per month in earnings than the controls, or less than $20 more per week. Moreover, this average increase came about because more recipients began to work and for longer hours, rather than because of an improvement in wages. In fact, Riverside might have achieved the results by getting the recipients in the experimental group to switch from the informal to the formal economy. In the last quarter of year 3, recipients in the experimental group were $77 better off than recipients in the control group (or $26 per month). In year 3, only 19 percent of the participants in the experimental group, compared with 16 percent of the participants in the control group, had a total income above the poverty line. In addition, only 31 percent of the participants in the experimental group were employed in the last quarter of year 3, and about a third never worked during the entire three-year period. Thus, the benefits to the recipients of the Riverside program were very modest. However, most importantly, the researchers found that Riverside produced a positive best benefit-cost ratio – the government saved money. “This return was exceptionally large in Riverside – $2.84 per every net $1 invested.”
Studies on who is at risk of being sanctioned show convincingly that recipients who are more vulnerable and with greater barriers to employment are more likely to be sanctioned. Several studies have shown that recipients with more children, who lack work experience, and with limited education are more likely to be sanctioned. Similarly, recipients with health, mental health, or substance abuse problems are far more likely to be sanctioned. These studies also show that recipients who experienced domestic violence are also at greater risk of being sanctioned. Lack of resources, such as access to child care, adequate transportation, or caring for disabled family members, also increases the risk of being sanctioned.
Most (62.6%) of nonstandard workers said that the reasons for their jobs were the constraints of the jobs – they could not get any other job, the employer set the hours, it was the nature of the job. Only 5.7 percent said that the nonstandard job was because of child care arrangements, and about the same percentage (5.1%) gave better pay as the reason. The top ten nonstandard jobs were cashiers, truck drivers, commodities sales workers in retail and personal services, waiters and waitresses, cooks, janitors and cleaners, sales supervisors and proprietors, registered nurses, food serving and lodging managers, and nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants. Except for truck drivers, all of these jobs are in local services. Thus, for the most part, nonstandard work is not due to globalization. Most of the jobs are low paying. The average hourly earnings (1997) was $8 per hour as compared with $9.50 for those in standard shifts. Thus, even though nonstandard work is not desired by most workers, as a group they are not rewarded with higher earnings.
Currently, in the United States, 40 percent of all workers work nonstandard times – evenings, nights, rotating shifts, on weekends. The pervasiveness of nonstandard work has significant implications for the health and well-being of families and for social policy. As Harriet Presser puts it, “Today, nonstandard work has produced a new ‘home time’ family structure, especially for the working poor.”
The “work first” philosophy of welfare reform emphasizes immediate employment over formal job preparation and assumes that workers will be able to use the skills and knowledge gained in initial jobs to qualify for better-paying jobs. However, employment mobility is also a myth. Regardless of whether it was true in the past, today low-wage workers are not moving up the economic ladder. Only one-fifth of the jobs held by less-educated workers are in “starter” occupations, which require little training or experience and are associated with subsequent well-paying occupations. Most routes up the ladder are inaccessible to many less-educated workers. According to a recent study, the 1990s’ job expansion was mostly concentrated at the high end (20%) as well as the very low end (17%) of the job structure.
Although a majority of the leavers work full time, they still experience a high rate of poverty and are earning only half of the average household income.
The jobs most likely available for welfare recipients are nonstandard, lowpaying service work. TANF is not designed to help smooth the week-to-week, season-to-season variations in income that accompany shifting schedules and rapid job loss. Strict time limits on welfare receipt fail to take into account not only fluctuations in the economy but also the chronic instability of lowerwage work. The crude performance measures commonly employed by public agencies can be very damaging when coupled with employment instability.
Between half and two-thirds find jobs shortly after leaving welfare, mostly in sales, food preparation, clerical support, and other service jobs. The wage is between $5.67 to $8.42 per hour and most do not receive benefits. These are relatively high number of weekly hours of work, but still there are substantial periods of unemployment as well as job loss. Earnings range from $8,000 to $15,144, thus leaving many families in poverty. Earnings increase largely from longer hours, not wages. Most do not receive child care subsidies. Many families are worse off because wages do not make up for lost benefits, even counting the EITC. Thus, despite the political claims for success, the gains for welfare-to-work recipients are very modest and often fail to account for the costs of working – transportation, reciprocity in child care, missed days, and so forth.
Goran Lukič
Zveza svobodnih sindikatov Slovenije
M: 031 517 201 |
09 Apr 2010 00:10 |
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Časovni pas GMT + 1 ura, srednjeevropski - zimski čas. Danes je 22 Dec 2024 09:00
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