Social Minister Rudolf Hundstorfer still glosses over the disaster in the “labour market”
(Vienna/Graz, 5th January, 2016) It’s really a mockery how social minister and would-be president is trying to hush up the failure of his labour-market policy with very selective and incoherent juggling with figures. It’s almost striking that Hundstorfer sweeps the great increase of the long-term unemployed who are permanently excluded from working life by the economy under the table: in 2009 on average 58,209 registered long-term unemployed people still appeared in the internal statistics of the Public Employment Service (PES), but this figure was rising in 2015 to 147,601 people, that is a plus of 60.6 per cent! The share in actual long-term unemployed people who were hidden on a huge scale by compulsory PES measures in a set of fake statistics and who were misleadingly called “long-term unemployed” rose from 17.9% to 35.2%, that is, has almost doubled within 6 years!
The biggest share in long-term unemployed shows Vienna (42.4%), followed by Lower Austria (37.5%) and Burgenland (36.4%). In western provinces of Austria the share amounts to 20% thanks to seasonal work in tourism lasting only for a few months. It’s noticeable that this development has been moving equally steeply upwards in all provinces since 2009, which points to a fundamental crisis in the capitalist labour system. Despite an increasing workforce offer, the number of performed working hours is slightly continuously decreasing since 2011 and the part-time rate is continuously increasing as ever.
Losers in Hundstorfer’s fake policy: older employees, health victims and increasingly intellectuals and qualified people
A closer look at the statistics shows the fatal repercussions of the unsocial policy of “social minister” Hundstorfer: the repressive, neoliberal abolition of the restricted disability pension hits those whose health was sacrificed for economic growth and the profits of a minority. The number of unemployed people who are put on file by the PES “as persons with health restrictions” has almost doubled since 2009: from 35,672 to 66,644 in the last year. Contrary to the myth “education protects against unemployment” it is not putatively “semi-educated people” and “foreigners” who are affected, but it is also the number of academics which are registered as unemployed at the PES which rose from 10,663 in the year 2009 to 21,515 in the last year. In comparison with the previous year the highest growth rate was to be noted with a percentage of +20.4%, followed closely by the category “higher education” (school-leaving exam) with a plus of 16.4%. From the mid-forties on people in gainful employment “in the prime of life” are noticeably discriminated against which is why the unemployment figures are rising here above average:
Aged 45 to 49: +11.1%
Aged 50 to 54: +17.7%
Aged 55 to 59: +22.0%
On the other hand, young persons are driven out of the unemployment statistics by a compulsory training for young persons forced upon them from above by the social minister and a decrease of rising unemployment of young persons is dreamed up.
Stop the systematic deceit!
It’s about time to stop spreading fake figures and maintaining false hopes and to eliminate the real causes of the permanent crisis instead of expensive suppression of the symptoms carried through by force by the sanction regime.
Whereas politics threatens the victims of economy with violence and with deprivation of their livelihood in the form of ineffective compulsory measures, the perpetrators receive money gifts at the cost of taxpayers and insurance payers.
For this reason ‘Aktive Arbeitslose’ demand that violence against employees is quickly put to an end:
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Stop the sanction regime which runs counter the human rights! There are no sanctions which destroy the livelihood for politicians like the minister of economic affairs and the social minister, and for employers who sacrifice the human right of freely chosen work in favour of an increase of the profits of a minority and who discriminate against the long-term unemployed as well as older employees!
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A full say of the employees affected by means of an independent agency for unemployed people which also has a full right to vote in the supervisory committee of the PES!
‘Aktive Arbeitslose Austria’ demand the long-term planning and the realization of a new social and economic architecture for the purposes of genuine democracy:
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The gradual reduction of the regular working hours to 25 hours per regular weekly working hours
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The gradual introduction of the emancipatory unconditional basic income including the free access to education for all, also at an “advanced age” and for putatively “semi-educated people” who are severely discriminated against as far as disability pension is concerned! (No professional protection and therefore no right of re-education or requalification!)
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Reorganization of the tax system: full discharge of the factor work by replacing the poll tax on paid labour by a value-added tax, redistribution of the money accumulated by the upper strata of society by wealth taxes, capital taxes and estate duties.
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Support of a united economy and the setting up of democratic structures in the economy. It is democracy and human rights that must not stop at the material basis of the livelihood of society, of the economy!
Further information:
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Hundstorfer on the labour market: the increase in unemployment slightly dampened
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The situation on the labour market becomes aggravated
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10.6% out of work
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AMS labour market data
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Falsification of statistics: PES pushes the figures of long-term unemployed people below a tenth by means of “courses”
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Agenda Austria: Austria, the land of hidden unemployment