Fire at will bill will not lead to 13 week benefit stand downs

There has been a fair bit of scaremongering by the Greens that the Fire at Will Bill will lead to people losing their jobs and not being eligible for a benefit for 13 weeks. In fact it is the opposite - people who are fired at will for misconduct under the 90 day legislation will be much less likely to get a long stand down.

Firstly, if you are fired within the 90 days and your partner works you are not eligible for a benefit anyway. Secondly, the 13 weeks only applies to a work tested benefit and is a discretionary stand down, not a mandatory one as the MSD can choose not to apply it. If they go on a sickness, invalids or DPB, the stand down won't apply.

Section 60H of the Social Security Act provides for the stand down if an employee leaves their place of employment without a good and sufficient reason.Unemployed means resigning from or otherwise leaving employment, other than by dismissal. Any firing is dismissal. However the section also applies if an employee has lost his job because of misconduct. Misconduct cannot be proven under the 90 day legislation as an employee can't challenge it in a personal grievance - the only method of establishing whether the employer acted with good and sufficient reason, whether that reason was misconduct or simply a bad case of BO. .So a stand down can't be legally imposed as there is no test of that good and sufficient reason.

Sue Bradford wrongly says that if an employee who is dismissed, say, on suspicion of theft, will be stood down from the dole for 13 weeks, and will have no means of challenging the stand-down. Mere suspicion is not a good and sufficient reason and a decision to stand down on something that may not have happened can certainly be challenged. But, for those who don't know beneficiary rights - including Sue Bradford and most WINZ Case Managers - they wouldn't know that a person can get out of a 13 week stand down purly by attending a mandatory interview in preparation for employment, and an approved activity. This could be as simple as getting a free CV and doing the interview applying for a benefit and receiving a Job Seekers Agreement.

One in five unemployed are on a training benefit

I have been saying for a while that much of the reason the unemployment benefit numbers are low is because of the amount of people on training benefits. Those on training benefits are excluded from official dole figures. Training benefits last from six weeks to more than a year, depending on the type of training.

About one on five of those who would normally be on the unemployment benefit are on a unemployed training benefit (UBT ), thus significantly skewing the dole figures to a greater extent than those who are transferred from the dole to sickness and invalids benefits.

For example, at the end of June, 23000 were in receipt of an unemployment benefit and 6368 were in receipt of a training benefit. Some are transferred from other benefits like sickness, but these are few. Ths is because training benefits require you to be in training for 30 hours a week and if you can't work 30 hours a week because of depression or whatever, you shouldn't be able to cope with training for that period either - but some slip through.

And what happens after they finished training? What proportion enter sustainable employment? Well, the MSD staff won't say, because they don't know. However they do know that many go on to other training options or onto the sickness or unemployment benefit again. Some get part time jobs and have their benefit abated. But the MSD has no idea how many people get jobs or go to further training such as university as a result of training they put their "clients" though.

It is important to note that these figures do not include those under 18 who would normally be on the independant youth benefit. And given that half all on the unemployment benefit are over 40, and the vast majority of those on training benefits are under 40, this could mean that of all those under 40 who are eligible for the unemployment benefit and are receiving income from Work and Income, up to a quarter could be on training benefits or the reason half of all unemployment beneficaries are over 40 is because fewer of those over 40 are trained because they are tougher to train.