So about three weeks ago a young Samoan women came in to my office asking ever so nicely if we could give her some work experience.
She recently completed a National Certificate in Business Administration but hasn’t been able to get work because she has no work experience.
I told her that I didn’t have any money in the budget to hire someone else but she pleaded with me to let her volunteer her time. I agreed to put her on a Parliamentary Internship to provide her with the work experience she needs as well as to support her in what ever way I can to assist her with getting in to paid employment.
Then what happened….
A week in to her starting I get a call from a WINZ case manager asking if I would agree to her being on a subsidised work scheme i.e. WINZ subsidise her being in paid employment for me. I told them - nope, I have no money and therefore can not pay her and I’m not even sure if parliamentary regulations would allow for me to do that anyway.
I explain to the WINZ guy that I will assist her as best I can with getting the work experience she needs as well as support her in trying to find work. I explain to him that I’ve even set it up, as a legit Parliamentary Internship. He tells me that he understands and that this sounds like a great opportunity for the young woman and that if she’s still actively seeking paid work, then that would be fine.
A week later (beginning of last week). I find out from this poor young woman that WINZ have cut her benefit. Despite the fact that the last case manager I’d spoken to, had said it was fine – another WINZ case manager had wrongly assumed that the young woman had deliberately (and without good reason) missed a WINZ seminar that she was suppose to attend as an Unemployment Benefit recipient.
I rang WINZ that day when I find out and leave a message (outlining the situation) on the phone of the case manager that had made this decision (a different case manager from the one I spoke to the previous week). I don’t get a response from her, but the very next day the young woman undertaking an internship in my office, gets her benefit reinstated.
Get it together WINZ! Not all of these poor young people are going to have an MP on their case, who can ring up and leave rather firm voice messages for you when these mistakes happen. The vast majority of our young people are wanting to be engaged with work or study but at this point in time, things are against them and they need additional support. Don’t treat them like criminals out to commit benefit fraud and/ or bludge of the system.
Are these the new ‘front line’ services that big Paula keeps crowing about?
Surely unpaid internships are exploitation, or does Labour not believe in the minimum wage anymore?
On the information you just provided, you inappropriately excercised political influence over a public servant who appears(on the facts you have chosen to represent) to have done exactly the correct thing.
You cannot do voluntary work INSTEAD OF being available for full time employment:
http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/manuals-and-procedures/employment_and_training/programmes_and_services/voluntary_work/voluntary_work.htm
So maybe give some more details to prove that “WINZ got it wrong”? or maybe even better – ask Work and Income directly?!
How come you’re happy for this woman to work for you just for the experience and for zero pay, yet you don’t want to let me or her or anyone else work for the experience and $10/hour (which would be more than she’s getting at the moment from WINZ)?
Perhaps if the minimum wage laws were abolished/amended you would be able to pay her at least something rather than the nothing you are paying her now.
But because you can’t afford to pay her $12.75/hour she instead has to work for free to get experience.
what are you lot on? unpaid apprenticeships are common, and are opportunities for people to gain some critical work skills, in a diverse and often cut throat workforce. I think you’ll find that every major institution in this country provides such apprenticeships for students, with the support of Ministries and businesses e.t.c. – the issue here isn’t about the Process the MP took (although last time I checked helping people out was a large part of their responsibility) the issue here is that WINZ did not follow due process – the first case manager obviously did not communicate with the second one- and because of their mistake someone had to go without money. It’s a matter of principle. Thank you Carmel for helping this girl out, I think it’s a great opportunity that she is getting, and will prepare her much better than a WINZ seminar in order to be able to gain vital skills in her area of choice complimenting her certificate in Business Administration. Keep up the great work.
Good on you Carmel and I hope that the experience leads into paid work. As for Richard and Frank and Peter I struggle to understand your complaints. People do voluntary work for not for profit organisations all the time. The fact they do is normally a sign of inner qualities that should be rewarded. But you choose to attack this young girl because she chooses to work for a progressive movement. No doubt you would prefer that she donated her time to McDonalds. Is it just the fact that it is the Labour Party that is causing your consternation?
I too am a single Mum with a recent qualification and little relevant work experience. Can you hook me up with an internship too?
How many other volunteers do you have in your office collecting a benefit ?
Someone on the Unemployment Benefit must be available for paid work. Your ‘volunteer’ must meet those conditions. It’s quite straight forward. It would appear Work and Income are doing their best to ensure unemployed beneficiaries are doing everything in their power to get paid work and you are attempting to thwart their processes.
What a selective reading most of the replies address.
I would rather subsidise this young woman to plug the gap the employers are telling her she has, namely experience, so she can remove that black mark in the job market and go on to long term employment (and tax paying). I find it incredible that soem here think it is better for society if she gets a job with McDonald’s immediately, and commits herself to a lifetime of little more than minimum wage.
Carmel made the following comment
“as best I can with getting the work experience she needs as well as support her in trying to find work”
She was not encouraging someone to NOT look for work, but was helping to engage them in a meaningful way WHILE looking for work.
It’s no wonder this Govt “aspires” to a workforce of minimum wagers so as to make us more competitive when it reflects the blinkered vision of many who have posted here.
“Work and Income are doing their best to ensure unemployed beneficiaries are doing everything in their power to get paid work and you are attempting to thwart their processes.”
Not quite Lindsay. I could equally infer that WINZ are looking for any excuse to remove people from the benefit even though they have been unable to find this young person work. There is nOTHING in Carmel’s story to suggest this intern volunteer is not still looking for work and upon getting work with WINZ help, would immediately stop being a volunteer.
Crikey,if the PM had thought of this you’d be positively drooling over his outside the square, inspirational and aspirational thinking to help young people.
Here’s the problem;
“A week later (beginning of last week). I find out from this poor young woman that WINZ have cut her benefit. Despite the fact that the last case manager I’d spoken to, had said it was fine – another WINZ case manager had wrongly assumed that the young woman had deliberately (and without good reason) missed a WINZ seminar that she was suppose to attend as an Unemployment Benefit recipient.”
From this one must surmise that the “good reason” was being on an unpaid Parliamentary Internship. A condition of receiving the UB is attending the seminar. WINZ was doing the job the taxpayer expects them to do. Unfortunately discretion around benefits was long ago relinquished for ‘entitlement’ which rests on even-handed application of the rules.
@Tracey.
This is Lindsay Mitchell we are talking about above. A Right Wing extremist more aligned with the Act Party so i personally hold anything she says in the name of Welfare Reforms with great mirth and contempt.
Carmel, you’re right that most people don’t have “an MP on their case”, and it was lucky the woman had you there to put things straight. However, I don’t believe the problem is as much operational as it may seem. Law changes over previous years have tightened around work-testing, requirements to show availability for work etc, but they’re so complicated it’s simply unreasonable to expect basic grade public servants to apply them properly. Whether the requirements are fair or necessary is one issue, but the problem here is how attitudes amongst the public servants on the front line that they have to “toughen up” on people are created by policies or law changes that when looked at in isolation may well seem fair but in reality generate a certain thinking which when combined with complexity is a recipe for ongoing errors. There’s so many benefit rules that no public servant should be expected to be able to administer correctly because they’re just so ridiculously complicated, therefore inherently flawed. And back to your point about support, most people simply just don’t have it therefore wear the consequences of incorrect decisions.
It’d be good to know whether Labour plans to reverse many of the similar law changes it introduced between 1999 and 2008.
No min wage or at least lower would mean that this lady would be able to gain employment as people could afford to hire her. Lowering the minimum wage would be a great place to spend your effort and time!
I fear this cutting of benefits by one WINZ person without checking with another WINZ person who may have been dealing with that same person on their last visit is pretty typical. It is important to get all decisions in writing and dated and signed by the WINZ person you were dealing with at the time, and have no expectations that the next person you deal with will know about it.
I’ll first of all lay my cards on the table. I am generally quite right-wing in my views. I don’t believe that someone should be paid an unemployment benefit if they are working in a volunteer capability for an organisation instead of looking for work.
A proper internship should be seen as a student situation, and treated accordingly.
However this highlights an important issue.
I do some volunteer work with a couple of men who have recently been released from prison. Both are still on parole. As such they have limited say as to where they live.
Recently WINZ cut the accommodation allowance for one of them because he hadn’t been in to confirm that he was still living in the same address.
He had no option as to where he was living, and didn’t realise that he needed to reconfirm his address after 3 months. What did WINZ do? They just cut his benefit, no call to him to let him know. No warning letter. Just cut the benefit.
This caused him a significant degree of distress, as he didn’t have enough money left after paying his rent to pay for both food and the medication that he needed.
I have managed to find him some short term work, but due to his background it will probably take some time for him to find more permanent work.
If WINZ had sent out a reminder to him, and gave him a week to come in and sort things out then he would not have been put in this situation. Likewise if this woman, who is obviously trying to upskill herself, had been given some notice that she would lose her benefit if she didn’t go to the seminar then the situation would have given her much less stress, and put her in a better place to get a realistic job.
@Lindsay – You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Firstly, you say “WINZ was doing the job the taxpayer expects them to do” which you presumably mean to be cutting the benefit” then you say “Unfortunately discretion around benefits was long ago relinquished for ‘entitlement’ which rests on even-handed application of the rules.” This, again, is just so nonsensical it’s
The problem isn’t the lack of flexibility in the rules around whether benefits are chopped or not – the rules themselves provide for decisions not to chop benefits if circumstances require – this being the excuse the pliticians always fall back on when people complain that benefits will be cut. It’s the attitudes that people like you display without knowing what you’re talking about that cause the problems, in all sorts of ways. Saying that ‘WINZ were just doing their job’ is wrong. If you were right then the woman wouldn’t been able to get the benefit reinstated because the decision would’ve been correct. It would’ve been the same story if there wasn’t the flexibility to fix things, which again something you’re wrong on because you say there isn’t any. The problem is the impossibility that such ridiculously complicated rules can ever be applied the way they’re intended. While they probably still be unfair if they weren’t complicated because it means punishing people for being poor, but they’re definitely unfair when the frontline staff can’t be expected to ever apply them properly.
For someone who is so vocal on these issues to have such a flawed analysis and who so easily feeds into the ill-formed red-neck opinions about welfare in this country, is extremely dangerous.
Anton, Most people expect someone on an unemployment benefit to be available for paid work and to attend WINZ seminars which are intended to advance that goal. Certainly National voters do. If sanctions are promised (as per policy) for not meeting those requirements, then sanctions (cutting the benefit) should be applied. On the other hand I (never voted National) think a degree of discretion could be exercised but then the beneficiary is at the mercy of their particular case manager on the day. And they no longer have one dedicated manager. We could go around in circles about what actually happens in practice. But the intervention of an MP might carry more weight than the intervention of someone running a charity shop for instance. On the face of it the intern did not meet the requirement for being on the UB and the MP intervened to reverse the sanction. Where does that leave anyone else who breaks the same rule, with “good reason”?
So, rather than trying to further themselves by doing voluntary work to gain experience, the current rules seems to suggest in order to put food on the table it’s better to sit at home and attend WINZ courses in order to remain eligble for the UB and wait for that utopian job opening.
Wow.
Lyndsay – Very few people expect anyone to claim an unemployment benefit and not be available or actively seeking work. The legislation requires it, and always has done. You’ll remember the chap Benjamin Easton who said publicly he didn’t want a job and wasn’t looking for one. Social Welfare quite correctly looked into the situation and obviously was satisfied he was telling the truth and stopped the benefit. This, on the face of things is what should have happened. The problem with what you’re saying is littered with flaws, the least being that you refer to basic criteria in the legislation regarding availability for work work and so on with activities people receiving the unemployment benefit may be subject to for the purpose of testing continued entitlement. For example, there is a seminar that new applicants ordinarily must attend BEFORE the benefit is granted. (This was introduced by Labour and was met with some pretty fierce opposition because it creates the possibility for people to be without assistance for long periods of time through no fault of their own, or reliance on one-off hardship payments that could’ve been avoided if the benefit was paid when it ordinarily would’ve been. The predictions that this would happen were proved right a hundred-fold.) Therefore assuming the woman was already receiving the benefit we can guess the “seminar” is not this one. This means that the “seminar” she allegedly failed to attend was without good or sufficient reason. However, having the benefit reinstated suggests there was “good and sufficient reason” because working with Carmel was regarded as giving work experience and presumably increasing the chances of getting a job. Heck, the legislation is now littered with “work” this, “increase chances of getting employment” that. Even ACT Party supporters must accept this is a good thing. But what you then go and do is get all mixed up with the principal criteria that’s been around since the very beginning which says the person must be available for work, and then go on to assume that because the woman is getting experience with Carmel (and despite the activity being regarded by Social Welfare as increasing chances of employment) that she isn’t available for work should a job come up therefore is not entitled to the unemployment benefit! It’s very similar to the situation with people studying part-time – if the person is still available for work and is looking for work then this doesn’t affect affect entitlement to the unemployment benefit – apart from potentially the rate of benefit because of income.
Like I said, Lyndsay, your logic astounds. To illustrate, here’s what you said: “We could go around in circles about what actually happens in practice. But the intervention of an MP might carry more weight than the intervention of someone running a charity shop for instance. On the face of it the intern did not meet the requirement for being on the UB and the MP intervened to reverse the sanction. Where does that leave anyone else who breaks the same rule, with “good reason”?” Totally illogical Lyndsay, unbelievably so I’m afraid. As I’ve explained, the woman DID meet the requirement for receiving the UB, both because there was satisfaction she was available for work as well as having a good reason for missing the “seminar”, so hopefully that’s cleared that up – she was simply lucky there was someone to help her get the correct result. Where are others left who “break the same rule” but have a “good reason”? If there is “good reason” then the rule IS NOT broken!!! The answer to your question (if it can be deciphered) comes back again to the complexity of the “rules”, the inevitably of wrong decisions being made and the fact the fact the woman was lucky to have Carmel’s support. Where would that leave others in a similar situation? Well, it’s pretty obvious really – with an incorrect decision that says they’re not entitled to the benefit. There’s always the right to appeal but you can’t use that to justify bad law.
mickysavage, I think it is disgusting of you to accuse me of attacking this woman.
I am defending the woman and attacking Carmel and the policies that she supports that have led to this woman’s unfortunate circumstances.
You think that her being forced to work for nothing to get experience is better than her being able to work for $10 an hour to get experience. An amount I will note is MORE than she is receiving from WINZ. I think that’s shameful.
Just saw this on Lyndsay’s blog. It’s the one single comment she’s got. She’s posted your whole piece and some of the earlier comments “in case it disappears;” Priceless. I wonder if hers will disappear. Lyndsay’s analysis is yet another plethora of incorrect assumptions held out as fact to support her strongly held personal conviction.
“Blogger Andrei said…Disagree Lindsay;
If this girl is working 9 to 5 and learning work and office disciplines as well as providing an element for a future CV, its all to the good.
It may be out of the box but since when was rigid thinking a good thing.
The only thing I’d say, given the actively seeking work requirement is that such an arrangement might benefit from an end date, which of course also protects us from this sort of arrangement being used for the MP in question using her as a source of unpaid labour”
There’s relevant mention of time-limiting the stint in your office, Carmel, but must assume Parliamentary Internships by their very nature are for a finite period.
The person on the dole would be required to either attend the seminar or explain why they cannot go – it would appear they did not do the latter.
As it was entirely possible for the person doing voluntary work experience work to attend (their not being obliged to be doing the work experience), they should have referred the matter to WINZ before not attending.
Of course WINZ is always able to review any decision once apprised of the circumstances.
Bleep me! This is why we can’t cull the public service, it would only lead to more bleep ups!
You’re lovely giving her work!
That’s right SPC, the whole situation can get reviewed and sorted out in a way that ought to have happened in the first place, and this is obviously what happened here – the benefit was stopped then put back on because there was a good reason for not going to the seminar. It doesn’t matter whether we think there was a good reason or not – fact is a decision was made that there was, so things got sorted out. Carmel’s point is about the whole saga and how wrong decisions are often left uncorrected especially if there isn’t anyone to assist.
So let me get this straight..this entire piece vehemently attacking Work and Income staff (and being quite nasty about it at that) is over one case manager’s exercise of the discretion that a particular person did not have a good reason for missing a seminar, and once further information was provided by Ms Sepuloni, a separate case manager exercised the discretion in a different manner?
Overeaction much?
the point a few her seem to have missed, or skimmed quickly over, is that once these decisions are made, an equible outcome is entirely reliant on the ability of the benificiary to clearly enunciate their concerns, and to be persistent without crossing over into harrassment.
this isn’t a widely held talent among the have nots of our society.
the point that the majority, who most likely would lack the communication skills to effect reaonable outcomes are left with having to face the consequences of bad decision making.
very unhealthy, and damaging all around, for the victim, and for the perpetrators.
add to that that examples of winz inconsistencies are starting to mount up, and we are seeing a picture of an overburdoned agency falling further and further behind their workloads.
@Frank – read the posts again. bbfloyd’s got it. It’s also about the extremely high level of complexity that’s found it’s way into the rules – so much so they’ve become impossible to administer properly or consistently, let alone fairly. This then creates the situation where people affected need help to get things sorted but as bbfloyd has understood, this is a matter of luck not process, so the inevitable result is a ton of incorrect decisions left unaltered. The problem isn’t just limited to the work-test, it’s across the board. It should also be said that Labour during its time contributed to the problem, and would’ve made it worse if it managed to get its single core benefit proposal through. The whole issue is a shambles but nobody cares about beneficiaries except when there’s a need to blame someone. There’s no will to fix it from anyone, and when someone does say they want to try they make things worse, either because they don’t understand the issues or see it as an opportunity to put the boot in, yet again.
@Frank – Just read your comment above about doing voluntary work INSTEAD of being available for full-time employment, and the Work and Income policy on the link you posted. You’ve misread the policy completely to mean the exact opposite of what you say. You’re getting confused between being available for work (which is part of the main criteria) and the work-test. You probably won’t understand the difference because, like we’ve been saying, the rules are quite complicated – we don’t expect you to understand them – but they are very different.
WINZ don’t inform you of seminars because I am never informed of what is happening next, just told to go after sitting in a room for half an hour twiddling my thumbs under camera surveilance…(and then I had to remind my case manager that there were 5 jobs on the list she showed me, that I would like to apply for and since, only been directed to one of those jobs). I have to phone every week and waste time (this time is better spent on job searching) on call waiting, to ask what my next obligation is. I think they should at least give Beneficiaries a written contract of when, where and what is required of them so they don’t get their benefit suspended for reasons unknown. WINZ will tell you you missed something they never informed you about or forgot to cancel as it was dealt with at another appointment, in my experience.
And also to make minimum wage lower will look interesting on Monday mornings when everyone is walking miles to get to their job or do you expect them to live in a dumpster by their job?? Go live it before you rant your raves.