Get a job up ya!
What a week we've had here at LORES. The Life of Riley Employment Service has been working with Channel Nine and other folk who so freely donated their time on the Jobs For Australia program. True blue, dinky-di, employing type Australians all. Every one of them generous to a T.
Of course you realise how successful we were. By midnight Wednesday, there were 18,667 jobs that weren't there at 8pm. It just goes to show you, doesn't it. Squeeze a lemon hard enough and you're sure to get more juice.
Let's not quibble over whether these are full, part time or casual positions; or how many of them were new jobs. A job's a job, for crissake! In these times, that's the marker.
If all these jobs offered $250 for a week's work, that's almost $5 million in pay packets (give or take a few million, as we've been very general here.)
So with roughly 800,000 unemployed (give or take a few hundred thousand) nationally, in one night, we managed to drive down the unemployment rate by (wait for it!) 2.3%. Golly, if we had a month of Wednesdays like that, we could reduce the total jobless figure by over 60% and be back to full employment by Christmas. It's amazing what you can do when you try.
What a Christmas present that would be for all the destitute and dejected out there. All we need do is arrange for another $200 million (give or take a few million) to be spent on wages each week. That's it! All it requires is a little effort and another $10.4 billion (more or less) in outgoings each year.
If we could just put the deficit side on hold and stop job losses — say (here's a thought) by making redundancies illegal — we'd get Australia working again and keep it that way.
So what about it, Australia? Unemployment can be beaten. Ask and you shall receive — but do it nicely. Appeals to corporate Australia for job donations need to emphasise civic duty and national pride. All we're asking is that local business forgo some of this year's profits and plough a million or more here and there back into the firm.
And if there's not enough work — hell! split it up and share it around. Reduce the work week or something. That's the ticket.
This is the type of visionary thinking this country needs. We've had our fill of idle thoughts on this subject. We want action.
If the employers don't come to the party on this one, what then? If they drag their feet or refuse to donate the number of jobs needed?
Then we'll levy them, tax them and harass them until they do.
And if that doesn't work, we'll do the unspeakable — we nationalise the bastards. Not only would we create jobs, but we could keep the profits to share among ourselves to spend on schools, hospitals, housing, more jobs, whatever.
So you want a job up ya? Take LORES' advice and do what needs to be done.
Dave Riley