Buying and Selling the Poor

Inside Australia's privatised welfare-to-work market

Mark Considine author Siobhan O'Sullivan author Michael McGann author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Sydney University Press

Published:1st Dec '21

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Buying and Selling the Poor cover

Buying and Selling the Poor ventures behind the scenes of the multibillion-dollar welfare-to-work system, offering new insights into how Australia responds to unemployment and disadvantage. As the authors tell the story of four local employment offices, they paint a vivid picture of a critically important social service which many people are aware of but which few properly understand. They also reveal the wider impacts that processes of marketisation and welfare reform have had on these frontline services over decades, and how the work of frontline staff and service providers has been transformed.

Buying and Selling the Poor looks closely at how these services operate, why some succeed where others fail, and what can be learned from the stories of staff and clients who have navigated the system. Three decades into this market experiment, how well are we doing in supporting our most vulnerable citizens to get back to work?

"Buying and Selling the Poor looks at the failings of a system where the misery of unemployment fattens bottom lines. A system where penalties are handed out to jobseekers for minor infractions, while privatised employment services routinely fail to reach targets."

-- Public Service Association of NSW * Red Ta

ISBN: 9781743327869

Dimensions: 210mm x 148mm x 17mm

Weight: 330g

284 pages