British Economist, Guy Standing, coined the term, precariat, to describe the reality of low wage workers in our modern, global economy; a reality in which risk continues to be shifted away from capital and on to the backs of working people at the low end of the labour market. As Frederic Ozanam put it: “The haughty lords of industry, just like our ancient kings, are carried round on the backs of the people.”

As the late Pope John Paul II put it: “The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the maximisation of profits.”

The needs of the people in the lowest 20 per cent of the income distribution must take priority over the desires of the people in the highest 20 per cent. The rights of workers, especially those whose working lives are fraught with insecurity and devalued by inadequate pay, must take priority over the maximisation of profits.

Thus writes Dr John Falzon, President of the Society of St. Vincent dePaul Australia in a reprise of an article he wrote 10 years ago.

NEARLY TEN YEARS AGO I WROTE an article for The Record that began with the famous lines of Henry Lawson from his poem, Faces in the street:

“They lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone
That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street –
Drifting past, drifting past, To the beat of weary feet –
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.”

I observed at the time that, unless we reversed the trajectory of growing inequality:

“The Australia of the early 21st century will be more akin to the Australia of the early 19th century: a land disjointed rather than diverse, a land where dispossession and exploitation of people is the rule rather than the exception.”

I tried to conclude, however, on a note of hope:

“We are passionate about what we know to be fair. We are practical about what we know to be possible. Let us be decisive about our future as a nation. Australia: working hard to build equality. Wouldn’t that be a description to be proud of in a UN Human Development Report of the future!

Australia:
• building equality by creating decent jobs for people
• building equality through a social safety net that protects and enables rather than punishing and humiliating
• building equality through its world-class public healthcare system
• building equality through its public investment in free education and childcare
• building equality through affordable and adequate housing and transport.

The prophets of doom are wrong. Such an Australia is possible. By daring to work towards it we can share both bread and hope with the owners of those faces in the street.”

I still believe in this objective. Not because it is a nice ideal. I believe in it because it continues to be the message I am given, in no uncertain terms, by Vincentians across Australia. It continues to be expressed to me by the people we assist, the people with whom we stand in solidarity, our brothers and sisters in Christ. It arises from the concrete conditions experienced by people who are struggling on the edges of the labour market, on both sides of the employment/unemployment divide.

It is also true to the social analysis that characterised the St Vincent de Paul Society’s humble beginnings. Frederic Ozanam, as both a student and as an academic, was a deeply engaged social activist. As such, he had a bit to say about workers’ rights. At one stage the St Vincent de Paul Society was actually proscribed as a quasi-communist organisation because it so clearly took the side of the workers living in poverty during the revolutionary upheavals in Paris.

Frederic wrote:
“Exploitation occurs when the master considers his workers …as an instrument out of which he must extract as much service as possible at the smallest possible price.”

More recently, British Economist, Guy Standing, coined the term, precariat, to describe the reality of low wage workers in our modern, global economy; a reality in which risk continues to be shifted away from capital and on to the backs of working people at the low end of the labour market. As Frederic Ozanam put it: “The haughty lords of industry, just like our ancient kings, are carried round on the backs of the people.”

With the rise in casualisation and the St Vincent de Paul Society have seen a sharp rise in the number of families with one or even two members in paid work who seek assistance from us.

Work insecurity means housing insecurity. Housing insecurity is only a short step away from families sleeping in cars or knocking on the doors of homelessness refuges. Homelessness has devastating consequences for everyone, especially the children who are then more likely to experience homelessness as adults.

As the late Pope John Paul II put it: “The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the maximisation of profits.”

The needs of the people in the lowest 20 per cent of the income distribution must take priority over the desires of the people in the highest 20 per cent. The rights of workers, especially those whose working lives are fraught with insecurity and devalued by inadequate pay, must take priority over the maximisation of profits.

There was a time in Australia when the received wisdom was that a job is the best route out of poverty. This is no longer true. For many of the people we assist the move from welfare to work is a journey out of the frying pan and into the fire; a journey from inadequate income support to inadequate income. And sometimes back again! There was also once a time when the social security system sought to be exactly that. Now it is, for many, a system of social insecurity that, sadly, prepares people for work insecurity.

The US bishops, in their ground breaking 1986 statement, Economic Justice for All, explained that “[t]he way society responds to the needs of the poor through its public policies is the litmus test of its justice or injustice.”

This is not call for a return to the past. The members of my organisation who,every day witness the Australian face of working poverty, are calling for a new way of genuine social security and inclusion for all people. Let us put aside what has, in effect, become a false border between those outside the labour market and those whose work is low paid, insecure and precarious. The time is right for a new social contract that protects people no matter where they currently sit along this precarious frontier; protects them from being cast off and cast out; protects them from being devalued as human beings, as women and men, along with the children who share their precarious fate.

The St Vincent de Paul Society is a spiritual movement committed to social justice and social change. We are not called to preserve poverty or to preserve the structural causes of poverty. In Frederic’s words “It is time to seek the abolition of poverty”.

We will always be there to give people a hand up. But this should not be seen as a matter of charity. It is a matter of justice.