Job applicants face a tough job market, but more job seeker beneficiaries are being penalised under new rules, data shows. (File photo) Photo: RNZ / Quin Tauetau
Beneficiaries face an uphill battle to find a job, with sanctions making the situation more difficult, and few jobs available, a beneficiary advocate says.
Sanctions issued to beneficiaries in the three months to the end of September* rose 133 percent to 14,409, compared to 6177 in the same period last year, Ministry of Social Development (MSD) figures showed. With not attending appointments or failing to prepare for work the main reasons given as to why people were sanctioned, MSD said.
But sanctions had been proven to be counter-productive to getting people back into work, Beneficiaries and Unwaged Workers Trust senior advocate Kay Brereton said.
"We should be looking at everything we can do to engage people, before we take this step which actually just puts them further away from the labour market," she said.
"That's what all the studies show: they say that if you sanction people, you put an extra layer of stress in their lives and they're less likely to be in a position where they can find a job."
In August the government introduced a traffic light system for penalising beneficiaries who breach obligations, and extended the length of time breaches count against beneficiaries.
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One problem with the way sanctions were being used was that at the point someone received an orange warning, which meant there would be five days' notice before a sanction, there was usually not enough time for them to be able to successfully fix the problem that was raised, Brerton said.
Many job seekers already found themselves in a precarious position when unemployed, before sanctions were applied.
"Even when people are receiving their full benefit entitlement, they can't afford enough food every week - so it's really desperate and people are really stressed," Brerton said.
"And that means all [the sanctions are] doing is adding another stress on top."
Brereton said people missed appointments for all kinds of reasons - including many that were genuine and unavoidable.
"They could be sick, they could forget, a lot of appointments now are by telephone, so if you're not next to your phone - and we do hear of people's phones ringing and them trying to answer it and then the call cutting out."
People on benefits were scared, desperate and demoralised by the new sanction systems, she said.
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Cutting beneficiaries' incomes simply does not work, so is hard to fathom, Green Party social development spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March said.
Earlier, Social Development Minister Louise Upston said the new traffic light sanctions system was working, after MSD recorded 6975 failures to meet obligations by beneficiaries in September, compared to 7491 in August.
But MSD's latest data showed the number of sanctions issued had more than doubled year on year, in the quarter to September*, compared to the same period last year, rising 133 percent.
Menendez March said it showed the government had celebrated too soon after the introduction of the new system in mid-August, and with too little data.
Sanctions simply pushed families deeper into hardship, he said, while there was no evidence that sanctions help people into employment.
"Benefit sanctions affect families, affect disabled people, and we've got to remember that when we take someone's income away we're pushing them to foodbanks, we're forcing them potentially into the streets and motels.
"And we've got a government that's celebrating pushing families into hardship instead of investing into things like ending child poverty."
* The MSD data for the number of sanctions issued in the three months to September counted individual sanctions, not the number of beneficiaries they were issued to.