Zero-sum social policy: going gig and the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme

Abstract

Australia’s newly introduced National Disability Insurance Scheme establishes a cash-for-care model that pits the human rights of people with disabilities against the employment rights of care workers, generating a zero-sum game that sees the emergence of gig labour markets, a downward spiral in wages and conditions, and concerns about quality of care. This article introduces the concept of pro-market/gig market to analyze this state-led initiative to restructure a largely publicly funded and nonprofit workforce into a privatized, casualized, and fragmented one.

Keywords:

• Care work
• cash-for-care
• nonprofit
• precarity
• privatization
• pro-market/gig market

Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the research participants and unions for their support of this project, and the reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Howard et al., “Early Thoughts of Parents and Carers”; Thill, “Listening for Policy Change” 15–28; Williams, “What Can Australia Learn.”

2 Howard et al., “Early Thoughts of Parents and Carers”; Warr et al., Choice, Control and the NDIS.

3 Baines, Managerialism and Outsourcing; Friedman, “Workers without Employers”; van Doorn, “Platform Labor.”

4 Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital; Thompson, “The Capitalist Labour Process.”

5 Brennan et al., “The Marketisation of Care”; Cristiano et al., Long-term Care Reforms.

6 Miller and Hayward, “The Strange Case,” 133.

7 Howard et al., “Early Thoughts of Parents and Carers”; MacKinnon and Coleborne, “Deinstitutionalisation in Australia and New Zealand.”

8 PwC, Planning for a Sustainable Disability Sector.

9 Martin and Healy, “Who Works in Community Services?” 126–27.

10 Martin and Healy, “Who Works in Community Services?” 126–27.

11 Productivity Commission, Disability Care and Support.

12 “National Disability Insurance Scheme.”

13 NDIA “4th Quarterly Report 2018.”

14 Productivity Commission, Disability Care and Support.

15 Productivity Commission, Disability Care and Support.

16 Cortis et al., Reasonable, Necessary and Valued.

17 Cortis et al., Reasonable, Necessary and Valued, 1.

18 Macdonald and Charlesworth, “Cash for Care.”

19 Macdonald and Pegg, “Contracting out Community Services.”

20 NDIS, Registered Providers of Supports.

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22 Hussein and Manthorpe, “Structural Marginalisation.”

23 Christensen, “Towards Sustainable Hybrid Relationships in Cash-for-Care Systems”; Cunningham and Nickson, “A Gathering Storm”; Glendinning, “Home Care in England.”

24 Macdonald et al., “Wage Theft.”

25 Friedman, “Workers Without Employers,” 171–88; van Doorn, “Platform Labor.”

26 Aloisi, “Commoditized Workers,” 653; van Doorn, “Platform Labor.”

27 Macdonald, “Gig Economy Care Platforms.”

28 Cristiano et al., Long-term Care Reforms in OECD Countries; Kvist and Fritzell, Changing Social Equality; Martinelli, “Social Services,” 11–48; Williams, “What Can Australia Learn.”

29 Brennan et al., “The Marketisation of Care”; Productivity Commission, NDIS Costs.

30 Thompson, “The Capitalist Labour Process,” 7–14; Thompson and Smith, “Labour Power and Labour Process,” 913–30.

31 Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital.

32 Aronson and Smith, “Managing Restructured Social Services”; Carey, “White-Collar Proletariat?” 93–114; Cunningham et al., “Voluntary Organisations and Marketisation,” 171–88; Glendinning, “Home Care in England.”

33 Baines, Caring for Nothing.

34 Baines, Caring for Nothing.

35 Baines, Caring for Nothing.

36 Harris, “Neoliberal Social Work”; McKinsey, Independent Pricing Review.

37 Macdonald and Pegg “Contracting out Community Services”; Mavromaras et al., Evaluation of the NDIS, Final Report.

38 Kirby et al., Experience Research Social Change.

39 Cortis et al., Reasonable, Necessary and Valued.

40 Kvist and Fritzell, Changing Social Equality.

41 Productivity Commission, Disability Care and Support.

42 Productivity Commission, Disability Care and Support.

43 Howard et al., “Early Thoughts of Parents and Carers”; Productivity Commission, NDIS Costs; Warr et al., Choice, Control and the NDIS.

44 Rose et al., “Governmentality.”

45 Jaehrling et al., “Tackling Precarious Work in Public Supply Chains.”

46 McKinsey, Independent Pricing Review.

47 Macdonald and Pegg, “Contracting out Community Services,” 2018.

48 Stainton, “Taking Rights Structurally.”

49 Ife, “Human Rights and Social Work.”

50 Edwards, “A Disabling Ideology,” 49–53.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was received from the Australian Research Council (Project DE160100543), the Centre for Future Work, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada.

Notes on contributors

Donna Baines

Donna Baines is the Director of the School of Social Work at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Fiona Macdonald

Fiona Macdonald is Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the School of Management at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

Jim Stanford

Jim Stanford is the Director of the Centre for Future Work in Sydney, Australia.