The Wisconsin Plan Returns… with the same problems | Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI)

Protesting the Wisconsin Plan. Photography: Tami Gross

A preliminary analysis by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel reveals that even in its updated format, the plan still has many problems.

According to the Economic Arrangements Bill published yesterday (May 6, 2013), the Wisconsin Plan is expected to make a return. ACRI conducted an initial analysis of the new formula owing to which ACRI Attorney Tali Nir wrote a letter to government ministers and the Attorney-General warning that the idea proposed in the draft bill raises many concerns about potential harm to job seekers and welfare recipients.

Among the problematic issues in the bill:

Private contractors will be given far-reaching powers in which they can determine the fate of job-seekers. They can recommend the revocation of income assistance, they will decide whether program participants should be referred to jobs, they will determine the personal programs of participants and their eligibility for placement support services such as travel charges and childcare.

Although the proposed wording of the bill states that the denial of benefits will be made by a public official, there is concern that this will be exercised as a “rubber stamp” as the decision is required to be based on the recommendations of the private company.

The treasury’s proposal seeks to implement the program nationally, not as a pilot, but as a permanent measure. This essentially means that the government is looking to approve a new plan, which has not been tested in this form without setting any minimum qualifications such as trialing the plan for a set-time period in a limited region. By attaching this plan to this bill, the government is seeking to bypass the oversight of the Knesset and its ability to stop the program’s progress.

Private companies will again be given budgets and placement support tools that have not existed for years such as large numbers of bureaucrats, the ability to provide program participants with personal attention that does not exist currently, vocational training, travel expenses, reimbursement of child care expenses, etc. These additional funds could instead be used to strengthen the current employment service and provide it with the same tools and budgets.

The creation of poor workers without job security: the treasury’s proposal, as in the previous versions of the bill that weren’t approved, once again does not refer to certain essential elements such as giving preference to professional training programs over the idea of “work first”. This means that the program is directed primarily at the rapid placement of program participants within the labor market, in any position whatsoever, regardless of working conditions and its prospects for career development.

A number of details of the treasury’s proposal are still unclear. For example, will participants be required to take part in an arbitrary 30-35 hours of program time per week, even if there are no benefits to combining multiple jobs? Will employees of private companies be permitted to demand private medical information from program participants? How will private companies be supervised?

According to Attorney Tali Nir, Director of ACRI’s Social and Economic Rights Department: “despite talk of potential improvements, a pattern is emerging from the Economic Arrangements Bill according to which the weakest segments of society will suffer. It must be remembered that receiving basic welfare benefits to enable people to live is a fundamental and constitutional right. As long as private firms have an influence over eligibility for benefits or employment support services, recipients will be left at the mercy of the contractor’s financial interests.

Over recent years, Israel’s employment services have been left in tatters. Its budget has been dwindling year after year. Instead of healing and improving the service by injecting it with the necessary funds, the treasury is returning to its old methods that have already failed: the irresponsible transferal of essential government powers, relating to the rights of the unemployed and welfare recipients, to private companies whose guiding principle is its own economic gain. How can it be that this privatization that was so roundly criticized and withdrawn by previous governments can be brought back through the loophole of the Economic Arrangements Bill? And not just brought back, but expanded nationally as a finished product without the benefit of a pilot program. We call upon the government to at least remove this plan from the Economic Arrangements Bill and to discuss it separately as a separate law on its own merits.

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