Workfare: The New Zealand Experience and Future Directions

Alex McKenzie

This paper discusses the notion of “workfare” in the context of the reciprocal obligations associated with the receipt of welfare payments, and briefly outlines some of the work-related requirements placed on welfare recipients in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

While compulsion to participate in community work or training schemes is an integral part of some overseas welfare systems, this has not been widespread in a New Zealand context, with policy being focused more on assisting job seekers to gain self-sustaining employment in the private sector through supervised job search.

However, in 1996 the new government stated its intention to require the registered unemployed to undertake a prescribed level of work or training in return for the Unemployment Benefit. It is proposed to achieve this by replacing the Unemployment Benefit with an equivalent community wage or training allowance, with the programme initially directed towards addressing long-term unemployment.

This paper outlines the formalisation of the requirements embodied in the new work test in New Zealand along with the extension of work testing to new groups of welfare recipients from April 1997. Also detailed is a small-scale work-for-benefit scheme that has been operating in New Zealand since 1991.