Capitalism and Social Work – The Cost of Doing “Business”
Isaac Lang
22/12/2021
When one thinks of social work, caring for those in need and improving society come to mind. It is about people who want to make the community better by running services for those hit hardest by capitalism. In the 1970’s lecturers would teach social work students about how to organise rallies and methods of protest.
Unfortunately, the social work of today falls short of those lofty goals and past practice.. Social work is now increasingly about “targets”, “engagement” and ‘fiscal responsibility’. Many social work organisations now have CEOs, board members and executives; all there to line their pockets and increase their social status through vanity projects that allow the elite to pat themselves on the back for “helping” the poor. Over the last few decades, the field of social work has been gutted and malformed by the adoption of neoliberal ideology, which is hell-bent on privatisation as a means to exploit new markets and extract greater profits, and the commercialisation of previously non-profit organisations. This ideology was put into practice in the 80’s and 90’s as the number of government provided services diminished, contracted out to the private sector to promote private profit. “New public management” was implemented within the social work field, a concept introduced by Neoliberalism, which claimed that business-like practices enhance both the efficiency and effectiveness of public organisations. In other words, the rich wanted to mirror the structures and targets from the private sector into social work/public sector departments. Gone are the days where organisations fought against the status quo to improve the lives of those pushed aside by the system. A key result is that social workers are now under pressure to meet arbitrary corporate quotas instead of focusing on changing people’s lives. This has led to numerous examples of organisations manipulating statistics and turning away people in need of support.
The most recent instance, as exposed an ABC report, involved “On the Line”. On the line employed numerous counsellors for Australia’s most well-known telephone helplines such as Suicide Callback Service, Mensline and 1800 Respect. The report detailed that employees on the Suicide Callback Service were pressured by their bosses to keep phone calls to an average of 17 minutes. Meaning, if you called up in a suicidal state, that worker is pressured to “cure you” within a 17-minute time frame. Such expectations are ludicrous and fly in the face of what we know and understand about trauma informed practice. It goes to show how out of touch and callous the corporate-style, metric-obsessed executives of social work organisations have become.
Employees on the Suicide Callback Service were pressured by their bosses to keep phone calls to an average of 17 minutes. Meaning, if you called up in a suicidal state, that worker is pressured to “cure you” within a 17-minute time frame.
We are steeped in neo-liberal propaganda that glorifies the role of corporate executives, attributing the success of any organisation to their individual business genius. Proles are told they shouldn’t resent the enormous pay-checks of their corporate masters, nor should they dare to question or worse still, organise against the socially harmful actions of their betters. After all, the organisation would fail without the CEO’s brilliance, right?
The answer is no: it is the workers who are indispensible. Without the labour of workers, whether they are assembling furniture, answering phone calls or putting data in spread sheets, no company, public or private, can function. With experience and practice, the workers can run their own affairs more efficiently, and more importantly, in an ethical and socially beneficial way. The ruling class, the owners of businesses and the corporate elite need workers to remain ignorant of this fact so they can continue exploiting your labour and looting society for their own ends.
CEOs in the social work sector engage in similar opportunistic and self-serving behaviour as CEOs in other industries. Too often are events and seminars used as photo-ops for CEOs and politicians rather than the progression and training of workers. Big claims are made about caring for the mental health and wellbeing of employees and “clients”, yet concrete actions such as hiring more workers or cutting bureaucratic KPIs are spurned in favour of cheap “solutions” and victim-blaming. The proliferation of “wellbeing” language in corporate double-speak seeks to insulate organisations from the legal costs that their intense exploitation of workers may impose, and shifts the blame of work-induced mental breakdowns to individual workers for lacking “resilience”. Under the usual hierarchy, the workers feel powerless to make a change within their organisation.
So what can you do as a social worker or even as a non-social worker? Get out and make your voices heard, join organisations, attend protests and be vocal on social media. The ruling class and their select supporters will not willingly give up their power and we as workers need to organise and take it back. There are organisations that are worker owned and operated. They use a collective ownership hierarchy where all vote on the organisation’s actions, policies and procedures. Get to know these organisations, donate to them and keep them running. It is imperative that we work together to keep the working class strong. Remember that you as a worker have nothing to lose but your chains.