On Employment

Employment is one of the most controversial issues that any politician has to deal with, not least because, in the Western world particularly, the populace has been subjected to a great deal of propaganda relating to it. To state anything other than the standard party line is considered shockingly irresponsible, so much so that free speech in this area is effectively suppressed. Any of us can look at current systems and see their flaws, yet solutions and alternatives are rarely suggested. People tend to accept things more easily when they consider an unfortunate option to be, nevertheless, the best option available.

When I was in my teens and first seeking employment, there were eleven unemployed people to every available job in the town where I lived. This problem repeats itself over much of the Western world. There are areas of Glasgow where, in the 1980s, unemployment was as high as eighty percent. People struggle to survive on insufficient state benefit schemes, chasing after jobs which only a limited number of them can possibly get. There will always be a limited number of jobs available. Increasingly, in the modern world, this number of jobs will be much lower than the number of people in the workforce.

At the same time, those people who are employed are working longer and longer hours, suffering increasing damage to their physical and mental health and to their ability to maintain personal and family relationships. This often makes them less efficient at work. Frequent studies tell us about the increasing number of working days lost to sick leave, especially for stress related conditions. All manner of solutions are suggested, but the simplest ones tend to be ignored. Give people a comfortable working environment; treat them with respect; pay them sufficiently that they are not constantly worried about financial survival; and don't bully them into working more hours than the average human being can reasonably cope with. Aim to keep good workers, not to drain them as quickly as possible in the belief that there will always be more. Training new staff also costs businesses money. We need to place more value on experience.

The unemployed are useful because they function as a scapegoat for government, a whole class of people who can be accused of laziness, of insufficient commitment to the well being of their countrymen; they can thus be blamed for most of society's ills. There will, of course, always be some people who genuinely do avoid work because they are lazy and/or apathetic, but any serious study of the unemployed as a group demonstrates that these people are a small minority, and that people find themselves unemployed for a wide number of reasons.

Most of those who are unemployed would like to work. Most of those who are employed would like to work shorter hours, provided that they still had enough money to comfortably maintain themselves and their dependents [1]. Therefore the only sensible long term solution is to cut standard working hours and encourage shift working so that production targets can still be met. Of course this should vary across different types of occupation - there are areas where sufficiently skilled workers are few in number, and are thus desperately needed to contribute all the time they can - but the bulk of work done by the bulk of people does not require so much training and expertise that expanding job opportunities to a larger number of people would cause serious problems for the employer. What is necessary is appropriate employment legislation to remove tax disincentives which currently discourage employers from taking on more than a minimum number of staff - from that perspective, staffing needs to be judged in hours rather than in individuals.

I have no time for the distortions of Marxist thinking which advocate that "anyone can be a bricklayer in the morning and a brain surgeon in the afternoon". Exponents of such theories are shooting themselves and their ideals in the foot. Each of these professions requires a high level of skill, and there are insufficient people skilled in either to meet current demand. Furthermore, both require particular (and different) physical qualities in their practitioners. It is not necessary to resort to such impracticalities to make a wider ranging employment system work. Most unemployed people already have some useful skills; for the most part, society simply needs to start properly utilising this resource.

The expansion of existing job opportunities such that they can be more evenly distributed would also cut down on the political imperative for makework - those jobs and training schemes which contribute nothing useful to the economy, existing only in order to allow manipulation of unemployment figures; and those jobs whose existence is so heavily subsidised that they cannot be said to be of economic value in their own right. This would save money for all concerned. It is currently every bit as much of a drain on the economy as is the provision of state benefits to the unemployed.

In the long term, opportunities for employment inevitably depend upon the condition of the economy as a whole. The UK is currently suffering as a result of having relied to heavily on the service industry, which can now be provided for more effectively in nations like India. Pleading to patriotism in an attempt to keep jobs in the UK offers no real solution to this problem in a free market economy. The UK cannot compete by attempting to offer these services more cheaply than developing nations where the cost of living is much lower. Its only option is to provide a higher standard of service (which would require considerable improvements in the education system), or to look elsewhere for economic opportunities. Service, of any type, is something which tends to be provided by the poor for the rich, so it's a non-starter for any nation aiming to be amongst the most economically successful. General manufacturing is also a vulnerable area when developing nations are able to compete with cheaper workers; the only sensible options for an advanced modern nation are cutting edge manufacturing (where new products are put together and/or a high level of skill is required) and the development of new technology. Both of these are highly profitable areas which can find markets all over the world. The UK government, and the governments of countries in similar positions, need to focus on supporting and developing these areas, enabling companies with a real future in the international marketplace to take on new employees. We must not allow individuals to bear all of the responsibility for finding and keeping employment - it is the job of governments to economic and industrial development and intervene where necessary to provide practical employment opportunities.

I do not believe in the provision of government subsidies to struggling industries with no realistic prospect of future recovery, though I can understand the political expediency of keeping excess workers occupied and phasing out recruitment rather than forcing redundancies. I would like to see money used in subsidies redirected into retraining, though we must be realistic about how this applies, and, in the past, successive UK governments have mishandled it dreadfully. Attention needs to be paid to the needs of individual workers. It is not reasonable to expect a man who has done hard physical work every day of his adult life, whether down a pit or out on a fishing boat, to content himself with sitting behind a desk all day. Too often, retraining programmes have focused almost entirely on the provision of desk jobs, largely because this is easy to organise when large numbers of people are involved - but it tends to lead to depression, physical ailments, and consequent poor economic output. There are always jobs out there which require a high level of physical fitness, which can prove far more satisfying to those already used to physical work. There must be a shift toward finding people appropriate work, not just anything that comes to hand to keep them out of the dole figures. People who are satisfied with their work are more productive and are less likely to retire early or to quit and return to the unemployment queues.

Back to Work

The current Westminster government has pledged to get at least one million people off incapacity benefit and back into work. The debate relating to this has been riddled with misleading language (stating that people want to work is not the same as proving that they can; 'disabled' does not equal 'unemployed', etc.) and with emotive bluster, disguising much more fundamental problems. Getting people back to work is all well and good, but first there have to be jobs for them to go into. Although it is illegal for employers to discriminate against disabled prospective employees, the fact of the matter is that smaller businesses often feel incapable of taking them on. Adjustments needed to enable access to premises, etc., are often cheaper than such people realise, but where they are expensive there needs to be better government support to get them made. It is not enough to say that such expenses can be written off against tax, as many smaller businesses are not making enough money to pay that much tax, or will be sunk by their debts long before the point of effective reimbursement. The same applies where it seems likely that an employee is going to need to take time off and claim sickness benefit - or, for that matter, maternity benefit, a factor which means that younger women are still discriminated against in the workplace. For the government to take responsibility for these matters will be expensive, but it is the sort of investment which can really make a difference when it comes to making the best of our national human resources, getting people off benefits, getting people paying income tax and giving the economy a boost. It's time our politicians showed a willingness to get to grips with these matters instead of hiding behind the scapegoat of the unemployed.

Another thing which would make a massive difference to many people currently unemployed or in part time work would be shifting more work into telecommuting. This is entirely feasible for many types of business; it is only habit and an unwillingness to make the initial investment in restructuring which is holding businesses back. It's time the government introduced tax incentives to encourage such changes. Not only does telecommuting offer the potential for employment to currently disenfranchised sections of the community - seriously disabled people, parents of young children, carers, rural dwellers, etc. - but it improves life for those who continue to go to work in the traditional manner. It cuts down on traffic (also helping us to meet our protocols on carbon emissions). It reduces the demand for office space, thereby reducing many companies' expenses and making offices more affordable for new businesses. It gives people the option of working for longer as age begins to take its toll. This is the twenty first century, and there is no reason why we should still be modelling our society in such a primitive way. It is time for us to move forward and take advantage of what technology has given us. It is time that we made work work for us.