Employment
Saturday, January 01, 2000
I wrote to the "Minister for Labour" 20 years ago, urging changes to working hours to create more jobs, but was fobbed off with promises of full employment under the old conditions. This line has now lost all credibility.
We have learnt that people need jobs rather than handouts, and that many jobs will never return due to automation.
Small business employs the most, costs the least, and searches for new business. Despite its central role, Government makes a sport of neglecting small business. Small business typically operates on a lean cash flow, but if able to expand in small steps, it safely grows. It has much work to offer. But we pay a million workers to stay idle on the dole.
The problem is there is no logical reason why a small business needs only a whole number of workers in each department. Most could profitably provide work for an extra day or two in the office, or the factory, or sales, delivery, grounds, maintenance, etc.
But the pay for two days is hardly more than the dole. So capable workers stay away in droves. The business cannot expand, the young are not trained, and the dole bill weighs heavily on the taxpayer.
Some say stop the dole. But this would hurt those who genuinely cannot find work. Some say work for the dole. But it is impossibly expensive to provide work for every recipient. There is however a solution.
Replace the dole with a form of "national service". Pay the same benefit, and have the same rules for eligibility. Every national serviceperson would be on "standby".
This means that wherever a service organisation – such as a school, council, utility, military post, government department, or charity – demonstrates to a government employment service that they can supervise and fund a worthwhile project, they can engage people on local standby – who continue to receive their national service wage.
If the hours of work in any week exceed the value of the national service wage – at award rates – these workers would be paid the extra by the service organisation.
This would raise self-esteem, provide work experience, give some return to the nation, and create an incentive to accept jobs that are waiting to be done in the private sector – leading to growth in small business and more real jobs.
Philip O'Carroll