INSURANCE AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22005, 1 February 1937, Page 14

INSURANCE AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT

PROPOSALS MAY BE PLACED BEFORE PARLIAMENT

Proposals for a national unemployment insurance scheme may be placed before Parliament when it reassembles, according to the Minister for Labour (the.Hon. H. T. Armstrong). The Minister said in an interview on Saturday that excellent progress had been made by the committee set up to prepare a report. The scheme under consideration provided for loss of employment from any cause whatever. The report would cover both a contributory and a non-contributory system, but it was more likely that a contributory scheme would be adopted. A more liberal scale than that of the scheme in Britain would be used. The Government was working in conjunction -with the friendly societies, and the Minister did not think there would be any serious interference with their activities. ' . Unemployment insurance is compulsory in Britain, where a contributory system has been used for 25 years. Contributions are made by the workers, the employers, and the State. The contribution for each adult worker is ninepence a week and similar amounts are paid by the employers and the State. A single man, on becoming unemployed is entitled to draw 17s a week from the fund, and a married man 26s with an allowance of 3s for each dependent child. The only large sections of workers who do not come into the scheme are domestics in private service, and clerical workers earning more than £250 a year. A recommendation to the Government to increase the remuneration limit to £4OO a year is being considered. Coverage is provided for persons up to the age of 65 years. DEPRESSED AREAS IN ENGLAND METHODS ADOPTED BY GOVERNMENT Though there is a very great improvement in the unemployment position in England, the depressed areas are still very hard hit, according to Mr G. H. Ince, chief insurance officer of the British Ministry for Labour, who has come to the Dominion at the invitation of the Government to place at its disposal the experience gained in operating the British unemployment insurance scheme. The Government in Britain, however, was tackling the problem in two ways, he told a reporter on Saturday, by establishing new industries in the areas and by assisting the workers to move to other areas where employment was offering. In Durham and South Wales, he said, the bottom had fallen out of the coal-mining industry. Although the new method of carbonisation of coal was proving of some benefit to the industry, a large number of miners and their families had moved to the south of England, and many others had been assisted to do so by, the Government. There, a large number of new industries were springing up, particularly in the light engineering and wireless trades. It was difficult, however, to transfer some of the older men, who had worked at mining all their lives, to other trades, and the tendency was to move younger men. Relief was being effected to some extent in South Wales by the removal of a large part of Woolwich Arsenal from its present vulnerable position to that area. The Government was also assisting the Tyne shipbuilding industry by giving naval orders, not only to assist the unemployment position, but the work could be done most efficiently there. There had been a great improvement in the steel industry, he said, which had formerly been very much depressed.