Surplus jobs in Britain forecast

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33067, 7 November 1972, Page 19

Surplus jobs in Britain forecast

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) PARIS, November 6. Britain could have more than three million surplus jobs by 1980, and have to import Commonwealth and foreign workers to fill them, a British expert on race relations said in Paris yesterday.

Mr David Stephen, industrial director of the Runnymede Trust, an independent race relations research organisation, was speaking of the possible effects of booming economic conditions like those of the mid-sixties. He told a European conference on the problems of migrant workers: “In really booming conditions in Britain there could be 3.6 million more jobs than the native labour force could fill, and we could expect that overseas workers would be imported to fill them. “Britain could, by the mideighties, be dealing with foreign labour problems as great as that of West Germany to-

day. Without engaging in costly training schemes, the easiest course would be to import foreign or Commonwealth workers. “It is worth pointing out that, with more than 800,000 unemployed in Britain in August, there were nevertheless 203,000 jobs unfilled.” Mr Stephen said that southern European catering workers were still being "imported” by Britain, and firms in some areas were employing Filipino women to do manual jobs. “If industrial expansion in Europe continues at the rate of the last five years, gaping holes will continue to appear in the European labour market,” he added.