British dole queues worst in 44 years

Press, 29 August 1980, Page 6

British dole queues worst in 44 years

NZPA London ' Britain’s ’ jobless total topped the two million mark this month giving the country its longest dole queues for 44 years. ! Official figures published (yesterday gave the unemiployment level as 2,001,205, : compared With 1.9 million last month, and representing nearly 8 per cent of Britain’s 26 million work-force. I The figures reflect big redundancies in the manufacIturing and mining industries in the last few weeks as the, 'recession bites deeper into, Britain. j Government Ministers had I Hoped that a surge of job) (offers for school leavers I would keep unemployment below the politically sensitive two million level, but the spate of redundancies undermined the hope. More than 50,000 jobs are now being lost each month, more than five times the figure at the same time last year. 1 The Trades Union Congress’s economic committee ,chairman (Mr David Basnett) said in advance of the official unemployment fig- i ures announcement that

unions would demand action to Curb the flood of cutprice imports (mostly from the Common Market), cut the working week, strengthen industry,, and create more jobs. , , . Many people are already on short working weeks. The “Daily Mirror" said yesterday that an estimated 200.000 factory workers are now on a short week in an employers’ bid to avoid more redundancies. The Employment Secretary (Mr Jim Prior) said that he was “deeply concerned" by the jobless total, j However, he and other Government Ministers have said | that employment will get worse before it gets better. They say the fight on inflation is the most important tssk. Labour’s employment spokesman, . John Grant, called the figures “statistics of shame.” He added: “Mrs Thatcher has duped her way to power on the backs of hundreds of thousands of people whose lost jobs are her resnonsibilitv. Her’refusal to change course as the toll mounts daily is brazen callousness.” The jobless total includes

more than one-third of the 712,000 teenagers who left school during the summer.

They have stepped straight from the classrooms into the dole queues, joining hundreds of thousands who are Still waiting for their first jobs. Mr Prior said he was preparing plans to ease problems for teenagers and for long-term unemployed. They ■ may '■ include “work experience" courses, more - training programmes, and ‘ possibly subsidies to ‘ employers to take on extra ■ young people. ; ‘ However, the cost-con- * scious Thatcher Government 1 ' has consistently said it will i not lift State hand-outs by » any significant margin. ’ The rate of increase in < Britain’s jobless is now the • steenest of any Common ■ Market country, according to • figures from Brussels. The ’ annual Increase in Britain t was, 29.5 per cent, with Den- • mark in second place with • 18.3 per cent. - J There were nearly seven * million people out of work in the nine E.E.C. States in . July, nearly one-third of them in Britain.