More job mobility likely need soon

Press, 23 October 1980, Page 8

More job mobility likely need soon

PA Wellington New Zealanders will have to be more mobile and prepared to move to where jobs are, says the President of the Employers’ Federation, Mr G. Reid. “Programmes should be developed to relocate people, where relocation is possible, and retrain them,” he told the annual meeting of the Wellington Employers’ Association. It might be preferable to use State funds to help with relocation costs to enable people to move to the best place for an enterprise, rather than subsidise its establishment in a less desirable area where its chances of survival were nil unless it was propped up, he said. People would have to become more adaptable in their careers. “In the future the long-service employees may be like the takahe today, "Education in the past was based on an assumption of a single career. Children today will need to be educated to enable them to benefit from retraining schemes and to accept the challenges of new jobs” Mr Reid said. A Treasury forecast that 300,000 people would be unemployed by 1985 was being used to create fears, even though it had been aet aside by the Treasury. “This forecast was produced early in 1979. Now that more than a third of the time of the forecast has elapsed we can test it to see if we are on this path. “We do not appear to be,” Mr Reid said. The number of people without work was increasing, but not as quickly as the Treasury had forecast. The assumptions which the

forecast was based on could now be seen to be false. “The forecast has been repudiated by the Treasury before the Arbitration Court. One might have expected the mytii would die, but it is still around. “It has evidently been exploited for industrial and other purposes, to create unjustified feats of the future” Mr Reid said. Moves were being made to resist the introduction of micro-processor and silicon chip-based equipment. However, proof of huge job-shedding after introduction of new technology “is just not there.” “The Employers’ Federation surveyed law firms which had recently introduced word processors. While some firms were now being run with fewer

workers, others were not. Some had increased the size of their staff. “Other factors were dictating staffing levels — not the word processors." New technology could have a positive and beneficial effect in reducing the drudgery of many repetitive jobs, and release people to more important and interesting careers. “When history judges us I do not believe that the silicon chip will rank any higher than the transistor electricity or the steam engine, Mr Reid said. “Nor is there any more justification for getting hysterical on the subject than there was during the Industrial Revolution, (except that we happen to be alive now and therefore part of its introduction.