Report on employment

Press, 28 September 1983, Page 2

Report on employment

Parliamentary reporter

The Government was not wanting to take jobs from married women, said the Under-Secretary for Internal Affairs, Mr Thompson, yesterday. Mr Thompson said he had been misinterpreted in a report in “The Press” on Saturday which quoted him as saying that a woman’s sense of worth could come from doing voluntary work for someone else.

The report also said that a special Government committee on employment was of the view that wives of well paid husbands could be “exhorted to give up their jobs for those needing income.”

Mr Thompson said yesterday that the committee had not come to that view, although some of its members might be of that persuasion. He was not of that view. He had said rather that employers could be exhorted to consider taking on young people in preference to other applicants because of the disproportionate number of young people unemployed.

This was a decision that would be left to the employer, he said. Young people needed to gain work experience.