Work schemes not effective—Mr Quigley

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 8

Work schemes not effective —Mr Quigley

The National Party member of Parliament for Rangiora, Mr Derek Quigley, said last evening that two Government-subsidised employment schemes were “not effective in social or economic terms,” and that a “new approach to unemployment should be considered.” The private sector job creation programme and the Project Employment Programme were singled out for criticism in a speech Mr Quigley gave to the Clothing and Footwear Institute’s annual conference.

He canvassed ways Government employment policies could change in the future. The effectiveness of the private sector job creation scheme gave “cause for concern,” Mr Quigley said. Numerous employers were paying the wages of people

they would have employed anyway. He said he was not surprised at a survey which found that 80 per cent of employers using the scheme would have made an extra staff appointment without the subsidy, which paid $75 a week for the first six months of employment or a lump sum of $4OOO when a job was maintained for two years.

The targetting of assistance was “clearly another problem area,” he said. A Eon only had to seek a for four weeks before ming eligible, which meant that the long-term, unskilled unemployed who were most in need were passed over. The P.E.P. scheme was better targetted than the job creation programme because it gave priority to those unemployed for more than 26 weeks. It, however, created a lack of incentive to seek alternative employment, as the pay was often better than that available in the private sector. The work was of a contrived nature and gave rise to an absence of interest in performance, he said. Scheme employees were often poorly supervised and gave little on-the-job training.

A two-pronged response was required to New Zealand’s unemployment problem, he said.

Measures adopted must improve the adjustment capacity of the economy by channelling resources into areas yielding greatest gains in real income and prove effective social support to those most seriously

disadvantaged. The Government had to ensure assistance was successfully targetted at those most seriously disadvantaged — unemployed youth and the long-term unemployed. Possible measures that might solve the problem were: the appointment of a Cabinet Minister with special responsibility for the unemployed and the nomination of a government agency, possibly the Labour Department (renamed the Department of Unemployment) as the sole agency responsible for employment co-ordination and co-opera-tion.

The appointment of a high-powered committee — similar to the Manpower Services Commission in the United Kingdom — was needed to advise the Government.

More active individual, business, service group, and community involvement in all areas of training and job creation was needed, as was the decentralisation of deci-sion-making and the allocation of funds on a blockgrant basis.

Existing schemes should be phased out in favour of an expanded employment preparation scheme for school leavers, he said. The P.E.P. scheme should be restructured to emphasise work of real value in the private sector rather than “make-work” schemes for the long-term unemployed.

“Private firms should be encouraged to bid for a full range of work, including community projects,” Mr Quigley said.