Training plan condemned

Press, 6 January 1987, Page 2

Training plan condemned

The Government’s plan to deny the unemployment benefit to people who unreasonably refuse a training skills programme has been condemned by the Christchurch Unemployed Rights Centre.

The Minister of Social Welfare, Mrs Hercus, said last week that the Government would next year apply the same “unreasonably refusal” rule to work skills programmes as already existed for job offers.

Under the law, an unemployed person can be denied a benefit if he or she is held to have unreasonably refused a job.

A spokesman for the Christchurch Unemployed Rights Centre, Mr lan O’Conner, said that the wages and conditions on many work skills schemes “amount to nothing less than slave labour.” The schemes demanded

at least 20 hours work a week, but apart from a $lO a week travelling allowance an unemployed person received no more than on the benefit, he said.

Although some schemes taught an employable skill, others were merely providing a cheap labour source and provided little hope for a future job, he said.

Unemployed people with families could have a good reason to refuse a training programme while looking for a proper job, Mr O’Conner said.

Rather than funding work skills programmes, the Government should put more money into labour-intensive industries.

“The only way a person can obtain work skills is to. work at a real job. Training somebody up when there are no jobs is just going to displace someone else.”