Unemployment

Press, 15 August 1988, Page 20

Unemployment

Sir, — The statements of the Employers’ Association concerning the need for job preservation are admirable but, regrettably, the major employing organisations, the corporates, are in other groupings and, therefore, their allegience is minimal. There was once a management philosophy that accepted a mediocre profit and allowed continuation on the basis of better future return, albeit that this philosophy was abetted by the difficulties in reducing staff imposed by the unions themselves. Now, with free-market and user-pays theories which condone and promote redundancies, modestly performing companies, once acquired by the corporates, are closed down only because the returns do not meet the criterion figure for the balance-sheet, transferring workers to the dole

queue and the value of assets sold to the balance-sheet as profit. Until some consideration for people is restored, such a pious statement has little effect in the current climate. Perhaps the answer is to levy those employers who make workers redundant with 50 per cent of the ongoing cost of dole payments for their workers. — Yours, etc.,

G. D. STAIRMAND. August 11, 1988.