The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 1939. THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 263, 4 August 1939, Page 8

The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 1939. THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

1 There have been frequent references by Ministers in recent months to the Government’s plans for facilitating the transfer of men from unproductive public works into regular productive employment through the encouragement of the manufacturing industries. The impression gathered has been that there would be a consequential tapering off in public works expenditure. In his Budget Statement, the Prime Minister declared, quite correctly, that it was economically unsound to keep so many men engaged permanently upon works that do not add to the present flow of consumable goods”—-in plain English, productive industry. The problem, he added, was being tackled along constructive lines by transferring the men into industry “as quickly as possible.” Unfortunately, this belated recognition of the fact that keeping many thousands of men on public works leaves the real problem of unemployment untouched does not square with the Government s programme of public works expenditure for the current financial year. Instead of tapering off expenditure, this is to lie increased from the record figure of £20,000,000 authorized last year to a new record total of £23,000,000 this year. In addition to this huge sum, provision has been made’for Unemployment Relief to the extent of £2,900,000 from the Consolidated Fund, and £1,500,000 is set aside under the Social Security Fund for sustenance payments. It is a familiar fact now that last year it required nearly £6,500,000 for unemployment relief work and sustenance payments, as against £4,239,000 the previous year, indicating the increasing demand for this form of State help. This heavy growth in expenditure on unemployment relief is' a disturbing revelation of the magnitude of the task that confronts the Government in its attempts to get at least part of this deadweight of State-maintained labour absorbed into the channels of private industry. And it is by no means certain that the encouragement it professes to have given the manufacturing industries to expand their production will have the desired effect of absorbing this type of labour. The chief growth in the number of workers in our manufacturing industries has resulted from the employment of women and girls who, in a ■number of industries suited to female labour, are stated to be m short supply. The restrictions of Labour Union rules and Arbitration Court awards and agreements impose obstacles to the gradual transfer of unskilled or semi-skilled employees on relief works to employment in private industry of a productive nature. The efforts of the Minister of Labour in seeking to secure some relaxation or readjustment of these hampering restrictions do not appear to have met with any success.

It. is a complete confession of failure, however, for the Government to set aside these huge and continually increasing sums of public money for public works undertakings, which are not immediately required, and which serve to draw still more. workers into dead-end, unproductive jobs. Very properly, the Acting-Minister of. Finance denounced this process of finding employment as being nothing more than a temporary expedient and not economically sound. Yet it is being perpetuated by the enormous expansion of public works and relief works expenditure.