DEFENCE OF THE "DOLE"

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 2, 2 July 1929, Page 8

DEFENCE OF THE "DOLE"

N (To the Editor.)

Sir,—On several occasions lately I have heard it remarked that the ranks of the unemployed in England will never lessen while the 'dole" is to be got for the asking: no one will work while he or she can be paid for doing nothing. Let me point out first of all that there is no such thing as the "dole." The State insurance is made up by three contributions in fairly equal parts. Firstly, the worker contributes his third, the employer also a third, and the State in about the same proportion. No person is entitled- to receive out-of-work insurance unless he' or she has been a contributor, together with their employer, for not less than twenty-six weeks. The worker has to report daily to the nearest Labour Exchange and register as being still out of work—at 11 a.m.— no "bilking" iby going in the lunch hour. If a job offers, he has to take it if capable of doing the work and able to proceed to it, or forfeit his insurance benefit. There is very little chance for the shirker to draw insurance; we hear of an odd one occasionally who has been able to "get one over" on the officials of the Labour Bureau, but such cases are as a grain of sand in a bucketful comparatively. At the end of twenty-six weeks the insurance payments cease, but in the majority of cases the workers have obtained work before the expiry of the term allowed. Some persons imagine that it is a stationary army of unemployed who are drawing the insurance, but it is not by any means the case; it is quite a shifting population. There are thousands of workers who have never drawn a penny for unemployment; their contributionsl go to make up the fund for the unfortunate who has lost his work. It is unfair and ridiculous to suggest that a man is as well off drawing a pound a week for six months, and then working six months, as he would be by trying and succeeding in getting regular work at three times the amount per week for a year, or even nine or ten months. In April of this year the Director of Statistics at the Ministry of Labour supplied the following figures relative to unemployment insurance from November, 1918, to December, 1928. The Government's share was 95 millions, in addition to a loan of 31 millions, which has to be repaid by the Fund Treasury at som». future time when things are easier. Thw made the total paid by the Government 126 milliotis. The joint 'sun jcriptions m hand from workers, employers, and Government in November, 1918 were 16 millions, so that the figures stand as follow:— Employers £142,000,000 Workers £123,000.000 Government £95,000,000 Balance and loan 47,000,000 The above absolutely correct figures show that the workers and their employers together subscribed two-thirds of the whole amount. This money is subscribed out of the workers' wages, and the employers' profits, so that there is not the slightest justification for the headlines we are constantly seeing: 'Workers and the Dole," "Should the Dole be Abol-

ished? etc. If a man or woman is in a iriendiy society, or has a lodge doctor, which he she ha- subscribed to for years, one does not thiuk or speak of that as cuanty, and the recipients as lazy. As a matter of fact ou my own observation A Know that the majority of unemployed ingushmen would rather earn 25s in a week at odd work than draw 20s for nothing, even though he has paid for it by S a» C?i, U one is golne t0 dul> it the o-oie, then ona should save a sejVate amj>"nt -or buriai. so as not to be b. ried under the stigma of a dole granted by the insurance company to which one has contributed for the purpose for many years. nimia U? re.l? ember that though thoUfli if^-T 168 8eP""-ate us from our are° W o "f H!Sherß at mHo] m ' ""* "till ™A fn t saml blood M ourselves, Wv Sf J he Bame Briti6l» tea' acity to stick things out and try their best, as we have here, under our also trying conditions. The many must not be unjustly judged by the few; one might aa well send Home the numbers of our people here who have re-entered priaon. pmitting the thousands who have madi good.—l am, etc., FASNY E.JOYCE.