THE KEY TO EMPLOYMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 127, 31 May 1944, Page 4

THE KEY TO EMPLOYMENT

It is generally recognised that the first essential to world recovery after the war will be full employment for all. This involves, as the recent British White Paper emphasises, not the mere curing of unemployment but the maintenance of employment, j Briefly, the British proposal is that in I good times surplus spending power j should be drawn off and used as a !reserve with which to maintain employment and the living standards of the people when more difficult times are encountered. The Government proposes that as soon as it sees there is an impending falling off in the consumer demand it will take steps to increase the spending power of the public. If, on the other hand, it sees demand outrunning supply, then there will be an artificial check on spending. In its application, this plan will call for the closest co-operation between the Government (which will have to accept the initial responsibility for the application of correctives), the employers, and the workers. This point was made recently by Seebohm Rowntree, an eminent British authority on employment. After emphasising the duty of the State, with the information and machinery at its command, to watch for signs of economic changes and to take steps to meet them, Rowntree dealt with the responsibility resting on employers and workers. It would be for the employers, he said, to cease all practices which aim ' at limiting the supply of goods and services so as to make them scarce anct therefore dear. All practices which stand in the way of the cheap and easy passage of goods from producer to consumer must also cease. On the other hand, Rowntree declares, the workers will be called upon to give up those practices that lower industrial efficiency—for instance, the unreasonable limitation of the number of workers allowed to enter a given trade so as to create a scarcity value for the services of those already employed in it. Trade union rules must also be made more flexible, so that workers may more easily pass from one trade to another^ thus paving the way for greater mobility of labour when this is necessary in the general interest. The Minister of Reconstruction (Lord Woolton) has stated that in the plans outlined in the White Paper the Government aims at ironing out slumps and depressions. In this respect the proposals closely follow the policy which was successfully pursued in Sweden for some years before the war —the setting aside of reserves in good times for use in difficult times. The New Zealand Labour Party at one time professed to adopt a similar plan. It is true that during the last world depression Labour in this country preached the virtues of the plan, but when it secured the opportunity to put it into practice it fell far short of the goal. This may have been due to a failure to understand the principles of the Swedish plan, or it may have been due to an inability to resist the temptation when revenue was buoyant to put into operation an expansionist policy which far exceeded the needs of the times. It was this embarkation on lavish State expenditure in all directions that planted the seeds of inflation and which made necessary the artificial checks—import selection and currency control —which were imposed immediately after the 1938 election. Plans such as those contained in the British White Paper call not only for courage on the part of the State to resist demands for increased expenditure when times are good but they also call for a realisation on the part of the public that whatever price is involved in obtaining the undoubted benefits of stabilised employment must be cheerfully accepted. In the article from which we have quoted above, Seebohm Rowntree does not disguise the fact that, in some respects, the price will be heavy, but he says that the benefit to all concerned, whether valued in terms of income or freedom from anxiety, will be so great that the people will feel that they have a good bargain. "The most unanswerable charge that Fascism has ever brought against democracy," he says, "is that it has never succeeded in finding a remedy for unemployment. Under Fascism this is done through the exercise of a strict and cruel .discipline. Under democracy discipline is still needed, but it must be self-imposed, and it is not always easy to discipline oneself, for 'it means being willing to place the interests of the community ahead of one's own selfish interest. But the fact is that democracy just won't work unless men are prepared to act unselfishly."