LABOR EXCHANGE SCHEME.

Mataura Ensign, 26 January 1912, Page 5

LABOR EXCHANGE SCHEME.

COVERNMEMT APPOINTMENTS. 80,000 APPLICATIONS. BT ELECTRIC TELEPRAPH. —COPYRIGHT. I'UF UNITKI> PRESS ASSOCIATION. 1 Received January 26, 9.20 a.m. LONDON, Jan. 25. In response to an invitation issued on January 8 the Board of Trade has received 80,000 applications for appointments in connection with the labor exchanges and unemployment insurance scheme.

Tho Labor Exchange Act of last session is the pioneer of the Government's Bill for compulsory insurance against unemployment. • The labor-finding exchanges and the insurance system are expected to co-operate, and to mutually support each other. In a speech on the subject in 1910 Mr Churchill, then President of the Board of Trade, pointed out that the labor exchanges would enable the Government to deal stringently with vagrants; "it_is_ not possible," ho added, "to distinguish between the loafer and the bona-fide workman except by some effective system of finding work." He went on to indicate that the Government would prefer to select some trades, and to make insurance against unemployment compulsory in them, rather than to make it voluntary in all. Tho trades to which the scheme would be coinpulsorily applied would 1)0:

(1) House-building and work of construction.

(2) Engineering. (3) Machine and tool-making (4) Ship and boat building. (5) Vehicles. (6) Sawyers.

Mr Churchill explained the benefits, the contributions, and the system as follows:—"They (the Government) propose to aim at a scale of benefits which would be somewhat lower both in amount and in duration than those which the strongest trade unions paid at the present time. But they would be benefits which nevertheless afforded a substantial weekly payment over a period which would cover by far the greater part of the average period of unemployment for all unemployed persons in this great group of* insured trades. In order to enable such a scale of benefits to be paid, it was necessary that they should raise something between 5d and 6d—rather nearer 6d than sd—per man per week, and that sum they proposed should be made up by contributions, not necessarily equal contributions, between the workmen, .the employers, and the State." ! "These trades are chosen," said Mr Churchill, "because they are a group in which unemployment is not only high, but where it is chronic, where in the best of times it persists, and where it is marked by seasonal and cyclical variations of severity, taking the form not of short time or of any of those devices for spreading wages and averaging risks, but involving a total, absolute, regular, periodical discharge of a certain proportion of the workers." These trades, too. contain about 2,500,000 adult males., or one-third of the total industrial population. Insurance cards will be issued to the men, and stamped each week. When the worker insured loses his work, he will take his card to the nearest labor exchange, and will be either found work or paid a benefit.