COST OF UNEMPLOYMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19452, 7 October 1926, Page 14

COST OF UNEMPLOYMENT

HUGE LOSS TO THE STATE.

OUR UNECONOMIC METHODS.

INSURANCE AS A REMEDY. BY T. BLOODWORTH. The recent, discussions which have taken place with Ministers of the Crown and others seem to have brought, ont two rather important points. First, that,, when once the community ir» made awara that unemployment and its consequentsuffering exist to any degree in our midst there is at once a general desire that steps should be taken to relieve the position. The second point is (hat whenever we are faced with unemployment, and its consequences to any extent, we find we have no machinery for dealing with it, no means even of finding out with any degree of accuracy its extent and nothing at all in the way of organisation to prevent its recurrence. If this country were subjected every two years or so to some epidemic against which preventive measures could be taken but which were not taken, our legislators great and small, would soon be made to feel the weight of public opinion. If serious accidents happened frequently which could be avoided by the observance of ordinary precautions, then those who were responsible for neglecting to observe those precautions would be dealt with under the law. My view of unemployment in the mass is that, it is a disease, an epidemic if you will, from which our social organism is liable to suffer. We cannot, with the present industrial system, entirely remove the causes though we could by the exercise of a little common sense considerably reduce their virulence and we could, as other countries have done, provide means for registering the progress of the disease", so that we know of its entrance in our midst, before its victims reached such comparatively large numbers. Accidents of Employment. My view of unemployment for the individual is that in by far the great majority of cases it is just as much an accident to the individual as it is when he or she falls off a scaffold or get? run over by a motor-car. In the case of accidents to workers arising out of their employment our law provides for compensation, as it does also in cases of accident arising in many other ways, but in the case of the accident of unemployment, our law provides no compensation and in that respect wo are now far behind other countries, which once looked to New Zealand as tho leader in legislation of that nature. Our haphazard method of dealing with this problem is at onco unsatisfactory and expensive. We have seen this winter the worst period of unemployment for some years. The remedy which seems most in favour at the present time is " a comprehensive land policy " —indeed that remedy is suggested so often and for such a lot of our social and political maladies that it has come to be regarded as a sort of patent cure-all. That there is little likelihood of that remedy being applied, or that if applied, it would take some time to become operative, does not seem to occur to those who suggest it. Neither do they seem to realise that it is at best a preventive rather than a remedy.

Getting Down to Facts.

I suggest that the first thing necessary in dealing with the problem in any other than a haphazard and expensive way is that we should first get to the nature and extant of the problem with which we have to deal. We want to be abla to put our hands on something like this "Employability.—lt was found that 62.7 per cent, of male claimants were persons who normally would bp in steady employment and another 23.4 per . cent, were persons who would normally ba ir, fair employment. Ihe corresponding figures for women were 77.2 and 13.0 per , cent, respectively. Only 3.6 per cent, of men and 1.4 per cent, of women were considered to be verging on the unemployable and of these more than twothirds of the men and nearly half the women were 60 years of ago or over. "Age.—Less than half the male claimants " and over three-quarters of the women claimants were under 35. The largest proportions at any one age were in the age group 20*24 and the age group 55 and over for men, and 18-24 for women, as in the 1923 inquiry." Now .hat is an extract from an aoalvsis of Unemployment Insurance Statistics, 1924, published by H.M. Stationery Office, and it relates, of course, to the operation of the Employment Insurance Act of Great Britain. With statistics such as those Parliament, knows the nature and the extent of the problem with which it, has to deal. Without such statistics Parliament and others dealing with the problem simply have to guess and often they guess wrong. The Unemployment "Dole."

1 talked recently on the unemployment problem of Great Britain with some prominent trade, union officials who happen?d along this way. They told me, what we all know, of course, that much as we raav rave about the demoralising effects of unemployment insurance—the dole as it is called by those who have never actually needed it—-it is the only alternative under present conditions to revolution in Great Britain. And they told me that, apart, from the actual payment, of relief funds, the system was ot inestimable value in that it provided accurate statistics by means of which it was possible for a Government so minded to understand the nature and extent of the problem with which it had to deal.

With such statistics it is easy to ascertain which trade or trades are most affected by unemployment at any time, and the nature of the work most suitable to give the necessary relief. Many countries have now established systems' of unemployment insurance, so that it is not a new or novel experiment which this country is asked to try out. There are also many ways bv which the volume of employment could be. to a certain extent stabilised so as to avoid booms as well as slumps. But for the proper arrangement of these, as well as fnr the proper treatment of unemployment when it comes, reliable data is necessary, and a form of industrial registration with a national system of unemployment insurance is the best way to get this information.

I think we have to realise in this country now that we have reached a stage in industry, as in .some, other thincs, when the guess-work method of doin; things will no longer suffice. We cannot afford to leave things to chance and cannot afford to put off provision against unemployment, until we. are right in a crisis. That, however, is -what- we have done up to the present and we are likely to do so again unless we rouse the powers that be to a sense of their responsibility in the matter. Progress in many directions is held up by these recurring unemployment periods. Questions of land settlement, immigration, apprenticeship and many others arc all affected. Unemployment, is bad for the individual, bad for ' the Stat*, had for business, and the fact that no real steps are taken to guard against it,, or to provide for its victims, is a sigti of really bad statesmanship.