GOLDEN HELLOS?
Monday, January 12, 2009 at 08:40AM So, UK PM Gordon Brown and other ministers will announce “golden hellos” worth up to £2,500 for employers to recruit and train the long-term unemployed; there will be 75,000 training places for people out of work for six months.
Big deal. For starters, train them to do what, precisely? Then there is the small matter of that £2500 incentive to hire someone unemployed for six months or more. Won't that simply mean that employers will ignore all those who are unemployed for LESS than six months? The answer lies not in golden hellos - it lies in allowing people to retain more of the money they do earn, it lies in cutting tax on business, and it lies in reducing the scale of the State. None of this appeals to Brown and his socialists crew and so they will continue to fiddle whilst the economy burns. Bourbons.
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Reader Comments (2)
Good point about the less than 6 month crowd. But I suppose if someone is taken off the dole or unemployment there may be some savings to the government, and the added (if decried) benefit of extra taxes from the new worker's income.
In our local area voluntary work involves working free at Poundland.
Work experience involves working at Poundland.
Unfortunately Poundland isn't recruiting at the moment, no doubt because they have a lot of free labour at the moment.
Skills training is provided by a private company. People tell me they share the room with drug addicts, alcoholics, 30-year veterans of benefit, hippies, teenage boys playing with mobile phones, etc, etc. They are told to sit at computers for 4-5 hours a day looking for jobs. Eventually they can get the chance of a placement - with Poundland!
Training is provided by a variety of private companies and involves life skills, interview skills, cv skills, filling in application forms, yadda yadda yadda. It is beneficial to people who have trouble writing a letter or who have never worked. For most it would be a humiliating experience.
70% of jobseekers sign off in the first 13 weeks of unemployment (in the good times) with NO HELP FROM THE GOVERNMENT. More money spent by the state means administering it, losing it, wasting it and ultimately not delivering on it.
Forget the ridiculous tinkering with VAT, perhaps given employers a break from NI? There are many firms struggling because contracts have been cancelled. Many of these firms could ride out the recession if they were given a little help. This does not need to be out of some administered government fund but by simply reducing the burden of taxation on business.
I also believe that the best time to help people is as soon as they walk into the jobcentre. There is no real help at jobcentres for the first 25 weeks, and even after the 26th week it isn't much (see my blog for a breakdown of the help available in the first 26 weeks of claiming Jobseeker's Allowance). There does not need to be any tendered contracts, interviews, forms, etc, just a small pot of money to help people with costs that could get them back into work. £35 for a CIS card, £30 for a CRB check, maybe £250 for an SIA license, or even several hundreds pounds for an LGV license. I don't know, but if any help is provided it shouldn't be targetted solely to the long-term unemployed.
Raising income based benefit rates by 6% in April is not going to help people back into work.