Libby Purves Hits the Nail on the Head
Libby Purves got right to the point in The Times yesterday about youth unemployment.
The last two paragraphs sum it all up.
In France, three years ago, Dominique de Villepin, then Prime Minister, tried to address it in a novel way: he proposed flexible job contracts for first-time workers under 26 — the CPE or first employment contract. Within the first two years they could be dismissed with no reason given, and employing any young person who had been six months out of work would exempt you from national insurance. Thus, employers might take a punt, and the young get a chance to prove themselves. Three months later, after violent demonstrations, the Government stepped back and the unions crowed. Now the French stick to the tired old stuff we go in for here — training schemes, internships, fake jobs, anything to keep the figures down.
But it’s real jobs they want, these young: to be needed, useful, a cog in the machine. Even if it’s a job you have to laugh at in the pub that evening. Many young French voices — drowned by union rhetoric — said precarious employment on the CPE would be better than none. I suspect ours would agree. But what politician would dare roll back some of the stifling regulation and expense entailed in giving them a chance?
I have recently had a stroke. I’m better now and can drive again. But in the four weeks when I couldn’t drive, I woulod have loved to be able to recruit a helper, who I could then have fired when I was better.
How many other temporary jobs are there out there, that are unfilled because of the bureaucracy.
Cutting Unemployment
I run a couple of small businesses; one is a computer software firm and the other is a thoroughbred stud.
I have a problem on the stud in that work is distinctly seasonal and so some of the essential maintenance jobs that no-one really likes to do, get put to the bottom of the queue, when other more important things come up. For instance, if it means having an injured horse for rest after a racing injury, which requires extra care time, then this will take precedence over say painting fences or renewing a badly worn gateway, because the former is better for your cash flow.
In the past twenty years or so, whilst my late wife and I have run the stud, we’ve often needed someone for say a month or two for these maintenance and other tasks. Usually, we’ve subcontracted to a building firm, who don’t like these sort of small jobs and charge much more than say employing someone for a couple of months.
What is needed is a computer system based on the technology used on many web sites, to match the unemployed to the small jobs available. The site might be something like a cross between a dating-site for something like The Times and eBay.
Suppose you chose someone from this web site for a job that would last anything upwards of a week.
You would pay the site, which would then pay the employee directly and automatically adjust their benefit, so that they avoided the problem of going on and off benefit. After they’d finished, you would then assess their work and post it with ratings on the web site.
I think that this would have benefits for both employers and claimants.
Employers and especially small ones, would have a simple means of bridging that temporary labour problem without any great hassle. They could also read the references of those available for employment in their area and may well choose an employee whose skills and experience matched their needs. In the case of the stud, I’d probably do jobs where I can easily find people to do them. For instance, I have several painting jobs that need doing, so if I found someone, who had experience of industrial painting, then that job would be done.
Claimants would benefit from the work and the extra money, and because they were rated, this would increase their chances of getting full employment. The system would also benefit, those who perhaps because of circumstances like age, children and disability, did not need or want to work all of the year.
It is an idea, that I feel needs to be examined. As a computer scientist, I don’t believe that setting it up would be the biggest of technological problems, although asking the government to do it would probably be a disaster.
The Anonymous Widower 