Government tightens Your friendly jobsmart' will not solve unemployment

Towards the end of the 28-page booklet is a strange criticism that many labour exchanges are people sit withou a specie purpose'.

Ulster How much further from reality can you get?

Up in his ivory tower-far away from the governmentsponsored shake-out which has been destroying close 10,000 jobs a week since the summer-the writer dreams of a world where people would be popping into their friendly, with-it, High St job supermarket every five minutes, just for the hell of it!

Sinister

The implications of this kind of thinking, which runs through the booklet, are, to say the least, sinister.

What the D of E proposes is to:

TURN the employment" service into a self-managing unit within the department under a new Chief Executive respansible expenditure administration.

HIVE OFF the finding of from and the placing of people • payment of unemployment benefit, extending the self-service techniques beginning to be used in the former activities and paying out all benefit by post in future. EXTEND: the forward planning and predicting capacity of the service - using computers and other aids to facilitate redeployment trom area to area.

As reported in_yesterday's Secretary Robert ' Carr also favours the establishment of a national manpower council involving trade unions and management with government.

If the union leaders accept this proposal it will authentically trim out the whole corporatist plan.

Despite the deplorable record of the employment service, there can be no set of neutral, non-class proposals for improving it. Even so, ALL TRADES U MEE the Tory government resign!

Return a Labour government pledged to restore full employment and repeal al Laws against the unions.

BRACKNELL: Thursday December 16, 8 p.m. The 'Red Lion', High Street. SHEFFIELD: Thursday December 16, 7.45 p.m. •Broughton Inn', Attercliffe Common (near No 4 gate, River Don steelworks).

WOLVERHAMPTON : Thursday, December 16, 7.30 p.m. The Lewisham Arms, Prosser Street. Discussion on ATUA manifesto.

Special Course of lectures, bullding of the Party SUNDAY DECEMBER 19 Economics and Politics SUNDAY JANUARY 2 Historical Materialism today IEAVER HALL, GARLICK HILL given by AN APPEAL TO ALL OUR APPEAL TO ALL READERS:

Ask your Public Library to take a copy of Workers Press We would like to ask all our readers to help us expand the circulation of Workers Press. One thing you all can do is ask your Public Library to take a copy each day. All requests Circulation Department 186a Clapham High Street London, sw4.

Telephone: 01-622 7029

yesterday's 'Morning Star' worked hard to imply was.

But it is worth looking at the record, nonetheless.

Small

For the size of the problem, the government service as it stands is amazingly small: about 7,000 staff divided between 1,000 general offices, 600 specialists in the 45 offices covering the professional and executive field and 200 at 44 occupational guidance centres.

Alongside this, smaller and even more inadequate services for disabled people and youth operate.

No wonder state-run labour exchanges have this unenviable record of handling only about 20 per cent of the total job changes in an average year. Or that over the last five years only one in three of those who registered as unemployed were found jobs.

Though largely drawn up under the Labour government, there is little in the D of E modernization which will improve this record.

And in her parliamentary attack on the proposals Barbara Castle MP made clear that this was not her chief concern. ' *If by improving the employment service we succeed in getting down by just one day on average the time taken by unemployed men and women to move into new jobs we save the loss of 3 million working days a year, she said.

It is significant, however, that the Labour scheme for making the employment service an independent body free of day-to-day Ministerial control has been scrapped.

The Tories want to • keep a firm grip over the administration of mass misery.

ONS ALLIANCE NGS SW LONDON: Tuesday December 21, 8 p.m. Small Hall, Clapham Manor Baths, Clapham Manor St, SW4. 'Elect a Labour government pledged to socialist policies'. BIRMINGHAM: Wednesday December 22, 3 p.m. Christmas social: Mount Pleasant Community Centre. All unemployed workers and youth welcome.

YOUNG SOCIALISTS' STUDENT SOCIETY HUDDERSFIELD Thursday, December 16, 7 p.m. Huddersheld Polytechnic YSSS National Conference decision to prepare Ir Mansion House tube) 7 p.m.

(SLL national secretary)

RIGHT-TO-WORK COMMITTEE MEETING Sunday December 19 YMCA, Howard St, Kilmarnock Speakers:

Sam Kay (Convenor, Massey Ferguson)

Joe Morlarty (UCS)

(Both in a personal capacity)