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> "The Jobs Letter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "The Jobs Letter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 09:41:22 +0000
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>Subject: The Jobs Letter No.67 (1st October 1997)
>Reply-to: "The Jobs Letter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Priority: normal
>
>T H E J O B S L E T T E R 0 6 7
>-------------------------------------
>a subscriber-based letter
>published in New Zealand 1 October 1997
>
>edited by Vivian Hutchinson for the Jobs Research Trust
>P.O.Box 428, New Plymouth, New Zealand
>phone 06-753-4434 fax 06-759-4648
>Internet address -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>I N T H I S I S S U E
>-----------------------------
>INTERNET HOT-LINKS
>COMMUNITY TASKFORCE BROKERING
>ETSA MAORI JOB FEES
>CODE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
>JOB FORECASTS
>MORGAN AND BANKS JOB INDEX
>WANGANUI COMPUTER
>ROBERT THEOBALD
>
>
>T H E J O B S L E T T E R
>an essential information and media watch
>on jobs, employment, unemployment, the future of work,
>and related economic and education issues.
>
>Kia taea ai te tangata te whiwhi mahi
>ahakoa ki whea, ahakoa ko wai.
>Our objective is that every New Zealander will have the
>opportunity to be in paid work.
>
>The Jobs Research Trust -- a not-for-profit Charitable Trust
>constituted in 1994 to develop and distribute information that
>will help our communities create more jobs and reduce
>unemployment and poverty in New Zealand.
>
>D I A R Y - THE STATE OF JOBS IN NEW ZEALAND
>----------------------------------------------
>
>14 September 1997
>A British study has found that if government ministers want to
>raise school standards, they should end child poverty instead of
>spending more on education. The study, called Literacy, Numeracy
>and Economic Performance, by the Centre for Economic Performance
>(based at the London School of Economics) says that a serious
>programme to tackle child poverty might do far more for boosting
>attainment in literacy and numeracy than any modest intervention
>in schools.
>
>16 September 1997
>A report on Tomorrows Schools by the Council for Educational
>Research says that teachers and principals are working longer
>hours, and increasing numbers of them are describing their
>workloads as excessive.
>
>17 September 1997
>The number of registered unemployed has risen by 7,198 people or
>4.4% to reach 170,624. Employment Minister Peter McCardle blames
>the rise on a data-matching exercise that has found that
>thousands of people receiving the unemployment benefit were not
>registered as unemployed.
>
>Labour's Steve Maharey says that this explanation does not
>wash with him. He believes that unemployment is ballooning out of
>control, and Peter McCardle's explanation does not explain why
>there are more than 16,000 or 10% more people unemployed now than
>there were a year ago.
>
>A new Treasury report on Private Providers in tertiary
>education, says that there are 800 PTEs (private training
>establishments) half of which have been established since 1990.
>The PTEs provide courses for 100,000 students, with some 43% of
>the students being Maori (compared with 11% in the mainstream
>tertiary sector).
>
>18 September 1997
>Up to 70 civilian staff at Trentham Army Camp are uncertain about
>their job futures after the work they do was awarded to a private
>company.
>
>The Alliance launches a new campaign to build support for
>measures to close the gender pay gap. Alliance's Laila Harre:
>"The gap between men's and women's wages has increased since the
>Employment Contracts Act took effect, and this indicates that the
>marketplace alone will not deliver pay equity..."
>
>19 September 1997
>Ted Turner, the founder of Cable News Network, has
>announced plans to donate $1 billion to United Nations
>humanitarian agencies over the next 10 years and called on other
>wealthy people to do the same.
>
>The British Chancellor, Gordon Brown, is to spearhead a global
>initiative to cancel the debt of the world's poorest countries by
>the year 2000. He proposes that by 2000, 75% of the world's
>poorest countries should have schemes designed to cancel or
>relieve their debt. This will free domestic resources to invest
>in education, health and the relief of poverty.
>
>20 September 1997
>The Wellington City Council is to employ unemployed people
>under Community Taskforce to record the number-plates of
>motorists who are running red lights in the city.
>
>Worker's accident pay will be slashed from 80% of their pre-
>accident earnings to 65%, if the government accepts official
>recommendations as part of a revamp of the ACC.
>
>21 September 1997
>A Belgian study shows that couples in which both partners
>work argue more than couples with one breadwinner.
>
>The Employment Service in Whangarei is buying bikes for
>jobseekers in a bid to get over the district's lack of public
>transport. The jobseekers must be able to prove that mobility is
>an obstacle to full-time employment. They are issued with a $375
>bike once they start work, and if they are still there after
>three months, they get to keep it.
>
>22 September 1997
>The European Union unemployment rate fell in July for the
>second consecutive month, according to figures produced by
>Eurostat, the EU's official statistical body.
>
>The Business Roundtable is calling for a flattening of the tax
>scales to reduce the top personal tax rate to 20% or less over
>the next few years.
>
>23 September 1997
>The government makes a Treaty settlement offer to the Ngai
>Tahu tribe, which will give Ngai Tahu $170m, and an apology for
>the failings of previous governments. The settlement also
>includes ownership of land and lakes, and the future dual naming
>of many South Island placenames.
>
>The Ruapehu District Council is restructuring with as many as 41
>staff having to reapply for their jobs.
>
>Coeur Gold's Golden Cross mine ear Waihi will close at the end of
>the year with the loss of 81 jobs.
>
>24 September 1997
>Private sector wages grew at 1% in the May quarter, slower than
>either the markets or the Reserve Bank were expecting.
>
>Dating agency tactics are being used to pair employers and job
>seekers in Tauranga. Business people invited to a breakfast
>meeting next month organised by the Employment Service, will be
>given profiles of long-term unemployed people eager to find work.
>The Tauranga NZES is also to videotape their unemployed clients
>as another way of marketing them to employers.
>
>25 September 1997
>74 students are arrested outside parliament after protests over
>the Government Tertiary Review Green Paper which they say is a
>"thinly veiled plan to privatise universities and polytechs..."
>
>26 September 1997
>Thames businesses closed for an hour to protest against planned
>tariff cuts which would lead to Thames largest employer, Toyota,
>closing down permanently. The Minister of Commerce, John Luxton,
>told a hostile rally that the town had to start planning for life
>after the death of the plant ... which presently employs 330
>workers and pumps $15m into the district's economy.
>
>A retiring member of the police executive says that Auckland
>needs another 400 police officers if they are going to make
>inroads into crime.
>
>Fletcher Challenge Forests' 1400 employees will have to submit to
>drug tests or lose their jobs.
>
>NZ Post plans to axe 124 jobs as a result of restructuring in its
>mail centres.
>
>NZ'ers have rejected Winston Peters compulsory
>superannuation scheme in a referendum with a staggering margin of
>92.4% "No" votes to 7.6% "Yes" votes. The New Zealand Herald
>describes it as "one of the most stunning referendum results in
>world history..."
>
>27 September 1997
>Ngati Kahungungu tribal leaders have met with Children and
>Young persons and Their Families Service (CYPFS) staff to discuss
>taking over contracts for youth services for Maori youth from
>Wairoa to Wairarapa. The move is part of Social Welfare's iwi
>social services strategy, which will lead to increasing numbers
>of Maori taking over responsibility for their young people.
>
>28 September 1997
>The Sunday News reports that many Maori and Pakeha TOPS
>providers called to a Christchurch briefing on ETSA's Te Ararau
>scheme, greeted the news of a $500 Maori cash-for-jobs bounty
>with stony silence, and then walked out in anger.
>
>29 September 1997
>The National Bank's survey of business confidence has
>continued to show signs of strengthening, and is now back at
>levels last seen in December 1995.
>
>30 September 1997
>Firefighters fear more staff cuts are on the way following the
>resignation of the Fire Service's National Commander Bob Baillie.
>Bailie is the second top executive to quit in a week.
>
>More than 40 people are losing their jobs at a Hamilton bakery --
>among the first to go in nationwide redundancies following the
>Goodman Fielder takeover of Defiance Foods.
>
>I T E M S -- ESSENTIAL Information on an ESSENTIAL issue
>--------------------------------------------------
>
>COMMUNITY FUNDING FOR COMMUNITY TASKFORCE
>* The government has pledged $5.3m of extra money to help
>find more Community Taskforce positions, in a move which
>Employment Minister Peter McCardle calls "strengthening community
>ownership" of his work-for-the-dole scheme. Fifty "suitable"
>community organisations will be offered contracts to place job
>seekers onto local Community Taskforce projects.
>
>McCardle: "This initiative aims to provide significant impetus to
>increasing the number of job seekers in community work by
>organisations outside the central Government bureaucracy. I am
>acutely aware of the links and extra strengths that many
>community organisations have in assisting unemployed job seekers,
>and this strategy aims to capture that strength..."
>
>McCardle says that the new money will assist with
>strengthening and refocussing existing community organisations'
>activities into brokering community work opportunities for long-
>term and disadvantaged job seekers in particular.
>
>* The government announced in the last Budget that it will be
>expanding the numbers of long-term unemployed on Community
>Taskforce, committing $10.2m in order to get 17,000-20,000
>jobseekers participating in the programme. This latest initiative
>is $5.3m of new money and is aimed at contracting the 50
>community organisations to collectively achieve 6,500 of the
>Budget's placement target.
>
>* Note: this new money is not going to the sponsors providing
>the Community Taskforce positions, but simply to the selected
>community organisations who are facilitating the placements. A
>spokesperson from the Minister of Employment says that if
>additional resources for sponsors are officially identified as a
>barrier to CTF placements, then this will be addressed in the
>design of next year's expanded work-for-the-dole scheme.
>
>* In perhaps a sign of how the future workfare programmes
>will be administered, the selected community organisations in
>this latest initiative will be known as Community Broker
>Organisations, or CBOs, in order to avoid confusion with
>community organisations in general. They will be contracted to
>deliver job seeker placements, the exact number being negotiated
>on a case by case basis.
>
>This whole process is going to be administered and supported
>through the Community Employment Group (CEG) who will be paid
>$1.2m of the $5.3 to provide field work support to the CBOs and
>to evaluate the initiative.
>
>* The bottom-line for community groups? This depends on
>individual CEG negotiations ... of the $4m left for grants to
>community organisations, this averages out at about $80,000 (incl
>GST) per group, or a $600 `finders fee' per placement.
>
>Who will be chosen as a CBO? CEG and NZES are presently
>inviting proposals from selected existing organisations ...
>especially those already working with the CEG priority groups:
>long-term unemployed people, Maori, Pacific Islands people,
>women, and people living in disadvantaged urban and rural
>communities. CEG will enter into 12-month contracts with the
>selected CBOs.
>
>TAMIHERE COMMENTS
>* John Tamihere, Chief Executive of Te Whanau o Waipareira
>Trust in West Auckland, criticises the Community Taskforce scheme
>as a "plan to move the unemployed around, rather than to create
>real employment". Tamihere: "If it means moving resources away
>from education and training courses in order to fund community
>brokerage, then we are going to have some problems..."
>
>Tamihere agrees with the co-ordination of projects being put out
>to community organisations: "... But what I would like to see
>simultaneously is the downsizing of CEG and NZES, so that the
>real resources also shift across to us. Otherwise you are just
>building a third or fourth level of bureaucracy..."
>
>ETSA ALSO PLANS CASH FOR JOBS
>* The Education and Training Support Agency ETSA is
>paying a $500-per head bounty to some TOPS training providers to
>help Maori trainees into employment that also provides industry
>training. The payments come under the $450,000 Te Ararau training
>scheme introduced in this year's Budget in order to help get more
>Maori into jobs.
>
>The Sunday News last weekend branded the scheme a "Maori Job
>Bribe", and quoted one Wellington TOPS trainer as saying: "It's
>racist, scandalous even. We have always treated Maori and Pakeha
>students equally. Now we're being told not to... in this day and
>age its appalling..." United leader Peter Dunne questions whether
>the scheme would pass a Human Rights Commission scrutiny: "Most
>people who are unemployed want work regardless of the colour of
>their skin..."
>
