Greetings all...
I would like to share my concerns about an apparent contradiction in
the UK Employment Zones approach.
Reform of active labour market measures in Canada and the UK in the 1990s
has involved increases in targetting (but not money), by which I mean the
number of discrete programmes aimed at those with distinctive needs
(youth, the long term unemployed, older labour force participants, etc).
This creates a rigidity when administered on a regional basis. When
administered at the local or regional level, the administrators have a
specific budgetary allotment for, say, youth, and a different allotment
for the aged, both of which are pretty much set. If one locale (zone) has
more youth unemployment than unemployment among older workers, too bad;
they must spend the allotment as budgeted and programmed. In this context,
the UK Employment Zone proposals (if I'm reading the proposals correctly)
show promise, for they allow localities the flexibility to reallocate
funding according to needs - budgetary decentralisation with a
small measure of local policy discretion.
But wait, what about all these other conditions? Those over 25 and are
classified as long(ish)-term unemployed (over 1 year) are targeted - a
slight claw-back of decentralization. A minimum amount must be spend on
certain key targeted programmes - a restiction on policy making
capacity of the zone. Project success stories will be
replicated across Britain, whether they are suitable to other regions or
not - a reduction in local flexibility. And what happens when the central
governments wants to target another class of labour market participant?
Budgetary centralisation and a reduction in local policy discretion,
that's what.
In fact, this is the cycle that has taken place in Canada:
(1.) demands for more flexibility come from local programme offices of
the federal ministry; (2.) budgetary allotments between programmes are
made more flexible; (3.) new demands emerge for another targeted
programme, such as youth; (4.) central level of government demands
such-and-such amount spent on the new initiative (or package of
iniatiatives), and local flexibility is reduced. With the Blair
government embarking on an on-going redesign of the welfare state, the
likelihood of new targeting measures seems very high.
What this boils down to is one question: are these local
experiments to create ideas for redesigning of the larger system, or are
they pilot projects in decentralisation of the entire system? (Surely,
the maintenance of a small and perminent cadre of priviledged zones is
politically unsustainable as backbenchers lobby behind the scenes for
special status for their own constituencies.) This is an either-or
proposition, each with its own perils, for making compromises between the
two creates an overly complex system - a state that active measures
sometimes seem prone to gravitate towards. The Australian scenario would
be the risk: programme targeting becoming so complex and success so
difficult to monitor that, eventually, those held accountable get fed up
with the unwieldliness and chop the system down to size.
Thank you for your attention.
Cheers, Peter Stoyko
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Peter Stoyko
Carleton University Tel: (613) 520-2600 ext. 2773
Department of Political Science Fax: (613) 520-4064
B640 Loeb Building V-mail: (613) 731-1964
1125 Colonel By Drive E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ottawa, Canada, K1S 5B6 Internet: http://www.carleton.ca/~pstoyko
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On Tue, 21 Apr 1998, Michael Gurstein wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 19:51:41 +0100 GMT
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: UK Employment zones: will they work?
>
> UK Employment zones: will they work?
> Zones d'Emploi britanniques: marcheront-ils?
>
> The Blairite solution to poor prospects for employment is to identify parts
> of Britain where these problems cluster and then concentrate resources.
> Smart. Will the policy work?
>
> Employment zones are areas where the usual national programmes for
> the unemployed will be ditched in favour of running trials of local
> initiatives. The five areas chosen to pilot the scheme all have high
> concentrations of the long-term jobless.
>
> "Employment Zones will give communities the flexibility to devise local
> solutions which best meet local needs," said the Employment Minister,
> Andrew Smith, when he invited bids for zone status last September.
> Plymouth, Liverpool, north-west Wales, south Teeside and Glasgow
> began running their own programmes in February. The schemes must all
> include training plans to improve employment prospects, business
> enterprise to help the jobless move into self-employment, and
> neighbourhood regeneration - work which improves the wider community.
>
> Ideas from the five areas include individual learning accounts, mentors for
> the jobless, free child-care vouchers, and specialised training for seasonal
> workers. In some cases benefit rules will be relaxed, like the ban on
> studying more than 16 hours a week while on Job Seekers Allowance.
> The Government is hoping that the zones will replicate the success of
> initiatives like the Wise Group in Glasgow which has a better record than
> the Employment Service at getting the long-term jobless back into real
> careers.
>
> The schemes will be aimed at people aged 25 and over, who have been
> out of work for more than a year; a group whom the Government's critics
> say have been neglected because policies have focused on the young
> unemployed. Participants on the schemes will be volunteers who will
> receive their benefit plus a GBP 15 a week top-up. Some 5,000 people
> will be covered in the five zones.
>
> Like the New Deal, programmes will be run by a combination of
> Government, local businesses and voluntary organisations. The GBP
> 58m budget is fairly small by New Deal standards, but if the programmes
> are successful the Government will expand the best features nationally.
> The inspiration for pouring in resources to specified parts of the country
> came from Chris Smith when he was opposition spokesman for social
> security. He suggested consolidating all the resources spent on
> unemployment through benefits, training programmes, regional
> assistance budgets and European funds into one budget, and allocating
> grants directly to individually tailored schemes.
>
> Experts are cautiously enthusiastic about the potential of the zones to
> generate new approaches for tackling unemployment. The biggest
> danger, according to John Philpott from the Employment Policy Institute,
> is that the Government could get cold feet when it comes to implementing
> the ideas across the country. "The previous government would launch
> pilots and them let them drop regardless of how successful they were. It
> shouldn't just be about talking up sexy ideas but about seeing them
> through." Local support is the key, says Paul Convery from the
> Unemployment Unit. "It demands high levels of local political leadership.'"
>
> Source: Charlotte Denny (c) Guardian 21/04/98
>
>
>
