Governments Under Pressure : European Countries Seek Ways to Get Unemployed Into Training Programs

European countries worried by stubbornly high unemployment are looking at ways to take more people off welfare rolls and put them into training programs, even if that might mean a touch of compulsion.

Unions and parliamentarians are putting governments under pressure to provide training for all the jobless.

Senior politicians in many countries believe that it is time for governments, in the words of a leading British conservative, to get tough about “this vast, wasted human resource.”

Last month, Norman Fowler, Britain’s employment secretary, visited the United States, where 35 states have adopted programs in which the unemployed are obliged to work or enter training schemes in order to qualify for benefits.

2.7 Million Jobless

Despite 700,000 vacancies in the economy, Britain’s jobless total for January was around 2.7 million, of which 1.1 million were long-term jobless people, government figures show.

But enforced participation is a political hot potato in Britain, where it is identified with the aims of the radical right. The government is quick to point out that its programs would be voluntary, not compulsory.

Fowler has just unveiled a new Adult Training Program. It aims at replacing all existing programs and providing 12 months of training and work experience for 600,000 people, roughly half the number deemed long-term unemployed.

Fowler told Reuters in an interview that the $2.6-billion plan was “a major commitment by the government to help unemployed people get back to work.

Training for Young

“We should provide training for young people up to a higher age than we have in the past, and we are working toward doing that,” he said.

Opponents call it a low-priced attempt to reduce the politicallycharged unemployment rate, adding that training programs fail to guarantee a good job and only provide a source of cheap labor.

Some opposition politicians in Parliament, including Michael Meacher, an expert on employment issues, say trainees in any program should be paid the union-negotiated rate for work they do. The Adult Training Program will provide them with no more than their unemployment benefit plus an allowance for travel and clothes.

Meacher said the unemployed person’s restricted right to refuse a place in a training program and the government’s crude system of assessing benefit qualifications meant that compulsion, in effect, existed already.

“Training schemes should be a matter of choice,” Meacher said. “If there is a good training scheme, people will queue up for it.”

In many countries, governments are introducing tax breaks and other incentives to encourage companies to participate in comprehensive training programs.

In France, where employers receive a training subsidy if they take on unqualified young workers, recent legislation also grants employers up to a full exemption on Social Security payments for workers ages 16 through 25.

The Netherlands’ Youth Employment Guarantee Scheme for the jobless under 21 years old is designed to guarantee an indefinite series of jobs lasting six months to a year until participants find a lasting job.

The Dutch government has also started paying one-time bonuses to unemployed people who accept jobs paying less than they were previously earning. And the government can deny benefits to people who repeatedly refuse suitable jobs paying as much or more than previous ones they had held.

In Sweden, where unemployment runs at around 2%, the unemployed are given benefits for 300 days on condition that they take a six-month temporary job or training from an employment office. They are paid for work at union-negotiated rates, but benefits are withdrawn if they refuse more than two temporary jobs.

However, it is unlikely that countries suffering the high unemployment of Britain or the Netherlands will be able to afford programs on such a scale.