CTU media release

The CTU has welcomed the strong focus on support for workers affected by the global economic crisis in the latest Employment Outlook (2009) by the OECD. At the launch of the report, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría called upon governments to “act fast and decisively to prevent the recession turning into a long-term unemployment crisis.” and added that “employment is the bottom line of the current crisis. It is essential that governments focus on helping jobseekers in the months to come.”

The Report argues that Governments need to:

• Help young people who have been hardest hit by the crisis, especially those with few or no qualifications. Targeting this group will reduce the risk of a “lost generation” of young people falling into long-term unemployment and losing touch with the job market.
• Reinforce social safety nets to avoid jobless people falling into poverty.
• Increase spending on active labour market policies, such as job search assistance, and training, to help the unemployed back to work.
• Foster skill formation to ensure that workers are well-equipped with the appropriate skills for emerging jobs, including green jobs.

Peter Conway, Secretary of the CTU says that the NZ Government has introduced a number of initiatives such as home insulation, Job Ops, community employment support, and the Jobs Support Scheme but this report shows the importance of scaling up these initiatives and including skills development in the mix of support for workers in the recession.

A major problem at this time is that the numbers on unemployment benefit has gone from just over 17,000 last year to nearly 60,000 and keeps growing.

Matching unemployed people with jobs is a priority but if that is not possible then matching them with opportunities to lift skills and ensuring adequate income support becomes crucial, said Peter Conway.