Council of Trade Unions media release

31 August 2010

“The untimely dropping of Community Max except in targeted regions and the outlook for construction jobs highlight once again that not enough is being done to support employment”, said Peter Conway, CTU Secretary.

The number on unemployment benefit is rising, the official measure of unemployment is 6.8 per cent, there are 159,000 unemployed and the jobless measure indicates that 255,700 people are out of work. This shows the  recession is not over.

Peter Conway said the Government needs to refocus on jobs.

“Why not expand Community Max which has been a success, increase funding for the skills investment subsidy and straight-to-work programmes, boost Task Force Green, expand tertiary education support, undertake a more significant housing programme and bring forward infrastructure spending where practicable”.

Peter Conway said that while there are limits to what the Government can do, there is a lot more that could be done right now and the unemployed deserve to be a higher priority.

“The intense focus of early 2009 has been lost while unemployment remains a major problem”.