The British Employment ministry is undertaking a new initiative. It is handing out alarm clocks to the unemployed to help them get to job interviews on time.
At the same time, the Australian government is organising $250 million finance to enable Patrick’s stevedoring company to sack all 1,400 of its employees.
Which country is doing most to help the reduce the unemployment rate?
It’s not an easy answer. Although the provision of alarm clocks give a much needed shot in the arm to the British clock industry, it also gives workers a great excuse for failing to attend job interviews.
Being public service clocks, the ‘Unemployed Alarms’ will start late, finish early, and not work well in-between.
When was the last time you ever walked into a government department where the workers all arrived on time and didn’t spend hundreds of hours a day reversing the bend on the paper-clips before serving the public?
Unemployed people can expect that their government-issue alarm clocks will enable them to do the same.
Already, British employers are wary.
“Its not so much the job interview that worries me,” said Ms Jane Cunningham, a shopkeeper in Leeds. “It’s that they might use them after they get a job. When I employ someone, I want them to put in a fair days work for a fair day’s pay. These government clocks will just mean flexi-time for all.”
One the other hand, the Australian government, by swelling the ranks of the unemployed by some 1,400 people, is doing very little to help reduce that country’s unemployment problem.
“We may have lost 1,400 over-paid waterside workers,” said Minister for Industrial Relations and Prime Ministerial hopeful Peter Reith, “but we’ve already been able to give meaningful work to gun-toting, black-shirted, jack-booted thugs, who’ve helped lock the gates on the docks. It’s a great leap forward for this country. I long for the days of paramilitary rule.”
The Australian government has not yet announced whether it will give the workers (members of the Maritime Union of Australia) alarm clocks for their job interviews, or just a shafting.
Unemployment: A Time For Action
