Nation Needs A Jobs Plan
Newcastle Herald
Monday December 15, 2008
THE worst thing about recessions is job cuts. Households lose incomes, demand is extracted from the economy, many asset prices slump and the confidence and health of the community diminishes.
Compared with the United States, where 533,000 jobs were shed in November, employment in Australia is still in relatively good shape. But unmistakeable signs point to problems ahead.Job advertisements have fallen sharply across every index and every medium. Business confidence is ominously down. The finance sector alone has shed at least 5000 jobs in recent months and some retailers are flagging major cuts to outlets and employment in 2009.Anecdotally, part-time work is drying up. This fits the usual pattern, with employers trimming casual and part-time hours first, only reducing full-time core workforces as a last resort.Even the official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics are conceding a rise in unemployment, reporting 15,600 jobs lost in November.The resources boom has been declared officially over, with the debt-ridden giant multinational Rio Tinto slating global job cuts of 14,000. It is not yet known how many of these cuts will be in Australia. Financial commentators are speculating that Rio's Hunter coal resources may find their way to the auction block.Australia's most important trading partners are faltering. Japan is in recession, shedding jobs and reducing imports.Perhaps more significantly, China has this week revealed its first drop in exports in seven years, coupled with a cut to imports of nearly 18 per cent. All this suggests the chances of the Federal Government preserving a budget surplus are now vanishingly remote and that a major focus on job creation and preservation will soon be needed.The ACTU has urged the Government to work with employers on training schemes to absorb redundant workers and ensure a supply of skills is available when the economy ultimately revives. Whether or not that type of scheme is practical, such lateral thinking should be welcomed. Some suggest the downturn won't be prolonged. They may be right, but governments can't afford to make that assumption. It's time for some serious emergency planning, with an emphasis on jobs. Police and sickness THE revelation that NSW police retire on medical grounds at 10 times the rate of their Victorian counterparts isn't entirely surprising. Anybody who has had dealings with the NSW Police Force will have noticed the large number of officers on restricted duties, on sick leave or medically retired. The knee-jerk reaction is to blame the sickness and disability scheme, and the disparity between NSW and Victoria supports that conclusion. But the problem must also be considered in the context of the stressful nature of policing in an under-resourced environment where employer and community expectations can be extremely high. The disability scheme may need reforming, but other aspects of the NSW police work environment may need similar reform.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald