Report to the People
1st October 2007
Just the Job
The
decline of our heavy industry took the work out of working class communities.
A generation of men, with skills no-one needed, were thrown onto the
scrapheap and never brought home a wage packet again.
We
went from a community in which we knew nothing but work, to one in which, not
only have some never had a job, but neither have their parents.
It’s
small wonder that, to those who have grown up without the culture of work and
the daily alarm call, joining the workforce can seem a remote and daunting
prospect.
But
there is work for them. There are
just over 10,000 workless people on benefits in Inverclyde.
And, every year, the local job centre is notified of around 5,000
vacancies.
Now,
of course not all 5,000 vacancies could be filled by these 10,000 potential
employees, but I agree with those running an initiative I launched on Friday
morning that more should be.
The
initiative, known as Workforce Plus, aims to give the unemployed the help they
need to get and keep a job. It
brings together agencies such as the job centre, Scottish Enterprise
Renfrewshire, the NHS and the college and will also seek to support employers
who want to take on local, if more challenging, workers.
There
is no doubt that long-term unemployment in parts of our community is a tough nut
to crack, but joblessness should no longer be a life sentence and I congratulate
Workforce Plus for its ambition in taking up the challenge.
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