APPENDIX 1
Memorandum from Donald Houston, University
of Glasgow (JG 2)
INTRODUCTION
1. I have recently completed research looking
at geographical barriers to employment which addresses some of
the questions this inquiry seeks to answer. This research sought
to investigate people's responses to localised job shortages (or
"gaps"), in particular the roles of information about
distant job vacancies, the ability to commute to jobs, and the
ability to move house closer to work. The work applies this at
the regional scale, as research from the US has suggested that
inner city residents are disadvantaged in the labour market in
part because of the decentralisation of lower skilled work from
central city areas to suburban locations. In the UK, "suburban
locations" corresponds to industrial estates poorly served
by public transport. My research was carried out in the Glasgow
conurbation.
2. The next section of this submission briefly
outlines the methodology of my research and summarises the findings.
I then present some thoughts on the policy implications.
METHODOLOGY AND
RESULTS
3. The research looked at firms, in a variety
of sectors, which have relocated within the Glasgow conurbation
within the last few years. The project asks what type of person,
and in what numbers, commutes to the new site, moves house to
be closer to work, or leaves their job. Firms' geographical catchments
for recruitment at their new sites were mapped. Questionnaires
and follow-up interviews were carried out with those who left
their job because of the relocation, those who stayed, and those
recruited at the new site. Managers were interviewed about the
reasons for relocation and their recruitment criteria. The results
can be summarised as follows:
Reasons for Relocation
4. Expansion out of existing premises is
the overwhelming push factor.
5. Room for further expansion, flexibility
of premises design, motorway access, and, for some industries,
proximity to a low skilled workforce were the main factors attracting
firms to their destinations.
Implications of Urban Industrial Geographical
Restructuring for Accessibility to jobs
6. Relocations are dominated by decentralising
moves, with travel time from Glasgow city centre almost doubling
for both car and public transport.
7. Firms are generally moving to locations
that are overall slightly less accessible by both car and public
transport.
Spatial Barriers—information, travel and
migration
8. Public transport provision to suburban
industrial estates is generally inadequate. Car ownership is vital
in accessing manual and lower skilled employment which is decentralising
to suburban industrial estates and smaller towns.
9. Information availability and job search
is spatially widespread for professionals and managerial/technical
workers.
10. Other groups, however, find it more
difficult to find out about work, particularly more distant work,
due to a reliance on the Job Centre and word of mouth. Recruiters
compound this with mild preferences for locals and staff referrals
and recommendations. Consequently, information does not penetrate
very far into most people's potential commuting catchments. However,
job search areas are heavily influenced by the anticipated cost
and ease of commuting.
11. Migration to be closer to work within
regions is in the long term potentially significant but mostly
confined to owner occupiers and car drivers, suggesting that migration
is a barrier to others. Car ownership may be the key factor in
employment led migration decisions rather than housing tenure.
Car drivers are more likely to make commute shortening moves because
it is still convenient to visit family and friends in the evenings
and weekends.
Loss of Staff
12. Firms on average lost 5-12 per cent
of their workforce as a result of the relocations.
13. Those who leave because of the journey
to work are concentrated on those who travel by public transport,
have the longest commutes, are members of "lower" occupational
groups, women, those under 20 years of age or over 50, and secondary
earners. However, there are interactions and overlaps between
these factors in determining propensity to leave because of the
journey to work.
14. Overall, the most important factors
considered in leaving a job, in approximate descending order,
are poor pay and conditions, alternatives available, the journey
to work and the degree of dependency on pay.
Commute Propensity
15. Income is the primary driver of propensity
to commute, ie higher earners travel further to work.
16. If considering geometric space rather
than the "friction" of travel, mode of transport is
also very important, ie a long time can be spent travelling not
very far by public transport when travelling to industrial estates.
17. Gender has a simple association with
commuting (women commuting less). Domestic responsibilities are
much less important than women's lower pay and dependence on public
transport in producing this association.
Transportation and Travel Impacts of the Relocations
18. General shift towards car travel.
19. Bus patronage to the new sites is roughly
half that to old sites, and rail patronage is only a fifth. This
has profound implications for the long term commercial viability
of public transport serving the journey to work.
20. Lift sharing with family and friends
works reasonably well, but lift sharing with colleagues often
causes logistical problems.
Recruitment
21. Generally, firms employing more than
20-30 employees were happy to recruit the unemployed as these
firms are able to provide off and on the job training. However,
smaller firms generally had reservation about taking unemployed
people on and they need people immediately "up to speed".
However, in the case of higher tech industries or others which
have overall labour shortages, experienced staff may be able to
pick and choose who they work for. In this scenario, small firms
may not be able to offer sufficient security and staff development
to attract experienced staff, so be forced to recruit less experienced
or unemployed people.
22. Most of the manufacturing firms reported
difficulty recruiting middle level technicians and sometimes engineers
with practical experience.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
23. Job search, recruitment and commuting
are geographically limited for the lowest paid and lowest skilled
members of the workforce, meaning they have few job opportunities
open to them. These are precisely the groups most prone to unemployment
because of economic restructuring and their inability to "bump-down"
to lower skilled work. Thus, manual and lower skilled job loss
from cities, including its decentralisation to smaller towns and
suburban areas, must have had a considerable impact on the employment
prospects of lower skilled inner city residents. This is the root
of the problem, not poor employability. One obvious solution is
to promote the recentralisation of manual and lower skilled employment
in urban areas. The main argument against this is that it is not
economically efficient, therefore may reduce overall total employment.
24. However, some public subsidy for the
decontamination and redevelopment of vacant land and property
for commercial and industrial use may have economic and social
benefits. By reducing risk, legal obstacles and planning delay,
it may reduce the need for infrastructure construction to serve
new greenfield sites (housing, roads, sewerage, public utilities
etc). This then may release public and private funds for investment
in more productive areas such as R&D and firm expansion without
the need for relocation. Some brownfield sites can be brought
into use with little or no public subsidy—sometimes the
state simply needs to act as broker when land ownership is fragmented,
or needs to simplify planning regulations so that private sector
development can go ahead as quickly and smoothly as is often the
case on greenfield sites and in the New Towns.
25. Firms being brought into closer proximity
to surplus labour in the larger cities may also help combat recruitment
problems sometimes experienced in less densely populated areas.
This could have an, albeit marginal, positive effect on overall
total employment.
26. In addition to altering the location
of employment, two broad options remain. Firstly, the unemployed
could be moved closer to suitable jobs; or secondly, commuting
to jobs could be made easier. These three solutions, note, are
not mutually exclusive. Given current social housing eligibility
and transfer rules within and between landlords/councils, moving
the unemployed closer to work is not feasible, although there
is scope for improvement here. In addition to housing tenure constraints
on residential mobility, this research has shown that those without
a car are, quite rationally, not prepared to move several miles
to be closer to a low paying dead-end job because without a car
it is difficult to visit family and friends in their "home"
neighbourhood.
27. The low density of new out-of-town commercial
and residential development is difficult to serve by public transport.
The promotion of low income car-ownership is an alternative. Reconciliation
needs to be made between this, however, and transport policy which
seeks to reduce car use. This may be possible by reducing the
cost of owning, taxing and insuring a car while increasing the
cost of using a car through fuel duty and road/congestion/parking
charging.
28. Finally, employment policy may be able
to tackle the issue of job vacancy information by providing aid
with job search, although this does already happen to an extent
in the Gateway element of the New Deal and in the Job Club scheme.
From the recruitment point of view, legislation could be passed
to oblige employers to advertise all job vacancies to the Employment
Service.
29. In short, the barriers to employment
faced by different groups of people in different parts of the
country, and even in different areas within cities or regions,
are different. Those seeking low paid work, women, the young,
older members of the workforce, those without access to a car,
and those without access to childcare are generally geographically
restricted in where they can take work. The long term unemployed
in regions with the worst historical job loss may well be perfectly
employable but lack job openings. This is likely to be most true
in inner London, the industrial conurbations, the coalfields and
remote rural areas. The New Deal, which seeks by and large to
make the individual more employable, in such parts of the country
seems less appropriate than in low unemployment regions.
Donald Houston
Department of Urban Studies
University of Glasgow
September 1999
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