APPENDIX 4
Memorandum from Forum of Private Business
(JG 8)
This submission is on behalf of the Forum of
Private Business, Knutsford, Cheshire.
1. The Forum is a membership organisation
with some 28,000 members. These are small employers with generally
less than 20 employees. The membership is spread across the whole
of the UK and covers all sectors of manufacturing and service
supply.
2. Members are little concerned with statistics
provided by the LFS. They are concerned with the availability
and literacy, numeracy and level of IT literacy of potential employees.
3. If employees are not available to be
recruited this gives considerable difficulties for what is a major
employer of labour in the UK. It constrains their growth and has
an adverse effect on their ability to provide services and semi
manufactured and manufactured goods for export or as exported
in first tier and other prime exporters. This business is then
taken up by imports from outside the UK or outside their region/area.
4. With labour shortages, structural or
otherwise, any employer prepared to train to offset the lack of
educational attainment cannot find people with even limited potential.
5. In general, potential employees, maybe
up to age 25 are not job ready. They do not have the discipline
of getting up and getting to work, neither do they have the basic
literacy and numeracy necessary to graft effective job related
training on to.
6. There is evidence of problems at the
other end of the educational scale. This group, graduates, are
in general mobile and for the top level of achievers from "acceptable"
Universities generally well catered for. For those at below 1st
class degree in other than traditional universities there is seemingly
little or no effective career advice, signposting or vacancy matching.
7. There are sometimes, in my personal experience,
tutors who strike at the confidence of lower level graduates at
some Universities or Colleges of Higher Education entering the
job market. They inform them that there are no jobs available
in their chosen area of interest. They do not give effective advice
or counselling. This is unfair to the general public, the graduates
and employers who may benefit from a scheme that effectively matches
graduates with employers. Some matching is done by some Training
and Enterprise Councils but graduates are not generally aware
of their facilities.
8. Mobility of labour is not very high in
the younger and single categories of male and female workforce.
There used to be assistance and hostel accommodation that enabled
people of all ages to overcome the problems of suitable low cost
accommodation. There were travel warrants to enable individuals
to get to interview and to start the job. Elements of this may
still remain. I am not able to discover and if so, how do those
who need such assistance discover and/or access the facilities.
9. I have not provided this information
on disk as we are not from the mainstream that may reply to your
request and this submission is not long. I hope that it is of
value in your deliberations.
Mr J Brown
Forum of Private Business
October 1999
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