Up to 500 overseas-trained medical practitioners are also claiming unemployment benefits or are working in other professions because they too had migrated on the false impressions that their qualifications entitled them to work. According to Alison Tocker of the Dominion, most of these doctors found they could not work without sitting a Medical Council exam that most of them failed to pass the first time.

Source - The Dominion 26 March 1996 "Qualification conflict cited in vet shortage".

Question: Shouldn't the NZ Qualifications Authority under its new `framework' be helping overseas-trained vets and doctors get recognition of their prior learning and experience?

Source - The Daily News 26 March 1996 " NP in trial scheme to help long-term jobless.

CTU President Ken Douglas comments: " This is an incredible five-year wage freeze applied by nearly half of all employers, despite a prolonged economic expansion and high levels of profit growth..."

Source - The Dominion 22 March 1996 "CTU blames Contracts Act for shrinking wages, benefits."

Source - Socialist Worker 18 March 1996 "The worth of women's work"

Among the book's proposals is a policy to encourage unmarried mothers to live with their parents or in supervised accommodation "...preferably provided by voluntary associations that will take responsibility for bringing out the best in the mother and baby."

The book has already come under criticism from welfare groups. While welcoming the discussion of social policy that this book will generate, the Council of Social Services' David Robinson says that to be effective, social policy needs to be developed in consultation with all relevant community groups. He says that Dr Green had ignored attempts by the Council to discuss this book while it was being researched. Voluntary Welfare Organisation executive director Ross Grantham says that community groups were "sick of being told they ought to pick up the pieces of growing social distress, while government policies made it harder for them and their clients to survive..."

Source - The Dominion 26 March 1996 "Volunteers and homeless agree welfare debate needed" and New Zealand Herald 25 March 1996 "Book proposes welfare restructure"

The Business Roundtable has also released a paper of its own called Moving into the Fast Lane, which is essentially its own "vision statement" for NZ. Its prescription includes amendments to the Employment Contracts Act to remove personal grievance "anomalies", reform of holidays legislation, a greater focus on education and training, and a radical downsizing of the welfare state.

It also says that superannuitants are paid too much and should have to wait until they are 70 to qualify; domestic purposes beneficiaries should get their money from the non-custodial parent where possible and lose the benefit when their children pass aged 12; the unemployment, sickness and invalid benefits should be replaced with insurance or an income-contingent repayable loan scheme; in the meantime. the unemployed should have their dole axed after six months and be enrolled into training programmes; sickness and invalids beneficiaries need better vetting, and the minimum wage should be abolished so many of the unemployed can price themselves into jobs.

Source - The Independent 22 March 1996 "Mini State Maxi Society. The Roundtable moves into the fast lane."

The figures: At the end of January 1996, nearly 103,000 NZers were either on the invalid and sickness benefits, or on ACC. There are 41,000 on invalid benefit (paid to those permanently out of the workforce), 33,000 on the sickness benefit (paid to those with temporary incapacitation), and 29,000 on ACC (paid 80% of their income as an earnings-related compensation for the loss of ability to work as the result of an accident).

Booker says there is a financial incentive for anyone out of work to go on sickness and invalid benefits rather than the dole. For example, a 25-yr old single person on the invalids benefit receives $173 a week, compared to $144 on the sickness benefit and $138 on the dole. He believes that `malingerers' have a more comfortable existence on the sickness and invalids benefits because "...they will not be called upon to do training or apply for a job."

Source - The Independent 15 March 1996 "Malingering The Kiwi malaise"

Seasonal Work in New Zealand by G and H Andrews, available from Andrews Publishing P.O.Box 8052, New Plymouth.

This year, Australia will issue a maximum of 38,000 one-year working holiday visas. These visas include a clause banning people from working for longer than three months in any one place as a way to safe-guard native Australians long-term job prospects. A recent Australian survey of working holidaymakers showed that the backpackers on these visas were staying longer and spending as much as $15,000 per person on their stay in Australia. In comparison, NZ Tourism Board figures show that our backpackers were staying for an average of 46 days, and spending only $2,700 each.

Campbell Shepherd of the Backpackers Council dismisses suggestions that changing NZ visa regulations would take jobs away from NZers. Shepherd told Sunday Star-Times: " They want the jobs that Kiwis don't. You ask the fruit-growers... The feedback I get from travellers is if they could work here rather than Australia, they would..."

Source - Sunday Star-Times 11 February 1996 " Backpacker `windfall' lost to NZ."

The GM company pleads that it is no longer competitive, and it is trying to save on labour costs compared to other US manufacturers who use much more outsourcing. Figures show GM makes only $413 profit on every vehicle it sells, compared to Chrysler making $2,200 per vehicle.

Seventy percent of a GM motor vehicle is made by GM workers making $40/hr (including benefits). Only thirty percent is sent to outside contractors. A Chrysler vehicle shows almost the reverse picture with its $40/hr workers only making thirty percent of the vehicle, while the remaining seventy percent of the vehicle is sent out to outside contractors making half as much wages, or less.

Source - ABC News 12 March 1996 lead story

Flack: " How many times have you worked part-time odd jobs at a low wage? Maybe you were an assistant goat-herder in Greece, a limestone quarry clean-up boy in Egypt, a pot-washer in medieval Europe, or a stall mucker in the wild West. If you're like most folks, you won't care to go through that again. Now you can start out in your next life in a comfortable position..."

Rebirth Referral Service phone 0800-555-679. Jobsletter subscribers are advised to check the date of this issue before making direct contact.

Source - based on a clipping sent to the Jobs Letter by Michael Fleck