1、 - 1 - 外文翻译 原文 1 Training Policy and Employment Generation For many years, in the post-war UK economy, training policy and employment policy were considered to be loosely related aspects of government economic policy as a whole, but each had its own separately identifiable characteristics and object
2、ives. Hence, in the 1960s and 1970s, employment policy consisted mainly of Keynesian demand-side measures, chiefly via government deficit financing buttressed by special support measures such as employment subsidies and regional assistance. Even the emergence of youth and long-term unemployment in t
3、he 1970s did not deflect government from its belief that the underlying causal factor was a lack of effective demand in the economy. In the meantime, training policy had developed in a piecemeal, ad hoc way with a lack of conviction by governments in this period as to the merits of training in helpi
4、ng to tackle the UKs micro-and macro- economic objectives. Only in the 1980s has government recognised the possible linkages between having a highly trained skilled workforce and achieving a high level of employment. Hence the New Classical revolution in macro-economics, with its focus on supply-sid
5、e rather than demand-side economic policy, has led to a fundamental change of attitude in policy circles towards training and employment. These are now seen as not only being significantly linked； but that a sound expanding training policy is a necessary precondition for achieving higher employment,
6、 especially among youths and the long-term unemployed. Hence the diagnosis of the UKs unemployment problem has changed from a macro- economic base to a micro-economic base, where the rigidities in the labour market are seen as the main cause and where training schemes are seen to be needed alongside
7、 policies to promote small firms and entrepreneurship, and with reform of the tax-benefit system and trade union legislation acting as a disincentive for unemployed people to stay unemployed. Industrial training policy in the UK dates back to the 1960s with the 1962 White Paper, Industrial Training:
8、 Government Proposals, which signalled a new era of government intervention in training, with Industrial Training Boards (ITBs) established after the 1964 Industrial Training Act. The 1973 Employment and Training Act significantly linked employment with training. It set up the - 2 - Manpower Service
9、s Commission and led to a greater professionalism in the assessment of training needs and the management and execution of training. By this time, however, labour market conditions were changing from a situation of excess demand to one of excess supply of labour and the second half of the 1970s saw s
10、pecial training measures introduced as a prelude to a much more intense approach in the 1980s. Hence, special training measures (1975-1979), Unified Vocational Preparation (from 1976), Training for Skills: A Programme for Action (1979/80) and the Youth Opportunities Programme (1978-1983) all precede
11、d major changes in the early 1980s. The 1981 Employment and Training Act led to the closure of many ITBs, while the 1981 WhitePaper,ANew Training Initiative An Agenda for Action, introduced a new emphasis on broad-based training with widespread retraining for adults and greater dissemination of stan
12、dards of training. In 1983, the Youth Training Scheme replaced the YOP and a 1984 White Paper, Training for Jobs, put emphasis on the need for vocational training. Further White Papers followed, all of which served to emphasise the new commitment by government to a more monetarist supply-side approa
13、ch to tackling the unemployment problem. The 1985 White Paper, Employment: The Challenge for the Nation, introduced by Tom King, had the theme of adapting to change and described the strengths and weaknesses of the UK labour market. A 1987 package of measures by Lord Young, Re-skilling Britain, exte
14、nded the YTS, the Job Training Scheme, Restart and the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. In 1988 came three key White Papers, one of which, DTI the Department For Enterprise, encouraged self-employment and enterprise in assisted areas, while the other two introduced major measures for training and employ
15、ment in the 1990s. Hence the White Paper, Training for Employment, introduced by Norman Fowler, launched the Employment Training scheme from September 1988 and brought together various existing schemes such as JTS, Restart and the Community Programme. The title of this White Paper put clearly into p
16、erspective how the Government viewed the relationship between training and employment. The third key White Paper of 1988 was Employment for the 1990s with Fowler stressing the need for a training and enterprise framework to tackle the lack of skills which were now seen as the main barrier to employm
17、ent growth. It set out key training objectives with a major role for Training and Enterprise Councils in analysing local labour markets. These employer-led bodies now have the responsibility for training programmes, local labour-market research, and liaising with local enterprise bodies. - 3 - Train
18、ing policy and employment policy in the UK have increasingly become interlinked in recent years, with current government policy abandoning traditional Keynesian demand-side employment policy for a monetarist supply-side approach, in which training plays a key causal role in generating higher levels
19、of employment. Whether this new theoretical approach to tackling unemployment in a New Classical way is correct is very much open to dispute from modern-day Keynesian economists. Hence Layard and Nickell, two prominent eclectic Keynesian economists, state categorically that more demand would without
20、 doubt generate more jobs. Even if the Governments diagnosis of the problem is correct, there still remain two key areas for dispute regarding the role of training in employment generation. The first regards the causal relationship between training and employment. Is it training which leads to emplo
21、yment or could it be the other way round? In which case, as Ryan believes, training policy should be secondary to employment policy. The second area concerns the quality and delivery of training in the UK. There is no doubt, there is much improvement to be made in the quality of UK training vis vis
22、our main competitors, and perhaps the problems start in our education system where significantly fewer pupils stay on after the age of 16 at school. Employers are worried that the Government is putting the onus on them for the funding of training instead of resourcing it from public funds.It will be a great pity if the new opportunities for employers and our future labourforce, which this new training drive offers, are not capitalised on in the 1990s. . Author: David Hodgson Nationality: UK Originate from: International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 12 No. 4, 1991, pp. 28-31
