Job study reignites bus remark row

A jobs study has re-ignited row over Iain Duncan Smith's bus remarks
12 April 2012

A row over a Government minister's remarks that the unemployed should "get on a bus" to find work has flared up when a study found there were almost nine times more jobseekers than jobs in the city at the centre of the controversy.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said last week that Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales was an example of a place where people had become "static" and did not know that if they got on the bus they would be in Cardiff an hour later and could look for work there.

"We need to recognise the jobs often don't come to you. Sometimes you need to go to the jobs," said the minister, who was criticised by union leaders for being "insulting" to the unemployed.

Research by the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) showed there were 15,000 people in Cardiff chasing 1,700 jobs, while in Merthyr there were 1,670 unemployed people and 39 job vacancies, all temporary and part-time.

The number of people out of work in Merthyr and Blaenau Gwent combined was more than the total number of job vacancies for the whole of Wales, said the PCS.

The vast majority of vacancies in Cardiff were temporary and part-time, mainly unskilled labouring, for just one or three weeks' duration, said the union.

The most popular vacancy on the day the union carried out its research last week was a Christmas job in a well-known store working four-hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays for the national minimum wage.

Among the permanent jobs was work in a casino or bars. Neither offered help with journeys home afterwards and the last bus out of Cardiff leaves at 11.06pm, the union pointed out.

"Workers from outside the city might be able to get the bus to work but they would not be able to get home," said a spokesman.

"These figures prove it is not a question of people not being willing to work, there simply are not enough jobs for them to do - and there are unlikely to be any time soon because of the Government's plans to cut public spending, including cutting 15,000 more jobs in the Department for Work and Pensions."

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