ASSESSING THE PERFORMANCE OF ASSISTED LABOUR MOBILITY POLICY IN BRITAIN
| Date | 01 February 1977 |
| Published date | 01 February 1977 |
| Author | P. B. Beaumont |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1977.tb00407.x |
Scottish Journal
of
Political
Economy, Vol.
24,
No.
1,
February
1977
ASSESSING THE PERFORMANCE OF
ASSISTED LABOUR MOBILITY POLICY
IN BRITAIN
P.
B. BEAUMONT*
INTRODUCTION
An assessment of the impact
of
any manpower policy upon the labour market
status of the policy users must consider the participant groups’ likely labour
market position in the absence of the policy. The importance of this con-
sideration in assessing the social utility
of
manpower policy is readily apparent
from
Daniel’s (1970, p.
50)
rather pessimistic suggestion that:
One
of
the tragedies of strategies for displaced workers is that the positive
ones tend to cater
for
those that least need them. There is a tendency for
the people who take advantage of placement programmes, the people
considered most suitable for retraining and the people most predisposed to
geographical transfer to be just those least in need
of
them, because they
could most easily get alternative jobs themselves, anyway.
There is no manpower policy for which this is a more important criteria of
performance, and by implication an unfavourable finding more damaging,
than assisted labour mobility policy. This is because the underlying rationale
of such
a
policy is to facilitate the movement of persons who could
or
would
not otherwise have moved. The social benefits from this type
of
policy are
strictly limited if it merely subsidises the migration
of
workers who would
have moved in the absence
of
the policy.
Thus in assessing the performance
of
assisted labour mobility policy the
most essential requirement is a differentiation of the policy users according
to whether they would have moved
or
not in the absence of the scheme.
This
has
been the central question for investigation in most American studies
of worker relocation policy. In his North Carolina mobility study Fairchild
(1969,
p.
464-5),
for example, stressed that in order to ascertain the net
effect
of
the project on the rate and pattern
of
migration one had to provide
answers to the following questions:
Did the movers represent an increase in the mobility
of
the rural
un-
employed,
or
was the financial assistance merely provided to persons who
would have moved anyway? If they would have moved anyway, was the
migration stream redirected away from traditional destinations
?
The likelihood that policies
of
assisted labour mobility will aid the move-
ment of a disproportionate number
of
workers who were both intending and
*
I am extremely grateful
to
Steve Engleman, Michael Farbman, Professor L.
C.
Hunter,
Alan McGregor and Charles Mulvey for helpful discussion
on
a number of the points
raised in this paper. All responsibility
for
the iinal content and interpretation, however,
is
mine alone.
55
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