| Description | An Unemployment Committee was set up as a result of the 1933 Midland Adult School Union Spring Conference on unemployment (see MS 703/2/10). Its remit was to exammine the causes, extent and effects of unemployment, propose ways of helping and providing paid work to the unemployed, and to take suitable action and report to the Union Council.
At each meeting, a speaker was invited to talk about an issue relating to unemployment and this was followed by discussion. Topics included the usefulness of occupational centres; the extent to which goods produced at these centres were priced fairly and whether they encouraged exploitation of the unemployed; the role occupational centres could play in creating opportunities for people to spend their increased leisure time in a beneficial way; the proposed introduction by the government of means testing for state welfare and what income should be included in the means testing; the proposed raising of the school age and the impact of this on unemployment levels; poverty; free social services; the Douglas Social Credit Scheme; extending the pension scheme to those over the age of 60; the proposal that the burden of unemployment should be shared by the working population and so on. |