OK, slackers. Back to work. Voluntary work, that is. News that the Government was planning to lay off up to 30 superfluous garbage truck drivers and 61 rubbish collectors was loudly applauded by the taxpayer. He could be heard shouting from the rooftops immediately afterwards, saying, 'I say, what's that mess on my front step?' Not to worry, though. The Government had the problem licked. The newly unemployed would be put to work collecting rubbish in return for their social security money. Of course, they would have a choice. They could refuse to work. But they could not then expect to feed their families, now could they? Meanwhile, the social security payment would be reduced by 20 per cent forthwith, just to show it was not a charity payment and to bring home the message to the work-shy that they could not get away with doing the same job for which they had just been deemed surplus to requirements and expect to get the same money - or perhaps more - for doing it.
Now that is the kind of lateral thinking that governments should do more of. After all, the private sector has already discovered the benefits of getting workers to accept pay cuts and then laying them off at lower rates of statutory redundancy pay. Since the administration, with its powerful staff unions, finds it much harder to cut pay directly, it has to find other ways of achieving the same ends.
But we would not want you to think we were being excessively cynical here. So let us put the rubbish collection issue into perspective. Of course we do not honestly believe 'workfare' collectors will be doing exactly the same job they were doing as government dustmen. There will be subtle differences.
Firstly, there is the matter of demarcation of territory.
Government waste disposal operatives work specific routes, collecting the garbage from designated waste transfer stations.
But community draftees, hereinafter to be known as volunteers, will be subject to the more flexible private sector working practices of such experienced waste management companies as Friends of the Earth. With their background in environmental lobbying, they will naturally concentrate on beaches, picnic sites, hillsides and drainage ditches. Vital work indeed. And, since the collection will be performed by hand, instead of by polluting diesel trucks, it will soon displace the inefficient and environmentally unsound system of waste-transfer depots altogether, allowing the Government to abolish its rubbish services once and for all.