Getting Attached: New routes to full employment: Getting Attached: New routes to full employment

Full employment is back on the agenda. But whilst Labour has been successful in reducing the overall level of unemployment, we have not yet achieved jobs for all. Pockets of relatively high, long-term unemployment remain across the country. What is more, programmes such as the New Deal have concentrated on getting the unemployed into jobs. But vulnerable workers also need support in employment, to overcome the stratification and insecurity at the bottom end of the labour market.

Getting Attached – New Routes to Full Employment sets out a policy agenda to achieve this next phase of welfare to work. Based on the idea of ‘attachment’ – helping people stick to employment, not just move into jobs – the report argues for a new strategy that provides ongoing support and training in periods of high employment and, in bad times, maintains individuals’ employability, keeping them in touch with the world of work. Most of all, as the clouds of an economic downturn gather, welfare to work has to become far better aligned with both business support and workforce development. In this way, it can start to become the centrepiece of strategies to create full employment and social justice.

You can buy a printed copy edition of Getting Attached: New Routes to Full Employment for £6.95, plus £1 p+p, by phoning the Fabian Society bookshop on 020 7227 4900, emailing us at bookshop@fabian-society.org.uk or send a cheque payable to “The Fabian Society” to 11 Dartmouth Street, London, SW1H 9BN.