Debating the Green Wage Subsidy

Regular readers of this blog (peace be upon them) will be well aware of the Green Wage Subsidy. There is a full exposition here.

GWS picks up two ugly economic problems, marries them, and produces a beautiful, simple, elegant solution.

The problems are
1) unemployment, and
2) massive amount of work in the green sector that needs to be done and is not getting done.

The solution : accredited Green enterprises can take on new employees, who can bring their current benefits in to work with them. In this way, although they get the going rate for the job, their new employer gets them at a subsidised rate. So the green sector forges ahead, doing good, and the economy picks up to the tune of some £10 billion a year.

Also, it opens the way for the introduction of Citizen's Income - a core Green policy.

You'd think the Green Party would get behind this pretty damn quick, wouldn't you?

You'd think wrong.

The policy was opposed by the GP policy tsar way back in 2009, and it was referred back at the last Conference after a highly unsatisfactory debate.

The person instrumental in getting it referred back, Benali,  has presented his case to me.

It is as follows:


I feel I agree with a viewpoint that businesses should be the funder of their workforce, and that subsidised labour provides complicated & sometimes undesirable conflict between role of state & 
corporates. 

Secondly I worry on whether the apparatus you have outlined is robust enough. 
Will there be enough people to stock these tribunes? 
Will they not be overworked with having to vet every company & every abuse?

I feel the opportunity for abuse of the system is very real? We're effectively creating a huge level of bureaucracy (& not using existing structures like job centres) that are created by political 
appointees. Will these appointees share our vision, is there potential for abuse of system? Because we've seen that with Quangos already.

I feel the best option to encourage growth of Green industry is an effective Carbon Tax that penalised bad behaviour whilst lowering tax on SME enterprises. 



OK, let's take it point by point.

1)  businesses should be the funder of their workforce
Yes, that is free market orthodoxy. Maybe it is an ideal even, to some.
But we do not live in an ideal world, we live in a deeply worrying long term recession. This is no time for ideological purity, whether of right or even of left, (I cannot see that the left would oppose state funding of jobs anyway) it is a time for practical action.

Working Tax Credits are a work subsidy that allows thousands to keep working. Do you oppose them? Would you withdraw them? If not, where is the consistency?

2) subsidised labour provides complicated & sometimes undesirable conflict between role of state & 
corporates. 

Please specify.

And please note that GWS is offered to local small green enterprises, be they cooperatives, public or private SMEs. "Corporates" suggest TNCs, who have no place in green accreditation.

3) Will there be enough people to stock these tribunes? 
Will they not be overworked with having to vet every company & every abuse?

I have estimated the numbers here. The numbers are tiny in proportion to local authority staff. They will probably come form local authority staff, maybe Unison members who have been made redundant by the Coaliton's idiotic policies.

They do not have to vet every company. They have to assess companies that apply to them.

This objection is without merit.

4) the opportunity for abuse of the system is very real?

You have put a question to which the answer is no.

There are three generalist dismissive reasons that bureaucrats give when they do not want to do something.
First, It's Been Done Before
Second, It Hasn't Been Done Before.
Third, It Will Get Vandalised.

You are putting the Third Objection.

5) We're effectively creating a huge level of bureaucracy (& not using existing structures like job centres) that are created by political appointees. 

No we are not. We are creating small local tribunals. It is not a huge level of bureaucracy. We are creating a few jobs in local authorities, which is good anyway. We will be taking pressure off Job Centres. You might as well object that any recovery from recession would undermine the Job Centres. Should we promote unemployment to keep Job Centres buzzing? The tribunals can be sited in Job Centres if you wish.

6) Will these appointees share our vision, is there potential for abuse of system? Because we've seen that with Quangos already.

Sorry, I don't get it. Are we going to insist that the taker of every job provided through green policies has to sign up to our "vision"?

Of course there is potential for abuse of the system. Every politico-economic system gets abused.
Quangoes can abuse. They can also do a great deal of good work. Eric Pickles hates quangoes, and has destroyed several perfectly good ones. Using "perfectly good" in the Eeyoreian sense, since nothing is perfectly good in this life.

Overall, cannot find any substantive objection to the GWS here at all. Sorry if I sound brusque, but I care very deeply about the suffering that unemployment causes, not to mention the need to heal planet and society.

This is not some abstract game. Unemployment is an ugly, soul destroying condition, and the green sector of the economy desperately needs a boost. GWS is a simple, practical and elegant solution to this. It grieves me that the Green Party has not been campaigning for this over the past four years as a solution not just to the economic crisis but also to the ecological crisis.