Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced the replacement for the furlough scheme. His plan has met serious backlash from Union leaders and Campaigners for being “too little to late”.
The Job Retention scheme is coming to an end next month and will be replaced by the new Jobs Support Scheme. This scheme will provide subsidies for viable jobs. With this subsidy, employers can pay their staff a third of their usual working hours. The total capped sum will round up to a minimum of 697.93 pounds a month.
The scheme will be made eligible for all small and medium-sized businesses starting in November and will run for six months. Larger businesses will need to prove that the pandemic had an impact on their profit margins to be eligible for this scheme. However, Sunak’s new scheme has not taken the art and creative industries into account.
The government and ministers need to work together with Trade unions and businesses to offer high-quality retraining of staff so that they are prepared for the difficult future ahead of us. They need to focus on industries that get hit badly in winter and come forward to support these families.
The government must not be content with only making these schemes. They need to ensure new jobs are created to fix the economy or else spectre of mass unemployment will destroy our country.