One hundred years of job seeking in York (From York Press)

One hundred years of job seeking in York

3:45pm Monday 1st February 2010

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Regions minister Rosie Winterton dropped into York to celebrate 100 years of job centres. STEPHEN LEWIS reports IT was 100 years ago this week that Winston Churchill introduced the country’s first Labour Exchanges.

They represented, at the time, a pretty radical idea: that the state should get involved in helping unemployed people find work.

The idea was to bring together in one office people looking for a job, and employers looking for staff.

Mr Churchill, then President of the Board of Trade, was typically….well, Churchillian with his oratory as he launched the first 62 Labour Exchanges.

They were, he thundered, a “piece of social mechanism and are, I believe, absolutely essential to any well-ordered community.”

The Labour Exchange in Parliament Street, York, was one of the very first to open its doors in February, 1910. And 100 years on another minister dropped in to visit its successor, the JobCentre Plus office on Monkgate, to mark the centenary.

That original philosophy of the state intervening to bring together those looking for work with employers looking to recruit held as true today as it did 100 years ago, said Minister for the Regions Rosie Winterton during the course of a lightning visit to York.

Today’s government was investing £5 billion to help those who lose their jobs back to work, she said.

“We won’t give up on anyone who is out of work, especially people in areas that have been hit hardest by the recession from which we are now emerging.”

Whilst the basic philosophy of the Job Centres hasn’t really changed in 100 years, many of the details have, Ms Winterton stressed.

The 1910 Labour Exchanges were all painted an institutional green. There were separate entrances and rooms for men and women, and separate rooms for skilled and unskilled workmen. Children as young as 11 were among those queuing up to find work.

Britain was, of course, a very different place back then. More people were employed in domestic service than any other job, closely followed by farming; the official school-leaving age was 12, and more than one in 20 children aged 10-14 was working; and life expectancy was only 50 (if you were a man: women struggled on to the ripe old age of 54).

So some things, at least, have changed for the better. And so have Job Centres, insisted Ms Winterton. Women staff no longer have to resign when they get married for a start (as they had to until 1945). The offices themselves are open plan and friendlier, she says – and the long queues that once characterised them are mainly a thing of the past, because people make appointments in advance.

Many of the job-seekers waiting for pre-arranged appointments yesterday seemed a little bemused by the ministerial visit. But not 26-year-old Sam Price. She happily chatted to the minister, explaining how she had had to give up working in a shop after she broke her leg and could no longer stand all day.

She got a clerical job instead – but within a month of starting last year was made redundant.

She was looking for another clerical or secretarial job, preferably in the medical field, she said.

“But it’s a struggle,” she admitted. “You can imagine how many people apply for jobs, and they do go for people with experience.”

Nevertheless, she said, the Job Centre had helped. She attends every couple of weeks. “It is really useful. They have given me advice on my CV, like tailoring it specifically to each job I apply for. I’ve had more interviews and more interest as a result.”

Factfile

* The first 62 Labour Exchanges opened their doors in February 1910 – the exchange in York’s Parliament Street among them.

About 20,000 people applied to work in the exchanges. They came from all walks of life: trade unionists, works managers, ex-soldiers and “ladies with a passion for service.”

* Each office had a woman clerk to deal with female customers – and individual offices tried to tailor their services to meet local needs. In Leeds, for example, where there was a large Jewish community, the Labour Exchange engaged a Yiddish-speaking clerk who was “familiar with the conditions obtaining among his co-religionists.”

* The first benefit payments were made by Labour Exchanges in January 1913 after the passing of the 1911 National Insurance Act.

* The Jobcentre network opened across the UK in 1973, and in 2002 officers were rebranded Jobcentre Plus. There are now more than 750 offices across the UK, with 400,000 vacancies listed each week on the JobCentre Plus website.

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