Treasury pledges cash for worker training

Employers
will be paid to have their staff trained, but businesses will not be forced to
allow workers time off for training, government officials reportedly said
yesterday.

The
Treasury indicated that businesses would receive financial support for workers
to have time off for training although it did not detail compensation,
according to the Financial Times.

The
news will come as a relief to business leaders who were concerned that the
Government might agree to union demands for workers to be given training leave,
even if their employers were reluctant.

Neil
Bentley, head of employee relations at the CBI, told the FT: "We think the
current programme is working very well. The most important thing about it for
employers is that employees are getting job-related skills and qualifications."

Business
leaders have been cautiously positive about the employer training pilot
schemes, set up by the Government in 2002 to help close the country’s hourly
productivity gap of about 20 per cent compared with the US, Germany and France.

The
pilots were aimed at groups that were not usually trained: the low-skilled, the
older worker and the small business employee. Businesses are helped to find the
right training for workers – whether numeracy,
literacy and English language classes or highly technical manufacturing skills
– by government-funded ‘brokers’ who help to guide them through the confusing
maze of training provision.

By Daniel Thomas

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