Sir: I have some sympathy for the indignation which ,Skinflint
appears ('City Diary', 9 January) to share with many employers at the cost of finding and employing secretaries. However, his answer to the problem—'no less than a ban on private job placement activity for profit'—is at best facile and at Worst naive.
A recent Financial Times article put the turnover for City and West End typists at over 100 per cent a year, and reported that the number of such vacancies registered in London exceeded the number of applicants by four to one. It is tempting, of course, to vilify the secretarial bureaux, but they can- not be held responsible for the scarcity which creates the excessive staff turnover and high wages of which employers complain—not even if Skinflint were able to demonstrate the prevalence of 'head-hunting' more convincingly than he does.
Meanwhile, most secretaries will continue to sell their services to the highest bidder—whether the bid be in terms of money. prestige, glamour, or in surroundings in Which interesting personal rela- tionships are likely to relieve the boredom of their drudgery. Film companies and fashion directors do require secretaries and may, in- deed, get them more easily and keep them longer than employers in less 'glamorous' fields. Skinflint may feel envious at the Pulling power of such industries, but he is wrong in assuming that such jobs, when advertised by agencies, do not exist. It is more than any secretarial bureau's licence is worth to be caught more than once by their local authority advertising a fake job.
A case can, of course, be made out for a state takeover of the role played by secretarial bureaux, just as much as for the nationalisation of any other industry. It is perhaps surprising that it should be in the SPECTATOR that we should see this case advocated. I- might add that the number of British secretarial bureaux operating in those Con- tinental countries where there is such a ban is increasing. Their success in providing Continental firms with secretaries on long-term temporary assignment, or with
permanent employees in return for a consultancy fee, has a healthy effect on the invisible sector of our balance of payments and suggests that state enterprise does not succeed in meeting demand over the Channel any more than it would here. Furthermore, about half the total placements which my own firm makes are with companies on the Continent.
Pierrette V. Knapp Multilingual Services, 22 Charing Cross Road, London wc2 Skinflint replies: A case may be made out for state secretarial bureaux, though there is no need to trouble with takeovers—labour ex- changes have been readily available since 1909.
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