Sick and absentee
Sir: Last year sick claims fell by 17 per cent. I wonder if we are I fully aware of the significance of the fact that this matches the one per cent unemployment rise last.
year about which political barometers rightly rose to fever, pitch. Although the two are closely intertwined and tend mutually to mask one another the dole which stood until last year at two per cent has always greatly interested economists and politicians to the exclusion of the much higher sick incidence of five per cent. Professor and Sylvia Jewkes in their pamphlet 'Value for Money in Medicine' noted the magical seven per cent absenteeism which in Britain consisted of five per cent sick and two per cent unemployment whereas in America the figures were reversed. Last year there was a shift of one per cent making sickness four per cent and the dole three per cent.
The fall in sick claims being. 'unexpected ' is perhaps marginally explained by absentee flu or the first three sick days being unrewarded, but to those at the grass roots it must overwhelmingly be ascribed to workers who for-, merly would have played ', being unwilling to risk redundancy in a, climate of growing technological unemployment and job shortage. What is a hopeful sign is that des pite technology society seems to be adjusting itself so that absenteeism remains at seven per cent. If through a process of work-sharing (London dockers now work a thirty-one hour week), retraining, and social and medical technological advance absenteeism can be kept static despite If million jobs being taken out of industry by technology, this surely gives hope for the future, when as Mr Maudling claims, we must embrace technology to bring its wealth to society's aid. G. P. Walsh Norwood, 26 Gorse Road, Blackburn
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