Rotterdam believes in total employment

"Zero unemployment in Rotterdam in four years’ time": this is how De Volkskrant trumpets the project announced by the city’s deputy burgomaster Dominic Schrijer of the Dutch Labour Party. The paper affirms that all the jobless in Rotterdam - long been plagued by high unemployment (close to 10% at the end of 2009) - should be working by 2014. Whether at regular jobs, or more probably in work placement programmes for students or volunteer work, anyone refusing will automatically lose their unemployment benefit. The project is to be launched first in the Tarwewijk and Overschie districts, where jobless rates are currently at 5% and 8% respectively, and which Schrijer aims to turn into the first “unemployment-free” area in the country. To this end he has termed the experience of some 600-odd asylum-seekers who have found work since the autumn of 2008 an inspiration. With little prior training and professional experience and a poor command of Dutch, they have landed low-skilled and low paid jobs in supermarkets, health care and security work. An example for the rest of the population to follow...