Chapter 28: Employment guarantees

VoTa does not require the State to operate a single employment guarantee, but its Constitution permits a public service to operate very much like a job-guarantee programme. A service may make a standing offer of paid work to everyone who meets published, task-relevant conditions. Its contract can allow its provision and tax budget to scale with the number of people who accept that offer.

Participation remains voluntary on every side. Nobody is compelled to work for the service, private employers remain free to offer more attractive employment, and taxpayers decide whether to allocate tax to the service. More than one employment-guarantee service may operate at the same time, offering different work, terms, methods, and outcomes. No political authority needs to select one programme for the entire country.

Beyond fixed government employment budgets

Conventional government budgets commonly purchase a fixed quantity of provision. A department may be authorised to employ a fixed number of greenkeepers, for example. If more useful maintenance is needed and willing workers are available, the department cannot employ them without obtaining another budget allocation. If less work is needed, the fixed establishment may remain in place until a later political budget process changes it.

An employment-guarantee service instead establishes in advance the terms upon which provision can expand. Rather than ordering a fixed number of workers, its contract defines qualifying work, employment conditions, the cost of each additional position, the resulting output, and any margin earned by the operator. The number employed can then respond to the number of willing workers and the amount of useful work available:

\[ \text{scaled funding} = \text{employment costs} + \text{other costs of useful production} + \text{operator margin}. \]

This is a provision scale rather than merely a usage scale. A usage scale responds to the number of journeys, treatments, visits, or other units consumed by patrons. An employment-guarantee scale may respond to the number of people accepting work and the useful production which the service can organise. The benefit may be collective and need not correspond to a separate customer transaction. Environmental restoration, maintenance of public spaces, care, emergency preparation, and community support can all expand without pretending that each benefit has an individual purchaser.

Countercyclical employment

The service can act as an employment buffer. During an economic downturn, private employers require fewer workers and more people accept the service's standing offer. Its workforce, provision, and funding consequently expand. When private demand recovers, private employers can attract workers by offering preferable pay, conditions, or careers. Fewer people then remain in the employment-guarantee service and its funding requirement contracts.

The adjustment occurs without politicians attempting to predict the correct number of jobs for each period. The contract sets the wage, standards, funding scale, and kinds of work in advance; voluntary choices reveal how many positions are required. This allows employment spending to respond to economic conditions more quickly than a fixed annual order for labour.

Useful work rather than payroll numbers

A larger payroll is not by itself a valuable public service. Paying the operator merely for enrolling workers would encourage it to maximise headcount without regard to what those workers accomplish. The service contract must therefore identify useful work, require suitable supervision and equipment, and provide evidence of the resulting production. Workers may be accepted under a standing offer while their assignments change according to local needs, their abilities, and the useful work presently available.

The operator's compensation should reward the successful organisation of accessible work and valuable outcomes. Known wages and other verifiable employment costs can be passed through without markup. A separate operating margin can pay for organising, training, supervising, and equipping a changing workforce. Payments may also depend upon independently verifiable output and quality. This prevents the employment guarantee from becoming a reward for wasting labour or inflating costs.

The Non-Discrimination Principle continues to apply. Conditions for accepting workers must be relevant to the work and published in advance. A service may accept everyone who meets a minimum standard instead of selecting only the best applicants. Low entry requirements can make the work accessible to people with few alternatives without the service discriminating in favour of or against them.

Comparison with an MMT job guarantee

Modern Monetary Theory advocates commonly propose a standing offer of publicly funded work at a fixed wage. The workforce expands when private employment falls and contracts when private employment rises. A VoTa employment-guarantee service can reproduce this central operating characteristic.

The method of funding is different. An MMT government issues the currency in which it spends and allows the programme's nominal expenditure to vary with the number of people seeking work. A VoTa service cannot create currency, borrow on behalf of taxpayers, or spend tax which has not been allocated to it. Its standing offer is supported through a scalable tax budget and the continued choices of taxpayers.

VoTa therefore separates permission from prescription. The Constitution neither prohibits an employment guarantee nor imposes one upon everyone. It permits taxpayers to support employment-guarantee services, compare their costs and results, and move their allocations when another provider or another approach produces better outcomes.