Job Creation Stimulus : Collective Enterprises - Federal sponsored grass roots job creation program.
Posted: Thursday, January 29, 2009
by Highway 101
As US taxpayers have recently witnessed the $350Bn government bailout to the banks has done nothing to stimulate the economy even though it has delayed likely nationalization of major banks. The government's $850Bn economy stimulation plan is at best a very weak trickle down job creation policy. The reason is that government funds are being injected at the wrong place, at the top of the employment pyramid and not at grass roots level. As of the end of January 2009 there were an estimated 6.5 million people unemployed. For the most part the current process for them to find employment is to look for wanted adverts on line, in newspapers and at government employment centers. They are in the main all looking for someone else to create a job for them. What if the government sponsored a grass roots level network which enabled the unemployed to collectively create their own jobs? How? If we cherry pick elements of self help job creation programs which have been around for decades such as cottage industries and kibbutz settlements there are ways in which the government can provide fertile ground on which jobs can be created by the unemployed themselves.
The proposed Collective Enterprise Centers (CEC) equipped with computers, printer, fax machines, internet access, food vending machines and the all important water cooler (for gathering) would be managed by a professional manager probably a retiree from the designated industry. Unemployed workers would register at say the Transport CEC or perhaps the Communications CEC where they would be provided information on new stimulus government contracts. The manager at each CEC would convene round table collective enterprise creation sessions with unemployed participants. The focus of these sessions is to get groups of people to work together to create a collective enterprise of say not more than 50 people who can bid for new government work as temporary corporate entity created for a single government contract. The members of each Collective Enterprise are paid by the government formed CEC wages dependant on the value of the contract. The Collective Enterprise is a vehicle to create new small sized companies under a government umbrella so that once the members of each enterprise have worked together on several government salary paid projects then some or all of the members of the group can then form their own for profit corporation and bid directly for government contracts with the objective of earning profits which can be distributed to the members of each collective.
The Collective Enterprise Centers could well be located in shopping malls where there are now plenty of empty and spacious retail outlets and the extra foot traffic would be welcomed by mall owners.
Vince Waterson is VP of business development at telecommunications company in California. He can be reached on email vwaterson@aol.com Tel: 805-641-2677
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