NATIONAL LABOUR MARKET POLICIES

InforMISEP Reports

Reintegration Measures for Former Participants in "Job Pools"

Workers who left a "job pool" in order to take up regular employment, but who then become unemployed after a short time, will soon be able to reenter the "job pool". Difficult-to-place, long-term unemployed can be allocated work from a "job pool" (cf. BIR-NL, vi.1). These pools draw together additional job opportunities in public and para-statal administrations. Such "job pools" are the last card which can be played by labour market policy, as unemployed persons can only be placed by means of the pools when all other chances of obtaining regular employment have been exhausted.

At present, participants in a "job pool" who are allocated a regular job, but then become unemployed again, are usually prohibited from reentering the pool, as unemployment benefit cannot be used a second time to finance work from such a pool: unemployment benefit is the most important source of financing for the pools. New regulations mean that unemployed persons can reenter this measure if they become unemployed again within two months. The final decision on whether to readmit an unemployed person under this provision lies in the hands of the pool itself.

At the end of 1992 around 13,500 people were working in "job pools".

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