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By Frances Berney On October 19 the Minister for Employment, Education and Training, Simon Crean, announced changes to Working Nation — the government's White Paper on employment and growth. He also praised the success of the initiatives which, he said, had already achieved the aim of delivering "employment and opportunity across urban, regional and rural Australia". The White Paper states that the reason many young people did not have jobs was their lack of skills and training. "If you are young, we will see that you are educated and trained. If you do not have the right skills to find work, we will help you acquire them. If you have been a long time out of work, we will offer you employment ... We will do all that we can to help make you ready for a job", it promised. The changes announced privatise more public services by allocating another 28,000 long-term unemployed to private (contracted) case managers, whose only aim is to reap the payment for getting people off the official unemployed list. Many are placed in six-month jobs at below award wages while they are "trained". There is no guarantee of long-term employment at the end of the six months and, since placement in training means these young people are no longer on CES's priority list for case management, their employment prospects become less optimistic. Meanwhile, Community and Public Sector Union members employed in CES offices, who have a genuine commitment to finding permanent work for their clients, are faced with a case management workload of up to 130 clients each. This far exceeds the load in the private firms; one in the ACT, for example, has only 10 clients per case manager. Despite Crean's claim that Working Nation is "a fully resourced commitment", his own department (DEET), which has the major role in implementing the White Paper initiatives, has consistently been refused the necessary staffing resources. The CPSU has been in a dispute with DEET over staffing levels since January. In May the Australian Industrial Relations Commission ruled that DEET should provide an extra 520 jobs to resource the White Paper initiatives. DEET offered 400 jobs, delivered only 120 jobs to the DEET client service delivery network, and then took 180 from them with a round of sackings euphemistically termed "voluntary redundancies". To manage the latest changes, CES offices in DEET have now been offered another 200 full-time jobs. When asked by an industrial organiser from the ACT Branch of the CPSU whether these jobs would be fully funded (rather than borrowed from other areas of DEET like previous staffing offers), Crean replied defensively that the funding would come from the new program's efficiencies. Crean has also provided DEET with 50 short-term youth coordinators, to work on the youth initiatives announced. While it may sound good, the latest offer amounts to only half a person extra per CAS office. As some areas in DEET are already over spending, it is also possible that many of the 200 extra jobs will not eventuate. CPSU members recently voted to accept a CPSU national executive endorsed motion which accepts a memorandum of understanding promising that the CPSU will make no further staffing claims on DEET this financial year. CPSU members see the jobs offer as an election ploy and are not convinced by the government's move. Nevertheless, they also recognise that, with a national union leadership which actively supports the re-election of a federal ALP government, the chances of a strong union-led campaign against ongoing job erosion in DEET now is very unlikely.