Summit will labour for jobs

DETROIT - Global unemployment will be the focus of the Group of Seven summit in July, finance and employment ministers of the leading industrial nations agreed yesterday, writes Peter Torday.

It was acknowledged that the jobs crisis had replaced finance and macroeconomics as the group's long- term central concern. But each country had a different idea of what to do about it.

Britain's emphasis on flexible labour markets was criticised by Robert Reich, the US Labor Secretary, who said some countries were 'too enamoured of the markets'.

But David Hunt, the Secretary of State for Employment, attributed the fall in UK unemployment soon after the recession to trade union reform and more worker flexibility on pay.

Report, page 31

Beating unemployment, page 18