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Secondly, the non-profit organizations will behave in a counterproductive way; either they will carry out work traditionally done by a regular employed person through an "Aktion 8000" Job, thus undercutting union rates; or they will give only menial work to those employed through the "Aktion 8000" (for the whole set-up is considered as merely transitional) thus depressing rather than enhancing the generał capacity for work of the young and long term unemployed.

Thirdly, the organizational misfit of the implementation prereąuisites and the counterproductive behaviour of the Job creating units will render the programme ineffective; it will cost a lot and achieve little. Thus it will be vulnerable to criticism of the Minister of Finance that the social administration wastes money rather than making best use of it under conditions of tightening budget constraints.

It seems difficult to reject the three critical arguments against experimental programmes encouraging (a special type of) local employment initiatives out of hand. The capacity of the Austrian society to inaugurate innovations in times of adverse economic trends has not only been ąuestioned by seasoned administrators. Hence some empirical evidence is called for. It will be provided in the next section.