THE working party which compiled the report rejected the idea that technological change meant work would no longer be available for everyone or that the only option was badly-paid or low-grade jobs.
"Unemployment could be much lower," Mr Andrew Britton, a former director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in Britain and a former Treasury official, told the press conference in London to launch the report yesterday.
"It is also possible for jobs to pay a decent wage and produce something of real value to the community. There could be enough good work for everybody," he said.
He recognised that this could prove costly but said that, instead of backing away from the problem, society should be prepared to pay what it took to end long-term mass unemployment.
The chairman of the working party, Mr Patrick Coldstream, a former director of the Council for Industry and Higher Education, recognised that to reverse the long-term trends that had pushed unemployment up through the 1970s and 1980s would mean quite a basic reordering of political priorities.
"Such a shift in priorities would not be a political possibility without a change in public opinion," he said, but hoped the churches could help bring about that change.
AFP adds:
For the British government, the Social Security Secretary, Mr Peter Lilley, said he shared the objectives of the report's authors but disagreed with the economic means to achieve them.
He admitted there was a problem between the haves and have-nots, but said on BBC radio that Britain was more successful than other countries in beating unemployment and the poverty gap.
The Labour Party said the report backed policies it was advocating, such as a national minimum wage and working limits set down in the European Union's Social Chapter.
"The churches are right to raise the concerns the whole of Britain has about unemployment and poverty in our midst "the Labour economics spokesman, Mr Gordon Brown, told a news conference.
Mr Brown came in for hard questioning about Labour's pledge not to raise income-tax rates in the five-year term of the next parliament.
In reply, he said Labour's policies would create jobs, and he accused the Conservatives of creating a "divided Britain" where one in five non-pensioner families had no wage earner.
Mr John Major, the British Prime Minister, announcing plans for local tax breaks for small firms, refused to be drawn on whether the churches were interfering in politics but said he disagreed with the report's conclusions.