Creating Employability
There was a time, when with a given rate of growth and inflation under
control, jobs could be created to meet existing demand.
Growth figures nowadays are healthy enough, but jobless totals remain
stubbornly high, giving the impression that we have no option but to
accept an essentially static level of structural unemployment as a fact of
life.
The current growth rates are rather sluggish, but necessary nonetheless.
At the same time, our target continues to be that of making finding a job
a more stable prospect and of eliminating the uncertainties associated
with redundancy.
We should resist considering economic growth as the sole source of
employment. This will mean facing head-on concepts such as employability,
flexibility, innovation, adaptability, personal initiative, full equality
of opportunity, and creativity. Employment is one of the pillars
supporting the future of the welfare state, for it keeps state welfare
systems financially bouyant and combats emerging forms of poverty,
exclusion and marginalisation.
THE STATE AND EMPLOYMENT
Besides its obligation to see to it that opportunities and income levels
adhere to the principles of equality and solidarity, the state has a duty
to promote the active policies and generate the basic climate through
which unemployment - the problem of greatest concern to our societies -
can be tackled.
The state must do more to build active policies on the labour market. We
must tap into the current deep-seated - and inevitable - changes to
traditional employment forms and structures and capitalise on them by
promoting greater adaptability in the labour supply and developing more
suitable conditions with regard to working hours, mobility and training
with a view to creating more jobs.
These active policies should focus their priorities on three particular
ideas: the importance of vocational training, the need to coordinate and
combine the application of different local initiatives, and the promotion
of opportunities to create new jobs in response to emerging social needs.
Furthermore, they should be targeted at those groups which face greater
difficulties in entering the job market or are more likely to be excluded
from it.
WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS ON OFFER?
A comparison of OECD recommendations, European Council guidelines and
recommendations, the conclusions of the G7 summit in February 1998 and the
employment guidelines approved at the Extraordinary Summit of Heads of
State and Government in November 1997, reveals some agreement on the
conditions required to formulate an employment strategy which, even in
isolation, will prove inadequate:
1. healthy economies with inflation and government deficits under control and greater
government investment to encourage strong and lasting growth;
2. the development of entrepreneurship by promoting and providing incentives for personal initiative, and the
means enabling businesses and their employees to adapt to new technologies
and new market conditions;
3. improved and ongoing training in a new culture of employability, investment in human capital, and the
availability of a skilled, well-grounded and adaptable workforce;
4. an active role for the social partners, with the emphasis on agreements and moderate pay increases;
5. flexibility on the markets in goods and services, a higher rate of competitiveness from European businesses, lower
non-wage costs as a means of hiring less qualified workers or workers in
highly labour-intensive sectors, and an 'employment-friendly' tax system;
6. effective structural labour market reforms to take account of socio-economic changes, a stronger emphasis on equal
opportunities and anti-discrimination measures, and agreements on more flexible working hours which do not erode the competitiveness or production capacity of
businesses;
7. the conversion of passive measures into active employment measures, changes to unemployment benefit systems, and the modernisation of
benefit administrations to help improve the employment situation;
8. support for agreements and initiatives at local and regional level to
boost employment, and a concerted effort to find new jobs to cater for social demand not
covered by market supply.
With a solid economic base in place, we can then proceed to:
· support the emergence of a culture of employability by increasing
the opportunities to enter working life;
· develop and spur on personal initiative and entrepreneurship;
· promote the emergence of a culture of adaptability and encourage
adaptability in the workforce and in businesses;
· strengthen a new equal opportunities culture.
Once we have accepted that creating jobs means more employment, we shall
also be able to accept that employability and adaptability are inseparable
from the need for a new entrepreneurial culture to emerge or from
incentives to set up new businesses.
Modern-day training should include grounding in entrepreneurship,
innovation, initiative and risk-taking. Traditional work concepts no
longer apply as they did in the past, but are changing to keep pace with
the changes in the economy and society.
Concern is mounting with regard to employment standards, the unequal
distribution of job opportunities and the dangerously low wages paid for
certain jobs. The opportunity to work brings many benefits, but that is
not always enough. A job must provide adequate income - sufficient, that
is, to cover people's social and material needs.
Source: http://www.globalprogress.org/
Tony Mathur
Discussion Leader
tony@yesweb.org
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