VOICE OF THE
WORKERS ISSUE 10 MARCH 2014
Contents EDITOR’S NOTE JOSEF VELLA
Off to a good start
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Youth Guarantee: The Facts
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The soul of Jobs+
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Attracting creative ideas for employment 08 The Youth Employment Guarantee 09 Initiatives at European Level 10
Jobs+ for Young People Welcome to this edition of the Voice of the Workers e-magazine! The Youth Guarantee has been launched in Malta. This is very good news for UĦM , as it forms an integral part of the Jobs+ initiative proposed by UĦM and agreed upon by all the social partners. Youth Guarantee is a creative way of looking at the provision of welfare in Malta. We are moving away from the culture of providing for persons, to giving persons the tools to help themselves. Just providing unemployed young people with social benefits will not solve the problem. On the contrary, it has proved to be a disincentive for such people to move out of their current situation. Research shows that unemployed young people are often without training, have low levels of education, and their VOICE OF THE
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skill-base is not adequate for finding them a suitable job that pays. Becoming more competitive as a country also means that all our young people are wellequipped to respond to changing labour market situations. We need to invest more in training, skills, experience, as well as entrepreneurial ability, even through cooperative ways of business. This means that we need to see a change in attitude amongst all stakeholders. Unless we cooperate together, we can never become competitive. Malta is a small nation. If we do not play together, our chances of success decrease dramatically at best. This is one, definite step forward. The road is long. The year 2020 target beckons.
“We need to abandon once and for all, the idea of one size fits all” Read full interview with Prime Minister Dr Joseph Muscat on page 5 1
PICTURE STORY
Off to a good start Young people all deserve a good start in life. Even if they believe that they cannot make it, or feel unmotivated to give it a shot. Youth Guarantee will be providing personalised, essential tools for unemployed young people to be better equipped for finding productive work that will not just provide them with a livelihood, but will also contribute to their happiness and well-being . VOICE OF THE
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FEATURE STORY
Youth Guarantee S T C A F E TH
Youth Unemployment: The situation in the EU and EU Mediterranean countries In the EU, youth unemployment increased from 15.6% in 2008, to 22.9% in 2012 on average. Due to this, we are literally talking about a ‘lost generation’. This crisis is also prevalent in the EU Mediterranean states: While youth unemployment in the EU28 increased from 15.6% in 2008 to 22.9% in 2012, youth unemployment in the EU Mediterranean were as follows: Country Spain Portugal Greece Cyprus Italy France Malta Source: Eurostat
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2008 24.6% 16.4% 22.1% 9.0% 21.3% 18.6% 12.2%
2012 53.2% 37.7% 55.3% 27.8% 35.3% 23.8% 14.2%
Youth Unemployment in Malta Compared to the rest of the EU, Malta’s youth unemployment rate is one of the lowest. However, unemployed young people are more than double the national unemployment rate. Youth unemployment in Malta peaked in 2004 with 18.3 per cent of those aged between 15-24 years, and subsequently declined to 12.2 per cent by 2008. Till 2012, youth unemployment increased by just two per cent to 14.2%. This is a marked difference to what happened to other European Countries over the same period. (Eurostat, 2013).
Why Youth Guarantee? • Youth unemployment rate needs to be reduced - 5.5 million young people were unemployed throughout the EU in March 2012. • It is a proven program that delivered results in other countries • Focuses on young people and their specific needs • Particularly encourages immediate action to tackle youth unemployment. • Avoids consequences and effects in the long-term • Is very effective for young people who are ready to work.
What is the Youth Guarantee? The Youth Guarantee offers a job, work experience, apprenticeship, training or combined work to young people, aged 18 to 24, after leaving school or within 4 months of becoming unemployed 3
Youth Guarantee Experiences
FINLAND • •
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Started implementing Youth Guarantee in 1996 Targets young unemployed people under the 25 but also including young graduates under the age of 30. 83.5% of young job seekers were successfully approached within three months as unemployed Youth Guarantee had resulted in a reduction in youth unemployment The investments in the Youth Guarantee paid off and the cost of lack of action is far higher that the costs of implementation.
SWEDEN • • • •
Introduced the first genuine youth guarantee in 1984 Targets young unemployed people aged 16-24 The number of participants increased from around 10,000 in 2008 to over 53,000 in 2010 46% of young jobseekers managed to enter the labour market with the Youth Guarantee Scheme
Youth Guarantee Scheme in Malta The Youth Guarantee is aimed at enhancing the productivity of the labour market with additional workers by providing them with additional skills and competences in order to facilitate their full integration. This will be done through personalised services for 350 youths who are inactive or seeking jobs, and who are at a
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disadvantage, so that they can continue studying or training for work. They will be paid €1,440 in the form of an educational investment, to a total cost of €2 million. This investment will take the form of training, job exposure, as well as apprenticeship with select organizations. This project is being sustained by the European Social Fund.
The Youth Guarantee Scheme is an essential part of Jobs+. Through the tapering of social benefits , young people who are currently dependent on social benefits will be encouraged to take up a job without instantly losing social benefits. This will make the prospect of finding a permanent job more attractive to just depending on social benefits.
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THE SOUL OF
Jobs+
INTERVIEW WITH PRIME MINISTER DR. JOSEPH MUSCAT ON THE YOUTH GUARANTEE SCHEME
In Europe youth unemployment is worryingly high. So much so that we are talking of a ‘lost generation’. In Malta, we have not yet arrived at this stage. So why is a Youth Guarantee scheme needed? The fact that our problem is not big does not mean that we do not have a problem. It does not mean you do not have an issue. We need to address the issue before it reaches the problematic proportions other states are facing. The fact that our problem is not acute means that we cannot benefit from EU funds specifically for this scheme. But this does not mean that we cannot use European funds at all. In fact, the scheme will be sustainable through the use of the utilization of the European Social Fund so that we could tackle the challenges of young people not in employment, education and training, with a specific programme. We need to abandon once and for all, the idea of one size fits all. Different personal situations call for different measures. A man of forty who is now unemployed after working all his life, would have different needs from from a young woman who has just left school, has never had any work experience, and does not possess the necessary skills to work. VOICE OF THE
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We cannot send these people to the same course, and we cannot use the same strategy to cater for them. If this scheme is to be personalised, it will become more expensive. How sustainable would such an expense be in the long term? We need to change the way we see things. We need to look at output, rather than at the expense per se. We can come up with programmes that cost less, but I would rather we spend more and achieve results. Spending less without achieving the right results ends up being more expensive at the end of the day. Measures costing less but which have to be repeated as they are not effective, will cost more in the long run. The initial investment will be much more worth it if it is effective, even if it means it is initially more expensive. It’s the value for money we are talking about here. But how sustainable will this be economically if such a scheme catches on and is expanded to greater numbers? I believe that to make such an appraisal, we first need to assess the scheme’s effectiveness on the initial cohort of 350 persons in the scheme. As 5
this is a first for Malta, it is a learning curve for us. Admittedly, there are experiences from other countries’ best practices we could draw upon. But we really need to also draw upon the experiences and reactions of this initial group of people. It is we are approaching these people to participate, not the other way round. So the achievements of this scheme will depend on the number of success stories we could talk about a year from now. We hope to hear stories of young people who had left school, did not possess the necessary skills, went through a period of apprenticeship, and today they are in a job. And even if they are not yet in employment, they can at least say that they have acquired the necessary skills to be better positioned to apply for jobs. I believe that these experiences will encourage others to go down the same path. There are young people who have the will to better themselves. Others are difficult to motivate. How can the Youth Guarantee Scheme help those who do not feel motivated enough to do something with their lives? I don’t think that we can talk about this issue in isolation. It is not just a question of just not feeling like it, being lethargic, or not having the energy to act. Unfortunately, there is also a personal background beneath the lack of motivation. This may include a poor experience of work within the person’s family, others who have not had experience
of family members in paid jobs, others whose family depend on social services, people who have come in contact with poverty, as well as those who have experienced abuse and criminality. This is where the personalized approach comes in. The experience we need to acquire is in the handling of such cases; it may be necessary not just to talk to the individual, but also to parents and family members, if any, as well and peers. I also suspect that once we have convinced peer leaders, we would be in a better position to attract more young people to the scheme. Only last week, I was struck by what the Minister of Education stated: there were 300 young people who did not even apply for their SEC exams. Even here, a specific programme was launched. The more aggressive ones underwent a period of job exposure with the Armed Forces for two weeks. What struck me was that according to the social workers, the attitudinal change of these persons was impressive. These people were exposed to a world they were absolutely not aware of, and which they came to like. I am convinced that this experience will be giving some of these persons the right impetus for them to get going and even pursue a career there. How do you see the Youth Guarantee Scheme compliment other services currently being given by other social service agencies? This has to be a horizontal strategy, and not focused in just one aspect. It has to be multi-disciplinary
“Spending less without achieving the right results ends up being more expensive at the end of the day”
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in the sense that rather than just focusing on the work aspect, there has to be a social interface through professionals active in the field. This also includes one idea the government has, namely the establishment of family clinics whereby specific family problems and skill issues are addressed at source: from financial management to health issues and eating habits amongst others. The Swedish and Finnish experience of the Youth Guarantee Scheme has shown that it was beneficial in the short term, but was not necessarily successful in keeping young people in work. What can be done to ensure that in Malta, this scheme is long lasting? First of all, we need to make sure that success is not measured over a year, but on a recurrent basis. The challenge here is that after launch, we need to engage in effective follow-ups, and have a system in place that follows the beneficiaries of the scheme. I would not be surprised if we were to create a form of blueprint on how this could be done. What I can say is that the European Commission is impressed with what we are currently doing here in Malta. Being a small state may permit us to utilize tools that may not be feasible for larger countries, but which might just be the right tools for us. The Youth Guarantee Scheme also hinges on the uptake of the scheme by employers. In what ways can employers be attracted to supporting this scheme? Simply put, this scheme is of benefit to employers. Although unemployment is a reality in Malta, it is also true that employers sometimes fail to find adequately-skilled persons to fill the posts on offer. When employers offer job exposure, traineeship or apprenticeship (we are offering 730 posts in 83 businesses), employers can discover more about the attributes of the persons they come in contact with through the Scheme. Opportunities may exist for an employer to decide to offer employment to a person who would have had little chance for selection during a normal interview. The scheme may be beneficial to an employer as it offers the chance of continuous assessment of the prospective employee, and may prove to be the opportunity for a trainee to land a job that is right for him or her. This scheme just might provide the right matches for both parties. But this may work where the pool of employees is large. In micro organizations, finding the right match will be a matter of luck. This year, we have approached organizations employing in excess of fifty employees. Eighty VOICE OF THE
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three of these are interested in joining the scheme. All of them are planning to employ more people in their organizations, but through investing in apprenticeship, they can better understand what they need and finding the right persons to fill the posts they are offering. Is there a danger that employers may see this scheme as cheap employment? A: This is where government comes in. We need to make sure that we do not have a situation of permanent apprenticeship or traineeship without employment. Apprenticeship and traineeship is geared towards creating new work opportunities. It is important to note that this scheme is voluntary. Had this scheme been mandatory on employers, the dangers you mention would have been very real. Employers who chose to form part of this scheme will be investing time and effort into it, and I don’t think that people would invest all that effort to end up abusing it. It is much wiser to invest the energy to employ the right people. Has government made any targets for this scheme? The targets set fpor the scheme are part of the targets listed in Jobs+. This includes increases in the amount of people employed, as well as increasing employability of Maltese workers. I do not think that one can make targets on one specific scheme. There are general, ambitious targets that we, together with all constituted bodies and all political parties, have committed ourselves to with Jobs+. How do you see the Youth employability Scheme fit into the underlying concepts of Jobs+? The Youth employability Scheme is the soul of Jobs+. In my mind, Jobs+ is an intelligent way of creating new places of work, and how these can be more productive, leading to economic growth. In this way, workers can really make work pay. The Youth Guarantee Scheme aims to nip challenges in the bud, before they become uncontrollable problems. Finally, what do you think are the pre-requisites of a successful Youth Guarantee Scheme? If we manage to get young people who, if left to their own devices would be ideal candidates for the unemployment register, to manage to find productive work, that would be our biggest success. Dr. Joseph Muscat was interviewed by John Mallia
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YOUTH EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE
Attracting creative ideas for employment YOUTHS IN THE EU HAVE BEEN BADLY AFFECTED BY THE ECONOMIC CRISES. YOUTHS ARE ULNERABLE. EU STATISTICS REVEAL A 23.5% YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE ACROSS THE MEMBER STATES.
The EU has introduced the Youth Guarantee policy which is aimed at ensuring that all youths take up a job, an apprenticeship or traineeship or offered such opportunities within 4 months of leaving formal education or becoming unemployed. More than just being a counter measure to inactive youth, this is also a proactive approach to reduce the possibility of unemployment in the future. This principle was endorsed by EU countries in April 2013. This scheme has also been coupled with the Youth on the move initiative which is also a comprehensive package of policy initiatives on education and employment. Malta is moving in the right direction since the unemployment rate amongst youths in Malta stands well below the EU
average at 13.9 %. Malta needs to continue to work hard so as to ensure an active youth generation. Maltese Government is committed to this goal and in fact has launched an Early School Leaving Strategy and it consulted with MCESD prior to launching this strategy. An action group was set up within MCESD to discuss the matter and recommendations were sent to the Minister of Education and Employment. The youth guarantee cannot work alone. Cooperation among major stakeholders is a must. One of the main contributors leading to an inactive youth generation is the mismatch that might exist between education and skills that employers are looking for. Apprenticeships schemes and further
enhancement of vocational training help to alleviate the problem. Malta has a further challenge, the phenomenon of youths moving from Gozo and settling in Malta. Initiatives such as the EAP scheme which was re-introduced in Gozo help in this regard. Policy makers and all stakeholders involved need to focus on attracting innovative ideas to the economy and new sectors of investment which will undoubtedly increase the employment rate. Igniting economic growth in this regard is essential. This coupled with an improvement in matching skills with work opportunities will help in the implementation of the youth guarantee. Investing in youth is investing in the guarantee.
MCESD 280/3, Republic Street, Valletta, VLT1112 Tel: (+356) 2200 3300 www.mcesd.org.mt VOICE OF THE
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The Youth Employment Guarantee
The European Union is working to reduce youth unemployment and to increase the youthemployment rate in line with the employment target of the ‘Europe 2020’ Strategy - achieving a 75% employment rate for the working-age population (20-64 years) by 2020. At the February 2013 European Council, EU leaders decided on a Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) with the aim of helping regions with youth unemployment rates above 25% to implement measures that favour youth employment, such as the Youth Guarantee. In April 2013, EU Member States adopted a Council Recommendation establishing ‘youth guarantee’ schemes. Although not a legally binding act, the recommendation reflects a strong political commitment by the Member States to establish national plans for youth guarantee schemes by 2014. In Member States with the most severe budgetary difficulties and higher rates of youth unemployment, however, a
gradual implementation could be considered. The Youth Guarantee is aimed to address youth unemployment by ensuring that all young people under the age of 25 – whether registered with employment services or not – get a goodquality, concrete offer within 4 months of them leaving formal education or becoming unemployed. The good-quality offer should be for a job, apprenticeship, traineeship, or continued education and be adapted to each individual need and situation. This measure comes in response to the worsening youth employment situation across Europe, with an increasing number of young people who are not in employment, education or training. The recommendation sets out guidelines for the implementation of youth guarantee schemes, focusing on a number of key strands of action, in particular: • partnerships between public and private employment
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services, employers, social partners and youth representatives; outreach strategies towards young people, especially the most vulnerable ones; support for the integration of young people into the labour market by enhancing skills, encouraging employers to offer young people jobs and promoting labour mobility; assessment and continuous improvement of the schemes; use of the available EU funds to support the establishment of the schemes.
The YEI makes €6 billion available for the period 2014-2020 from the European Social Fund (ESF) and other cohesion policy funding instruments. Although Malta will not be eligible for funds under this initiative (the rate of youth unemployment for Malta in November 2013 was 13.7%), the Government is committed to implement the Youth Guarantee through national funds and ESF funds (other than those allocated to the Youth Guarantee).
MEUSAC 280 Republic Street, Valletta VLT 1112 Tel: +356 2200 3315 • Fax: +356 2200 3329 • Email: info.meusac@gov.mt www.meusac.gov.mt VOICE OF THE
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Initiatives at European Level
Empowering social entrepreneurs for innovation, inclusive growth and jobs : Strasbourg Declaration The “Strasbourg Declaration” adopted on the 17th of January marks the end of 2 days of meetings and debates held at the participatory event on social entrepreneurship “Social entrepreneurs: Have Your Say!” cohosted by the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Commission, where participants had the opportunity to share their experiences and tell their success stories. www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/a_eesc-2014-00376-00-00-decl-tra-en.pdf
European Social Fund and the Youth Employment Initiative: vital instruments for a job rich recovery In the 2014-2020 period, the ESF will be instrumental in helping Member States to respond to the EU’s priorities and recommendations for national policy reforms in the fields of active labour market policies, social inclusion and employment policies, institutional capacity and public administration reform. europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-84_en.htm The ESF at work – opportunities for young people http://tinyurl.com/ocqdkc9 www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKtfGzEwNTg
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UNION ÓADDIEMA MAGÓQUDIN (Malta Workers’ Union) Dar Reggie Miller, St Thomas Street, Floriana, FRN 1123 - Malta Tel +356 21220847 - +356 21234801 - +356 21236484 • Email info@uhm.org.mt www.uhm.org.mt Operational Programme II - Cohesion Policy 2007-2013 Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality of Life Project part-financed by the European Union European Social Fund (ESF) Co-financing rate: 72.25% EU, 12.75 MT, 15% Private Funds Investing in your future
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The Youth Guarantee is a new approach to tackling youth unemployment which ensures that all young people under 25 – whether registered with employment services or not – get a good-quality, concrete offer within 4 months of them leaving formal education or becoming unemployed. The good-quality offer should be for a job, apprenticeship, traineeship, or continued education and be adapted to each individual need and situation. EU countries endorsed the principle of the Youth Guarantee in April 2013 (Council Recommendation). ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1079
PUBLCATIONS
Youth Guarantee is becoming a major tool in tackling youth unemployment in Europe. Success breeds success, and it is envisaged that more and more countries adopt this approach. The Brussels office of the Confederazione Italiana Agricoltori has collated some of activities being done on an EU level.