VOICE OF THE
WORKERS ISSUE 10 MARCH 2014
Contents EDITOR’S NOTE JOSEF VELLA
Off to a good start
02
Youth Guarantee: The Facts
03
The soul of Jobs+
05
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
WORKERS
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