Wanted: a well-trained workforce

Date: 30/10/1997

DESPITE the fact that there are 18 million Europeans currently out of work, many companies still complain that they just 'cannot get the staff'.

For Europe's employers, bridging this so-called 'skills gap' must be one of the key aims of the jobs summit.

Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz, secretarygeneral of EU employers' federation UNICE, argues that what is really needed to get Europe back to work is the creation of a well-trained and adaptable workforce.

“Rather than promising people a job for life, we need to ensure that if they lose a job, they can find another one quickly,” he explains.

The UNICE chief uses the example of one of his organisation's member companies operating in Ireland to illustrate his point. The firm in question wants to expand, but has had difficulty recruiting the qualified staff it needs. “Ireland has a relatively high level of unskilled, unemployed people but a shortage of skilled workers,” he explains.

UNICE also points out that with the advent of the single currency, the need for an adaptable workforce will become even more pressing. The organisation argues that once they commit to the final stage of EMU, national governments will lose the possibility to devalue their currencies or pursue inflationary economic policies in order to take some of the social sting out of periodic downturns in the economic cycle.

“After EMU, the labour market itself will be the shock absorber. That is why adaptability is so important,” says Tyszkiewicz.

But while he believes the employment guidelines recently put forward by Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn offer some positive ideas on this, he is notably less impressed by Flynn's suggestion that Europe commit itself to specific job creation targets .

Perhaps unsurprisingly, UNICE is also totally opposed to any attempt to create jobs by manipulating laws on working time. Tyszkiewicz is particularly scathing about the recent French and Italian proposals to cut the working week to 35 hours while ensuring employees are paid for 39 hours. “It is absolute folly to cut down the working week by decree. If you reduce working hours, you just make the market more rigid and this goes against adaptability,” he argues.

“If you decree that employees will be paid for 39 hours but only have to work 35, it sends out the wrong signals to the investing community.”

Tyszkiewicz argues that the EU could do well to learn from the example of the United States when it comes to job creation matters. He disagrees with critics who argue that America's apparently booming economy is the result of a large number of people being forced to take what have been pejoratively termed 'MacJobs' - low-paid employment, often in the service sector.

“Of course there are hamburger-flipper jobs, but a significant number of the new posts created in the US pay above the median,” he says.

The UNICE chief argues that even if one takes a more pessimistic view, the US model does at least encourage people back into the labour market. “They create the working poor while we create the unemployed poor,” he says.

As to whether the summit itself is actually necessary, Tyszkiewicz is grudgingly prepared to give the politicians the benefit of the doubt. “I can understand - only just - the political motivation behind the summit. It will show, I think, that Europe has a heart. But a group of companies would never have agreed to such a meeting. They would just have fixed it by fax and e-mail,” he remarks.