One of the main tasks undertaken by the Committee for Employment and Social Affairs in the European Parliament this legislature is to help generate jobs offering better conditions, this by employing a strategy which encourages greener jobs that will be the key to a more sustainable economy.
This strategy should be in place by 2011 and training and education modules will help enhance it and make it the success the Committee aims it to be.
Specific policies will be introduced and this measure has been encouraged by the European Commission.
Programmes to re-skill workers should be up and running soon and this will, hopefully, be an important step forward in order to generate new sustainable, green and high-quality jobs.
The transition to this type of training, though, needs to be coordinated in a way so that the national training centres, in our case the Employment and Training Corporation, and even our education systems will be based on this new method.
It is also important to give an incentive to those companies that invest in cleaner technologies and employ these re-skilled employees. Such incentives could be in the form of tax rebates and part-funding of the employees’ salaries for a specific period of time.
Incentivising SMEs will definitely contribute greatly towards the success of this project. The European Globalisation Adjustment fund will be made available to those training centres that will take part in the project.
This fund, that was created due to the economic turmoil, will also be used to aid those sectors or groups that are most vulnerable. This particularly refers to first-time job seekers and older workers aged from 50 upwards.
In many cases, the minimum standards for these age brackets are still too low and the conditions of work leave much to be desired.
In this sense, the Committee has called for the regularisation of non-standard working hours, such as part-time, casual, temporary and fixed-term working contracts. In many cases like these, employees are overworked and underpaid and this situation should be addressed as soon as possible.
Special attention will also be given to women in the labour world where many cases of unfair treatment and poorer conditions have been reported in blatant breach of the Equality Act.
Creating new opportunities through re-skilling and life-long learning will mean that over 20 million people across Europe will be lifted out of poverty. It also means a fresh start for many people who had to re-adjust due to lack of opportunities.
Poverty has been overlooked for far too long in Europe and it is high time that this matter is addressed in an adequate way. The Belgian Presidency of the EU has already pledged its support and commitment on the matter and if everything goes according to plan the employment guidelines will be formally adopted in October.
Adding to all this and taking into consideration that the youth sector was one of the sectors that was badly affected by the economic crisis with more than 5.5 million (22 per cent of all youths in that age bracket) under 25 being unemployed as at December 2009, the European Parliament has now proposed a European Youth Guarantee. This consist of a programme that aims to give every youth in the EU the right to work, undergo an apprenticeship and train if they have been unemployed for more than four months.
It has been emphasised though that these training schemes and apprenticeships should not be a replacement to real jobs and should be regarded as the stepping stone to the labour world.
The European Parliament is also advocating a system whereby these young people earn a decent income in order not to remain dependent on their family.
As MEPs in the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, we have called on the European Commission to earmark a minimum 10 per cent of the European Social Fund to aid young people through projects aimed at bettering their chances of improving their standard of living.
Mr Casa is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.