One of the strategy documents published by the government during these summer months has been the National Action Plan for Employment. This document sets out the principal employment strategies for the years 2005 to 2010 and the key measures for 2005.
It is the first National Action Plan on Employment to be submitted within the framework of the European Employment Strategy by Malta as a new member state. The document is very explicit in stating that this is not a job creation strategy but rather seeks to provide a clearer enabling framework for the creation of more and better jobs.
The government as such does not create jobs unless it, or the organisations that it controls, employ more persons. However, the government is expected to provide the appropriate direction such that the provision of skills is enhanced, the labour market operates more efficiently and the all segments of the labour market can take an active part in job creation. This direction would in turn encourage investors to take those decisions that eventually lead to a creation of further economic activity, to the creation of jobs and the generation of more wealth.
The three broad objectives that the document seeks to address are full employment, quality and productivity at work and an inclusive labour market. These three broad objectives are broken down into six strategies, which are in turn broken down into 10 guidelines. The document also gives specific measures that government plans to take to achieve its objectives as well as specific quantifiable targets that the country has to meet.
Thus, the results can easily be matched against expectations. As expected the objectives of the National Action Plan for employment have a social, political and economic dimension. It is the economic dimension of these objectives that is of most interest in this week's contribution.
The six strategies that the plan maps out have an intrinsic link with the economic dimension of these objectives. They range from the improvement of levels of education and certification with a view
¤ to rising productivity and making firms operating in Malta more competitive;
¤ to raising the national employment rate with the consequence of increasing the gross domestic product and the generate more wealth in the economy;
¤ to enhancing the business environment to encourage further investment;
¤ to improving productivity in the public sector to minimise if not totally eliminate government induced costs on the private sector;
¤ to improving the public employment service to facilitate the recruitment of personnel and avoid bottlenecks in the operations of businesses;
¤ to improving the governance of the labour market to achieve better coordination in the economy among the social partners.
The current employment situation is not as positive as it was a couple of years back, even if it is not the crisis situation that some are making it out to be. The reason for such a situation is very evidently the international economic slowdown. This has forced some companies to cut back on their operations as they were facing reduced demand.
Other companies have expanded their operations but only did so through increased automation. Thus their increased activity could not be transformed into jobs. Even so the feeling is that a number of companies are now well positioned to take advantage of the increased demand that is expected to occur.
The latest data we have is for March 2004. Compared to December 2001, there are less persons in a full time job. However, full-time employment in the private sector has increased by 1.1 per cent between December 2001 and March 2003. Thus the decrease in full time employment of 1,106 is solely attributable to a shrinking of the public sector; something which everyone has been advocating for several years now.
The share of the private sector in full time employment increased from 63.8 per cent to 65.1 per cent. Moreover self-employment increased by 3.1 per cent while part-time employment increased by 13 per cent. Employment in the public sector decreased by 3.9 per cent.
This data indicates that in the medium term the fundamentals of labour data are generally positive and is a reflection of the changes that the employment situation in Malta needed to go through. The National Action Plan for Employment provides not only the recognition for the need of this change but also the path that is needed to be gone through for the change process to be managed effectively.
It would be very simplistic to state that this document does not belong to just the government or to any single entity within the government. Probably it would be equally simplistic to state that this is a document that should be owned by the social partners.
I strongly believe that the key to the success of this document is the ownership by each individual operator in the economy. There needs to be the conviction that the successful implementation of this Action Plan for Employment would bring about long-term benefits to each and every individual business; hence there is the need for this action plan to belong to the business sector jointly and severally (to use some legal jargon) if it is to become truly national.