On the same morning that JobsPlus head Clyde Caruana was reporting to the EY conference about the possibility that 2,000 vacancies may not be filled in 2018, the Education Consultative Council (ECC) of the MFSA, which I chair, was having another of its regular meetings, with the agenda also yet again including a discussion of precisely the issue of financial services sector employers complaining about their repeated claims that they are “not able to recruit staff”.
On the ECC sit all the leading organisations in Malta who are responsible for running education and training in the many aspects and topics of financial services. And this discussion again brought out certain aspects of this alleged situation, which regrettably never seem to make it to either what the complaining employers keep complaining out, or with which aspects they show all signs of not wanting to have anything to do. Let me quote a few examples.
Employers keep saying that they do not find suitable people, in the right quantities, having a grip of what they collectively describe as needed soft skills. But it is very few of them who clearly specify, in detail, what they mean by this.
If they are referring to ability of speaking and writing correctly in English and/or any other foreign language, what are they themselves doing about it?
We know for a fact that very few firms have close enough links with the Ministry of Education to suggest tangible measures towards redressing this claimed situation. Employers should seek to get themselves on school boards, on tertiary education faculty boards, in the structures of professional education and/or training institutes… or are they too busy making money from whatever they are doing to be concerned with giving tangible help towards resolving (for example in curriculum formulation terms) educational issues?
Constantly badgering government to relax present regulations for more rapid importation of foreigners will only benefit them (the employers), and not the nation. For one thing it is now proved that:
Many of the recruited foreigners leave Malta within a short time even after/when being paid salaries higher than those paid to locals;
The country’s overall educational system would not have moved one iota forward through the employment of such foreigners in that younger people coming up will still remain without such skills;
Such employers would still not have made any really persisting contribution towards local national education circles, because the presently existing big and wide gap and vacuum between the two sides (employers, including the foreign ones among us, and the directorates, teachers, owners of institutions, and administrations thereof) will persist.
There do not appear to exist any legally imposed requirements in our laws intended for encouraging several sectors (industry, financial services, igaming, whatever) that require persons being given permits, operating licences, whatever, have to dedicate a clearly announced budget for training and education of both in-house already employed staffs, as well as forms of inputs into our schools, or other educational organisations.
The country’s overall educational system would not have moved one iota forward through the employment of foreigners
For example, almost all of the training organisations who are members of the EEC do not receive any form of official funding for their priceless work. (During 2016 these ECC member organisations gave courses to no less than 8,630 students/trainees, over 216 different types and levels of courses, with class or group averages of no less than 40 persons.)
So, food for thought, should for example the upcoming new MFSA Act include also some form/s of references to prospective licencees being also required to allocate a certain budget towards appropriate training?
Finally – but there is indeed so much more that can be said about this continuous nauseatingly repeated employers’ stance – is it such a big worrying deal that “2,000 vacancies will not be filled next year”?
Is there any economy in the world that does not have a labour market where, at any point in time, there isn’t a number of unfilled vacancies? Or has JobsPlus erroneously set for itself some Utopian targets like zero unemployment, or “x” people registering as unemployed, in Malta?
Any healthy labour market will always have, concurrently: “totally new” jobs being created; people leaving a job, thus creating a vacancy until they are replaced; certain jobs becoming so poorly paid that occupants leave them for better pastures; obsolescence having moved in well ahead of some employers even recognising it; and other realities of thriving economies.
A hot potato in the ‘job skills’ area is the question of language proficiency. I will never be happy until we here in Malta will have a situation where no single primary school teacher (whether in State or private schools) will ever be badgered – by parents or local councils in any town or district, by trade unions, ministries, the ‘defend Maltese’ brigade, or whoever – if he/she freely decides to spend the whole of his/her working day in class speaking to the students in English, starting even from childcare centres.
A highly qualified academic has privately told me that even good Maltese can be taught through making good use of English. Don’t give me the “such subjects in Maltese, and others in English” balderdash… that is what seems to be the situation nowadays, and see where we factually now stand: many of our students at University cannot write or speak correctly in either language.
We are already seeing clear signs of many workers, through their unions, rightly refusing to remain in their present status quo in terms of incomes and other working conditions when the economy is booming.
If, in coming collective agreements, employers and unions can come round to agreeing that there should be more provisions for in-house training centres, employers being required to take certain specific externally delivered self-development and training courses, and indeed employers making more use of external bodies and individuals for advice on their jobs issues… then indeed we would be able to say that some steps forward towards tackling the whole set of present issues – some of which will always be with us – would have been taken.
John Consiglio is chairman of the Education Consultative Council of the Malta Financial Services Authority, but is here writing in a personal capacity.