The Malta Independent
“Funding a massive training and re-training
mechanism to render our employees multi-skilled and employable as technology
continues to kill old jobs and create new ones.“
This is
very much linked to deliverable No 1 treated last week which dealt with
re-balancing the rights and obligations of employees across the whole
public/private employment spectrum.
Inevitably, if this exercise is done properly, indeed if restructuring has to go beyond funding of early retirement schemes, we have to go through a phase where people have to be displaced out of their unproductive jobs. The challenge is to create more job opportunities in the productive sector than the number of jobs that are being displaced.
This is indeed a continuous exercise but having neglected it for so long a new major impetus is needed. Training has to be both technical as well as moral. May be it should start with the moral.
The concept of job for life is out-dated. What counts in today’s fast changing world is life-long employability and this can only come about through continuous training. Learning has to be life-long and skills are the best form of employment potential. Indeed an employee has to be multi-skilled to safeguard against being rendered unemployable through technological obsolescence.
The responsibility of the State towards the individual is not therefore to provide cushy jobs for life in the public sector where tax-payers money is wasted in inefficiency and accommodative bureaucracy. It is to provide effective education in formative stage towards adulthood both in technical and professional competences and to provide a continuous framework were such skills could be added to, enhanced or up-dated throughout the on-going stages of one’s career. This could include obligations on employers to provide minimum training standards for their employees or to fund training programmes for employees when they become redundant.
To make up for the accumulated backlog of such on-going retraining needs we have to fund extensive retraining programmes to be organised in joint-venture with the private sector, to endow surplus labour resources in the public sector with the necessary skills to enable them to find employment in the private sector. But this transition is only possible if the deliverable No.1 , i.e. the re-balancing of the rights and obligations of public/private sector employees is first accomplished. Otherwise exhortation to the several thousand surplus public sector employees to seek private sector employment would be as effective as flogging a dead horse.
Obviously to oil the transition, incentives have to be included. And these incentives have to make it possible to price such surplus employees into market acceptability in private sector productive jobs without causing them undue hardship. On the contrary employees need to be rewarded for taking the plunge.
The public sector should therefore offer to refund 50% of the cost to employers who take on such retrained employees at their current wage level plus 20% on a descending basis until the incentive is phased out over a period of say five years. Under such a system private sector employers would be incentivised to take on such re-trained employees as they cost 60% of the current cost to the public sector; employees would gain 20% premium as a reward for the move, while the public sector would save 40% of the current wage level and phase out the 60% cost over a period of five years. Furthermore the overall economy would benefit from an impetus in production as idle resources are applied productively thus expanding the taxable base and generating sustainable productive economic growth.
This would be a win:win situation. Many who take the plunge will eventually experience their true worth and earning potential is much more developed working in private sector environment than it could ever be within stifling public sector bureaucracy.
Some may argue that I am over-simplifying the issue. May be I am. But complicated things never work out and often crash land before any real take off. Let’s take-off by accepting the principle that we need to invest massively in the re-training of our idle resources and we can solve the detail on the way if we gaint commitment to the principle that the best guarantee of a productive job is a high level of skill base.
Inevitably, if this exercise is done properly, indeed if restructuring has to go beyond funding of early retirement schemes, we have to go through a phase where people have to be displaced out of their unproductive jobs. The challenge is to create more job opportunities in the productive sector than the number of jobs that are being displaced.
This is indeed a continuous exercise but having neglected it for so long a new major impetus is needed. Training has to be both technical as well as moral. May be it should start with the moral.
The concept of job for life is out-dated. What counts in today’s fast changing world is life-long employability and this can only come about through continuous training. Learning has to be life-long and skills are the best form of employment potential. Indeed an employee has to be multi-skilled to safeguard against being rendered unemployable through technological obsolescence.
The responsibility of the State towards the individual is not therefore to provide cushy jobs for life in the public sector where tax-payers money is wasted in inefficiency and accommodative bureaucracy. It is to provide effective education in formative stage towards adulthood both in technical and professional competences and to provide a continuous framework were such skills could be added to, enhanced or up-dated throughout the on-going stages of one’s career. This could include obligations on employers to provide minimum training standards for their employees or to fund training programmes for employees when they become redundant.
To make up for the accumulated backlog of such on-going retraining needs we have to fund extensive retraining programmes to be organised in joint-venture with the private sector, to endow surplus labour resources in the public sector with the necessary skills to enable them to find employment in the private sector. But this transition is only possible if the deliverable No.1 , i.e. the re-balancing of the rights and obligations of public/private sector employees is first accomplished. Otherwise exhortation to the several thousand surplus public sector employees to seek private sector employment would be as effective as flogging a dead horse.
Obviously to oil the transition, incentives have to be included. And these incentives have to make it possible to price such surplus employees into market acceptability in private sector productive jobs without causing them undue hardship. On the contrary employees need to be rewarded for taking the plunge.
The public sector should therefore offer to refund 50% of the cost to employers who take on such retrained employees at their current wage level plus 20% on a descending basis until the incentive is phased out over a period of say five years. Under such a system private sector employers would be incentivised to take on such re-trained employees as they cost 60% of the current cost to the public sector; employees would gain 20% premium as a reward for the move, while the public sector would save 40% of the current wage level and phase out the 60% cost over a period of five years. Furthermore the overall economy would benefit from an impetus in production as idle resources are applied productively thus expanding the taxable base and generating sustainable productive economic growth.
This would be a win:win situation. Many who take the plunge will eventually experience their true worth and earning potential is much more developed working in private sector environment than it could ever be within stifling public sector bureaucracy.
Some may argue that I am over-simplifying the issue. May be I am. But complicated things never work out and often crash land before any real take off. Let’s take-off by accepting the principle that we need to invest massively in the re-training of our idle resources and we can solve the detail on the way if we gaint commitment to the principle that the best guarantee of a productive job is a high level of skill base.
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