2nd February 2006
The Malta
The problem is not so
much that a property developer who is investing in a real estate development,
won by public tender from the government, is forcing employees he has agreed to
take over to perform jobs unrelated to their skills as hotel workers. It is more
that we have so much inflexibility in the labour
market that skilled hotel workers prefer to hold on to a job they are unsuited
for rather than seek new employment which matches their skills.
The economy cannot move forward if we deploy chefs as labourers, waiters as painters and hotel managers as security officers. The economy should be growing robustly to permit re-allocation of surplus labour in one micro-unit, that is undergoing restructuring or transformation, to other units that need to recruit labour with proper skills in order to grow and expand.
We are wasting too much energy expecting a property developer to keep in employment hotel workers for whom he has no job opportunities to suit their skills, instead of directing our efforts to make the economy more flexible and labour more mobile.
We seem unable to accept that whether we like it or not we have to play the globalisation game where the job for life is extinct. In order to compete successfully in this harsh globalisation game labour mobility must be a way of life. Which means that we need to evolve our labour legislation to oblige employers to keep retraining their employees to preserve their employability; to provide a fund for due compensation in case of redundancy, which fund has to be spent in retraining to ensure that redundant employees can acquire refreshed skills to safeguard their employability.
Our ingrained quest to preserve the status quo is leading us to economically run on the spot while our competitors are sprinting ahead of us. Only last week the governor of the Central Bank of Malta, who is nearing the end of his term and therefore gains added freedom to criticise openly without having to use guarded coded language, explained how poorly our economy is performing when benchmarked to that of Slovenia.
A country that until 15 years ago we used to regard as inferior and way behind us in terms of economic growth and performance is now leaving us breathless as we marvel at their competitiveness and ability to attract investment and win in the globalisation game.
Many would argue that given my leftist political inklings I should be defending workers’ rights to job protection and job-for-life security. It is because of my leftist political inklings that I argue that the greatest right for workers is to have a job and the second greatest right is to have the ability to choose which job to have. For these rights to have practical effect we must have a robustly growing economy that is competitive in the global economy.
No government of left, right or centre can offer jobs in the old Keynesian way when tariffs and trade barriers were the order of the day and most economies were inward looking with little international trade to speak of. Reality has changed.
It is high time for the economic profession to stand up to our standards and speak more clearly about the fact that the political class is misleading us when they sing themselves glories for anaemic growth rates, which are half or less than those of our major competitors.
It is high time for pressure to be made on our political leaders demanding that they speak clearly and explain in facts and figures, before the election so as to avoid unpleasant surprises after having won the electorate’s mandate, whether universal free health services are sustainable in the light of the prospected relocation from St Luke’s to Mater Dei, whether universal social services are sustainable or whether means testing for entitlement would have to be introduced to keep such social payments within general affordability.
And this applies as much to the government as to the opposition. The opposition should be afforded full access to the government’s financial state of affairs so that they can include in their manifesto only policies and measures which can be financed without compromising the rules of good financial housekeeping which we must adhere to as part of our euro adoption obligations.
Unless we render our economy more flexible and our labour market more mobile we will economically continue running on the spot and will gradually lose sight of our competitors as they continue racing ahead. If we continue to argue about whether we should continue to pay hotel workers for nothing during re-development of their former hotel, or whether we should employ them in temporary jobs for which they have no skills, we will just get nowhere. The labour market has to be bubbly enough to offer our redundant employees an easy choice of a better job in their industry.
This can hardly be expected to happen if we continue to tolerate the apartheid in our labour market where public sector employees continue to be rewarded with job protection for a low efficiency job whilst private sector employees have to face the full rigour of the free labour market in spite of performing at much higher levels of efficiency.
Some levelling off of the rights and obligations across the whole labour market is a pre-requisite for strong economic growth to release us from the lock of economic running on the spot.
The economy cannot move forward if we deploy chefs as labourers, waiters as painters and hotel managers as security officers. The economy should be growing robustly to permit re-allocation of surplus labour in one micro-unit, that is undergoing restructuring or transformation, to other units that need to recruit labour with proper skills in order to grow and expand.
We are wasting too much energy expecting a property developer to keep in employment hotel workers for whom he has no job opportunities to suit their skills, instead of directing our efforts to make the economy more flexible and labour more mobile.
We seem unable to accept that whether we like it or not we have to play the globalisation game where the job for life is extinct. In order to compete successfully in this harsh globalisation game labour mobility must be a way of life. Which means that we need to evolve our labour legislation to oblige employers to keep retraining their employees to preserve their employability; to provide a fund for due compensation in case of redundancy, which fund has to be spent in retraining to ensure that redundant employees can acquire refreshed skills to safeguard their employability.
Our ingrained quest to preserve the status quo is leading us to economically run on the spot while our competitors are sprinting ahead of us. Only last week the governor of the Central Bank of Malta, who is nearing the end of his term and therefore gains added freedom to criticise openly without having to use guarded coded language, explained how poorly our economy is performing when benchmarked to that of Slovenia.
A country that until 15 years ago we used to regard as inferior and way behind us in terms of economic growth and performance is now leaving us breathless as we marvel at their competitiveness and ability to attract investment and win in the globalisation game.
Many would argue that given my leftist political inklings I should be defending workers’ rights to job protection and job-for-life security. It is because of my leftist political inklings that I argue that the greatest right for workers is to have a job and the second greatest right is to have the ability to choose which job to have. For these rights to have practical effect we must have a robustly growing economy that is competitive in the global economy.
No government of left, right or centre can offer jobs in the old Keynesian way when tariffs and trade barriers were the order of the day and most economies were inward looking with little international trade to speak of. Reality has changed.
It is high time for the economic profession to stand up to our standards and speak more clearly about the fact that the political class is misleading us when they sing themselves glories for anaemic growth rates, which are half or less than those of our major competitors.
It is high time for pressure to be made on our political leaders demanding that they speak clearly and explain in facts and figures, before the election so as to avoid unpleasant surprises after having won the electorate’s mandate, whether universal free health services are sustainable in the light of the prospected relocation from St Luke’s to Mater Dei, whether universal social services are sustainable or whether means testing for entitlement would have to be introduced to keep such social payments within general affordability.
And this applies as much to the government as to the opposition. The opposition should be afforded full access to the government’s financial state of affairs so that they can include in their manifesto only policies and measures which can be financed without compromising the rules of good financial housekeeping which we must adhere to as part of our euro adoption obligations.
Unless we render our economy more flexible and our labour market more mobile we will economically continue running on the spot and will gradually lose sight of our competitors as they continue racing ahead. If we continue to argue about whether we should continue to pay hotel workers for nothing during re-development of their former hotel, or whether we should employ them in temporary jobs for which they have no skills, we will just get nowhere. The labour market has to be bubbly enough to offer our redundant employees an easy choice of a better job in their industry.
This can hardly be expected to happen if we continue to tolerate the apartheid in our labour market where public sector employees continue to be rewarded with job protection for a low efficiency job whilst private sector employees have to face the full rigour of the free labour market in spite of performing at much higher levels of efficiency.
Some levelling off of the rights and obligations across the whole labour market is a pre-requisite for strong economic growth to release us from the lock of economic running on the spot.
No comments:
Post a Comment