Monday 3 December 2012

jobbing or come-uppance

Following the template of job security safety nets already in place in Austria and Norway, the European Union social services commission will put forward, within an obligatory framework, a mechanism to hold the problems of high unemployment among young people to account.

Just as there are para- chutes to try to slow the other concussions and pancaking of the fall-out of currency crisis, the EU is recognizing the debilitating and demoralizing urgency of the lack of prospects and direction, especially among the youth, which besides over-taxing government welfare and lends less to pension funds, leaves young people with some difficult and disheartening choices about career, family and home. Governments would like to be able to guarantee all people under twenty-five years old either a new position or at the very least, an apprenticeship, within no longer than four months after losing a job through redundancy or upon completion of their education and poised to enter the workforce. The details, associated costs and trade-offs are still being ironed out (in most EU countries, there are weighted social criteria, years to retirement, number of dependents, that are statutory considerations when it comes to letting people go, and whether such guarantees over warranties bias the scale and hurt established workers) and the promise may prove too ambitious, but it is a positive signal for governments to commit to their well-being of their up-and-comers and much as for their own reputation and safekeeping.