New activities, new jobs

Directorate-General For Employment Social Affairs And Inclusion European Commission

Description

Which development strategies?
Social policy
Employment policy

Informations

• Publié par: DIRECTORATE-GENERAL-FOR-EMPLOYMENT_SOCIAL-AFFAIRS-AND-INCLUSION-EUROPEAN-COMMISS
• Nombre de lectures: 17
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

SOCIAL EUROPE
NEW ACTIVITIES, NEW JOBS:
WHICH DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES?
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR
EMPLOYMENT, INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS SOCIAL EUROPE
New activities, new jobs:
Which development strategies?
SUPPLEMENT 1/96
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR EMPLOYMENT, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS The information contained in this publication does not necessarily reflect either the position or views
of the European Commission
Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1996
© ECSC-EC-EAEC, Brussels · Luxembourg, 1996
Reproduction is authorized, except for commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged
ISBN 92-827-0026-7
Printed in Belgium NEW ACTIVITIES,
NEW JOBS:
WHICH DEVELOPMENT
STRATEGIES?
Proceedings of the OPIO Colloquium
23 and 24 March 1995
Gilles-Laurent RAYSSAC
Groupe TEN-CONSEIL
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR EMPLOYMENT, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND
SOCIAL AFFAIRS
"Employment Analysis and Labour Market" Unit - V/A/2 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction 1
2. Development of new job sources: international comparisons 7
3. A macroeconomic evaluation of the potential for the creation of
new jobs in Europe 10
4. Policy on home employment and the chèque emploi service
in France6
4.1. Discussion 21
5. The programme of workshop schools and craft centres in Spain ... 24
5.1. Discussion9
6. Cultural activities and economic development in the
United Kingdom 3
6.1. Discussion5
7. Waste recycling in Denmark7
7.1. Discussion 41
8. Childcare for the under-threes in Germany 42
8.1. Discussion 47
9. Round-table discussion8
10. Conclusions 66 INTRODUCTION
DOMINIQUE BALMARY
Commissioner for Employment
Ministry of Labour, Employment and Vocational Training
I bid you all a warm welcome here to OPIO for this first seminar of the French presidency, which
focuses on new activities and new jobs.
The choice of this topic fits naturally into the context of implementing the White Paper on growth,
competitiveness and employment; it also reflects the conclusions adopted at the Essen summit. Let me
express my thanks to the European Commission for the support it has kindly provided us in the
organization of these two days.
New activities and new jobs is an aim espoused, at least in principle, by the entire body of Member
States, which acknowledge its potential for making our growth process yield a richer harvest of jobs
and for enhancing our capacity to combat our continuing excessive level of unemployment.
Nevertheless, I believe we shall realize that the present development of these new activities still falls
far short of the hopes we may place in them. We know the complexity of the problem; these activities
are numerous and highly varied, and their development generally does not meet the usual criteria
governing the development of traditional, mainly industrial, activities, neither in terms of forms of
production nor in terms of their demand. So it is a matter of benefiting from European reflection on
these matters in order to make progress on this vital issue. How can the development of new types of
activity be used as a means of achieving a twofold objective - how do we step up progress towards
competitive economies, and how do we encourage the creation of a greater amount of skilled work?
The European Union is truly confronted by an enormous challenge in terms of the unemployment level
that persists in most of its Member States. The White Paper on growth, competitiveness and
employment presented by the Commission in December 1993 provided a diagnostic dimension and
lent a sense of direction to the work undertaken in these areas. In December 1994, unemployment
affected 10-7% of the active population of the Twelve EU Member States, which was distinctly higher
than the figures for the United States or Japan.
In the face of this situation, the White Paper emphasized that unless employment policy underwent
profound change, unemployment could not be curbed, despite the resumption of growth. It also stated
that one of the factors which increased the volume of employment was the development of new
activities corresponding to new consumer needs and that this factor could prove a key element of a
solution to the problem.
These new needs, the vast majority of which are either not yet being met or are still being
inadequately satisfied, result especially, in the countries of Europe as a whole, from the major
transformation of family structures, from the increased numbers of women in employment and from
the new aspirations and requirements of a global population which is either aging or changing its
lifestyles. They also derive from the need to repair the damage inflicted on the environment and to improve living conditions that have often deteriorated in the wake of urbanization, some of which has
taken place too quickly.
And these new activities do indeed afford interesting job prospects. The various economic and social
studies drawn up by the experts agree on the potential of these new activities and on their contribution
to employment. In France, analyses based on developments in demography and in people's needs have
concluded that these activities offer the potential creation of around 300,000 jobs over a five-year
period. The report by the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission, presented at the Essen
Summit in December 1994, set out to confirm the existence in the Member States of this potential for
new activities, which are, of course, highly labour-intensive.These studies, it seems to me, clearly
reveal that the existence of these new needs does not automatically elicit an adequate response from
the market. That is the main question, to my mind, which we shall have to consider in the course of
this seminar.
In fact, the development of these new activities is dependent on the fulfilment of three conditions, each
of which seems difficult to satisfy. It is a question of structuring the supply of these new activities,
of bolstering a demand which may not be strong, and of training and professionalizing the workforce
which could be, or already is, employed in those fields.
• Supply too often appears fragmented. It most frequently results from local initiatives focused
on the immediate neighbourhood, and interesting though they may be, the dispersal of these
initiatives means that they are scarcely comparable with the sort of mass-consumption model
familiar to us from periods of major industrial development, a model which requires a certain
standardization of services and a market which is undoubtedly more structured and
transparent than our present one.
• Secondly, it seems that the logic governing transactions in these areas, and particularly the
classical market exchanges with which we are familiar, is not especially applicable to the
more personal services implied by these new activities and by work performed in the services
sector in general because of the more direct relationship between supplier and client.
• Thirdly, the demand created by people's needs is not sufficiently strong because the cost of
the service, which is largely conditioned by labour costs, may appear too high in relation to
its potential profitability.
• Nor is it easy to create these new services in order to meet collective needs, such as
environmental needs, or demands which were formerly satisfied by groups linked together
by bonds that are now tending to dissolve or weaken, like family ties, for instance.
Traditional forms of public intervention are still unsuited to such cases, because the
complexity of classical jurisprudence does not favour the development of these activities or
because the ways in which public bodies might intervene technically and financially could
create economic distortions prejudicial to the creation of real jobs or pose new problems of
competing jurisdiction which would be difficult to resolve.
It will ultimately prove impossible for these activities to develop without a proper training system for
these jobs in which the skills required for these areas of activity and the necessary career structures
are identified. That is the condition under which we shall be able to escape from the type of thinking
that classifies this type of work in France as apetit boulot, a "pin-money job". It is also the condition under which we might be tempted to make such employment attractive to job-seekers. And, lastly, it
represents, our only hope of establishing the quality standards without which households will be in no
position to avail themselves of these services on a regular basis.
France, for her part, has started to implement a policy which favours the development of these new
activities in the spirit of the recommendations made in the White Paper. This applies especially to the
five-yearly revision of the Employment Act that was passed by our Parliament in December 1993.
When the French experience is outlined to you in the course of this seminar you will see that access
to home-help services has been made easier by the introduction of a new system we call the chèque
emploi service, the service employment cheque, which p