Friday, March 13, 2015
Tweet[IWS] ADAPT: A GUARANTEE THAT IS NOT THERE (YET) – The Reasons for the Poor Functioning of the Youth Guarantee in Italy [14 February 2015]
IWS Documented News Service
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Institute for Workplace Studies-----------------Professor Samuel B. Bacharach
School of Industrial & Labor Relations-------- Director, Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell University
16 East 34th Street, 4th floor--------------------Stuart Basefsky
New York, NY 10016 -------------------------------Director, IWS News Bureau
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NOTE: Funding for this service ends on 31 March 2015. Postings will end on this date as well.
ADAPT University Press (Association for International and Comparative Studies in the field of Labour Law and Industrial Relations)
A GUARANTEE THAT IS NOT THERE (YET) – The Reasons for the Poor Functioning of the Youth Guarantee in Italy [14 February 2015]
Summary Report for Jyrki Katainen, Vice-president of the European Commission [14 February 2014]
by Michele Tiraboschi
http://adapt.it/englishbulletin/wp/?p=1530
or
http://www.bollettinoadapt.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Youth-Guarantee-report-def-14.23.pdf
[full-text, 14 pages]
[ADAPT recently produced this short report on the results of the "Youth Guarantee", a EU program to tackle youth unemployment. The report was submitted to the Vice-president of the European Commission because he asked for some quick reference to the progress made by the program].
The Youth Guarantee has been in place for nine months now. This is a short
period of time, which nevertheless is sufficient to provide a first assessment of this
scheme.
At present, the results of the programme are far from deserving the name. In fact,
the widespread perception among young people, practitioners and the public at
large is that the Youth Guarantee is yet another failure by Italy as regards labour
policies.
Statistics confirm this point: only 3% of participants have been offered either an
occupation, training, or an internship. It is safe to argue that in many Regions
(especially those with the highest rates of unemployment and school-leaving), the
Youth Guarantee has not even been implemented and has been mostly used as a
topic in conferences or to create new websites that do not work nor do they serve
as placement tools. Many young people have enrolled on the Youth Guarantee
programme long time ago, but nobody thus far has contacted them or looked after
their case.
The past expectations placed on the Youth Guarantee were as great as the current
disappointment. Ensuring a guarantee to an army of discouraged young people –
estimations report that there are 2 million NEETs in Italy – is a challenge that
must be taken seriously and cannot be lost. The risk is to widen the gap between
institutions, the labour market, and young people, with the latter who lose faith in
the State and legality.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, the present report sets out to provide
the Vice-president of the European Commission with an unbiased evaluation of
the Youth Guarantee and its main issues, putting forward ways to effectively
implement this programme also in Italy.
The Report offers a brief overview of the initiatives set in motion so far that the
research group of the Association for International and Comparative Studies in
the field of Labour Law and Industrial Relations (ADAPT) has analysed in great
detail. The investigation has highlighted some mistakes made by the Italian
Government regarding the implementation, the planning and the development of
the Youth Guarantee.
The end results of this examination are collected in a voluminous document edited
in Italian that contains research and monitoring findings, which can be accessed
free of charge by the European Commission at www.bollettinoadapt.it
Undoubtedly, the poor functioning of the Youth Guarantee in Italy is dependent
upon long-standing defects and past mistakes made when laying down active
employment policies in place only in a limited number of regions. The
international and national economic context has also affected the implementation
of the Youth Guarantee. Equally relevant are the issues and the shortcomings
resulting from glaring oversights made in terms of management and decisionmaking,
which we have promptly reported to the Italian Ministry of Labour and
which are now made available to the European Commission.
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