From 28 until 30 September 2017, the 6th EZA Platform for Young Workers (PYW) Youth Conference about “Precarious youth employment – challenges and solutions through stronger participation of young people in the social dialogue” took place in Platres, Cyprus, in collaboration with KIKEA-DEOK (Cypriot Institute of Training/Education and Employment (KIKEA) - DEOK). 40 participants from 18 different European countries discussed the situation of young people in precarious jobs as well as happiness at work.
Firstly, the core group of the EZA Platform for Young Workers presented its work. Katrin Stancheva (PODKREPA, Bulgaria) presented findings from a questionnaire which was distributed in the months before the youth Conference. This questionnaire had been prepared to ‘hear the voice and interests of young people’ so that the core group could adequately represent youngsters in the EZA network and has a feeling with the situation of youth on the labour market. The most respondents were employed, have a master degree or a higher education degree and are having a permanent full-time contract. 22% of them consider themselves as happy workers. Their salary falls within the range between €200 and €400 per month. The most important problem for young people in the EU today is the low incomes. The majority of young people prefer to live in the capital and the big cities. 58% of the respondents have not yet used the Public Employment services. From those who did so, the majority is unsatisfied with their support. 39% of the respondents have never heard about the youth guarantee and its possibilities.
Nextly, young representatives could develop their critical thinking in an exchange of views with a representative of the Cypriot Minister of Labour, Mrs. Zeta Emilianidou. She stated that, in its effort to restore economic growth and reduce unemployment, especially for young people, Europe has launched a series of measures such as the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative. Those measures aim primarily at improving skills, at promoting actions to support young people furthest away from the labour market, at upgrading of qualifications, at strengthening career guidance and at improving job search services as well as enhancing youth readiness for business development. The speaker introduced the National Education Portal which is the official national database for the educational opportunities in Cyprus. It was developed in the framework of the European Portal on Learning Opportunities and was funded by the European Commission. The goal of the Portal is to be a valid and reliable tool available to any European citizen who is interested in learning about educational opportunities in Cyprus. The National Education Portal has been created with the collaboration of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Department of Labour, the Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Security.
Participants were subsequently introduced into the topic ‘young people in precarious job’ in an experimental manner. All 40 participants were asked to stand in one line on the football field nearby. Core group coordinator Neza Repansek from Socialna Akademija asked participants to take a step forward if the challenge in the school-to-work transition applied to them. Participants were asked 15 questions such as whether they studied longer to postpone entering the labour market, whether they had to move back to their parents because of financial difficulties, whether they felt like they could live independently, etc. After answering all questions, there was not one line anymore on the football field. Participants were spread around but most of them had encountered several of the mentioned challenges on the road from school to work. The results of this sample of experiences of young workers across Europe was afterwards confirmed in the panel debate on ‘young people in precarious jobs’. At this panel debate, Nerea Cabrea from USO (Spain) shared insights from USO’s report on ‘the situation of the youth in Spain in 2016-2017’ and Dr. Lyuba Spasova (Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) presented the results from the Negotiate research project on ‘early job insecurity and consequences for the transition to adulthood’. In this research project, 209 semi-structured life-course interviews were carried out covering three birth cohorts. All interviewees had experienced unemployment or job insecurity by the time they were 25 years of age. The researchers could uncover four narratives with which the young representatives could also identify:
- the Stumble narrative: initial but passing troubles in transition from education to labour,
- the Precariat narrative: a life situation of economic insecurity due to lack of a permanent position, temporary employment, either with or without contract,
- the messy life narrative: chaotic upbringings, ill health and/or abuse issues,
- the Great crisis narrative: catastrophic societal crisis and loss, marked by a sense of hopelessness, unemployment as a fate that is completely out of the interviewee’s control.
Cristian Baldea (IFES) presented the situation of young people in Eastern Europe and introduced practical examples of how IFES is developing projects to support young workers to access the labour market in Romania. Katrin Stancheva (PODKREPA) shared good practices from the Youth Department in Bulgaria. Firstly, she presented the ‘transition to the labour market’-initiatives of the trade union, in which graduates are offered courses in writing a cover letter and having job interview and are subsequently informed about labour and social security rights. Nextly, Ms. Stancheva presented the trade union initiatives to support mobile students, workers, and apprentices with information, advice and support in Bulgaria before leaving for working abroad. Moreover, PODKREPA cooperates with different partner trade unions, NGOs and universities from the host countries etc. to reach out to mobile citizens. Finally, she presented the main categories of mobile ‘youth’ according to their educational status →1) students, who are studying at university or some other educational institution in another European country, 2) graduates from the university, who are working or seeking for work abroad (the higher-skilled) and 3) non – graduates who are working or who are looking for work abroad.
As a final exercise of the first day, participants were invited to take part in a tripartite social dialogue on ‘the right to disconnect’. Participants were distributed into representatives of the government, of workers’ organisations and of employers’ organisation. During a first round of talks, each party presented their viewpoint on the topic. Workers advocated for work-life balance and underlined that employers should respect the legislation on working time. They also stressed the high work pressure and the growing amount of the population facing burn-outs. The employers’ group underlined the need to maintain jobs in Europe and said that they would need to cut costs at the moment, but once economic growth takes up again, they would be willing to discuss the matter again. The government stated that it was too early to intervene but if the social partners would find an agreement, the government was ready to implement. All groups then received the time to negotiate on their position with their affiliates. In the second round of negotiations, the three parties came up with proposals but did not manage to find an agreement.
At the second day of the youth conference, participants were immersed into the topic of ‘happiness at work’ through ‘hunting happiness games’. Through these games, participants learned in a non-formal way to work together in a team and discovered how companies might set up organisational structures through which workers are competing against one another. Via group work, it appeared rather that together, the young people achieved more than by competing with one another. Krifa representative Benjamin Damsgaard substantiated the experiences of the participants with Krifa’s report on Job Satisfaction in which several factors are outlined which determine job satisfaction. Influence, achievements and colleagues are just a few of the indicators which proved to be crucial in workers’ happiness in Denmark. Participants discovered different aspects of Job Satisfaction through an interactive questionnaire on the topic. The direct poll revealed inter alia that almost 70% of the participants considered themselves to be rather happy at work (a score of 7 or more on a scale from 1 to 10). 75% of the participants work more than 35 hours per week and 80% of the participants work overtime. Of those who work overtime, 75% are not paid for working overtime. The participating youngsters consider colleagues as important at the workplace, find satisfaction in their job by being able to finish tasks, by receiving their wage and by using their skills at work.