[article]400,000 New Workers Required - Report.

mike65

From Indo-

Wanted: army of migrants to keep the Tiger purring
Workers need to be more motivated and productive by being offered financial participation schemes.


THOUSANDS of skilled immigrants will be needed over the next five years to help fill almost 400,000 jobs as the economy continues to prosper, a major new report predicts.

But to attract them Ireland will have to be seen as an attractive place to live and work, "with a welcoming attitude to immigrants and a diverse cultural life" it says.

Other countries will be pursuing the same immigrants as advanced economies depend more on knowledge and less on manufacturing, it warns.

The analysis, titled Ahead of the Curve: Ireland's Place in the Global Economy is the most thorough look at economic strategy since the Culliton report of more than ten years ago.

Like Culliton, it was prepared by a group comprised largely of business people, but including academics and trade union leader Des Geraghty. It was chaired by businessman Eoin O'Driscoll.

It makes 52 recommendations on how the country should adapt to being a high-cost economy in a world of increasing competition.

Among these are a dedicated export body, 1,000 more sales and marketing graduates, even more funding for research and a single regulator for all network industries, from electricity to broadcasting.

Some of the recommendations will be controversial.

The report suggests the abolition of Shannon Development, more competition for sheltered sectors, including state companies, and priority investment for towns and regions designated in the national spatial strategy.

Unveiling the report, Tánaiste and Enterprise and Employment Minister Mary Harney said the Government regularly reviewed policy but she thought it important to have an outside look at the challenges facing the economy.

"Our future depends on how well we manage the transition to a world where knowledge and ideas are more important than bricks and mortar."

She agreed that some of the ideas in the report would meet opposition.

"There are always competing interests involved. But we need to re-allocate resources to cope with these changes. My own departmental budget is up 3pc but the science budget is up 35pc."

Ms Harney stressed that the Government had not yet accepted the report's finding, but would consider them carefully after the summer break.

Mr O'Driscoll said it was important to have "joined-up government" with education, telecommunications and transport now key economic drivers. "Education is probably more important than taxation now and we must never forget that," Ms Harney said.

The report recommends a high-powered group of heads of government departments and private sector figures which would meet at least four times a year and brief the Cabinet twice a year.

It lays great stress on improving skills and qualifications. The percentage of young people taking the Leaving Certificate should be increased from 83pc to 90pc.

For those who do leave school early, it recommends new work-study programmes, relevant to the needs of the economy which would be the equivalent of the Leaving.

The most radical proposal put forward by the Strategy Group is a "One Step Up" initiative whereby people would be encouraged to study or train to move up a qualifications level.

"With our young workforce, 80pc of present workers will still be in work by 2015," Mr O'Driscoll said. The scheme should pay particular attention to those with low levels of qualification and in low level occupations who are least likely to receive sufficient access to learning opportunities.

Universities and colleges should be forced to compete for government funds on a performance related basis, the group says. Earlier drafts had included a call for the re-introduction of tuition fees.

Mr O'Driscoll confirmed that this and a number of other proposals in earlier drafts were dropped from the final version.

The report highlights the weakness among many Irish managers who lack key competencies in implementing change and responding to competitive pressures. "Irish managers are becoming complacent and their weak international skills and lack of strategy and customer focus are putting Ireland's continued success at risk," it says.

Meanwhile business organisations urged the Government to take prompt action on the report as they joined opposition politicians in giving it a broad welcome.

The Small Firms' Association tempered its positive response with a warning that its recommendations would be rendered impossible if the Government failed to set up an Expert Group on Enterprise.

ISME also gave the report a "cautious welcome".

Mike.

shoegirl

I'm not sure how accurate this is. The vast majority of migrant workers are in the lowest paid occupations and will have great difficulty living in Ireland on mean pay scales. My hunch on this is that the immigrant workers are in fact needed to exert downward pressure on wages in low paid industries that are struggling because they cannot maintain short term never mind medium to long term staffing needs at current pay rates. This is the case in the UK where migrant workers largely languish at the lowest ends of the pay markets and frequently in the black economy, which local workers cannot stomach.

The reality is that we still have about 4.5% of the population unemployed, thats nearly 90,000 people, not to mention people on disability, some of who are able to work in certain circumstances and single parents who with training and proper childcare could work. The caveat however, is their willingness (or ability) to survive on a wage that does not match the surge in private sector rentals and far beneath the lending limit to buy a home. To this we are happy to impose migrant workers, most of whom will be tied in by the deeply unfair visa system which engages them exclusively to their employers, and as a result they will stay in low paid jobs for much longer than native workers. As many are also sending money back to families at home, they are willing to endure hardships that people here have not tolerated since the hard old days in London in the 1980s and back further.

Meanwhile IBEC and the trade unions ignore, in particular, the plight of thousands of workers in the private sector who are non unionised and who often had little or no pay rise since the heady celtic tiger days. The communications sector, for example, have enjoyed pay rises of 29% while the artifically bloated figure of 50% is the average, including of course the substantial rises enjoyed by public sector workers who are now significantly above private sector workers. This of course, is only an average figure, some workers have seen minimal rises (I myself have languished on about 14% of a rise over 7 years after a series of pay freezes, small rises and cuts). The reality is that there is a large underclass of sorely underpaid workers who earn 85% or less than the so called "average industrial wage." In fact the mythical AIW is in fact made up by a large minority of very highly paid public sector workers whose large pay packets have upset the reality of the situation. (The fact that 51% of the population are now on a marginal tax rate obscures the reality that a married couple only have to earn 23k each before being taxed at the higher rate, despite being actually earning more than 15% less than the AIW). The reality of low pay is particularly acute for people living in rented accommodation, where they may have no control over rent increases, even where starting on a very low rate, and people with children - no wonder that Ireland has such a huge rate of poverty amongst lone parent families.

The ugly reality of the so called jobs boom of many years is that huge numbers of jobs have been funded by IDA and subsidised by the tax payer only to be inaccessible for the vast majority of Irish people. For example a search for jobs in Cork reveals large numbers of demand for people with Scandinavian and East European languages which are not even taught in Irish schools. This means that the tax payer is creating (often very badly paid) holiday work for other Europeans while there is still unemployment. Other examples includes the current push for vast numbers of "high skill" jobs that can only be filled by people with specific qualifications unobtainable without full time study for 2-4 years, thus inaccessible to those in the workforce already, and those with non-specisalised qualifications. Yet government investment in 3rd level education is collapsing at the same time.

BigEejit

Too many on the dole and they talk about getting people in to do jobs that pay less in some cases than what Irish people (well .. not all are Irish, just most of them) get for doing nothing. I definitely agree that there should be subsidised childcare so single mothers can go to work ...

Basically, how the fuck are immigrants going to pay the bills and live a reasonable lifestyle working these low paid jobs? answer = theyre not ... they are there to fill the job market and depress the pay demands of the present workforce (all businesses love it when there are more people looking for work that jobs, it means cheap wage bills)


(Completely off topic: When I lived in Galway 9 years ago the place was overrun with crusties .... has the situation improved? are there still gangs of them on shop street on a wednesday evenings -dole ran out and need money for drink- playing didgierdoos, begging for money with hordes of dogs running around them?
Make the fuckers work in supermacs and they wont have time for that carry on)

RicardoSmith

I have to agree with shoegirl. The figures that are being quote in the media do seem to be skewed considerably. I've been contracting for the last few years and in all the companies I've been in theres been a lot of very low paid and underpaid workers. Most people find it hard to moce to another job because they aren't getting offers that have decent wages.

Thats seems to be the general trend with most people knowing someone who is out of work or struggling to find work. Thats the majority of people. I do know a few people that are on high wages but they are the exception rather than the rule.