Meritocracy/Tenure & Emigration

http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/06/economics-22062009-unemployment-social.html

young worker’s propensity to stay in this country is a function of several variables all of which are under threat from our current policies. Young and highly skilled workers require an environment in which their careers are less constrained by the incumbents. Given that Irish regulations favour the length of tenure over actual and potential productivity as criteria for promotion, layoffs and hiring, this is an area of serious concern. While October 2008 – April 2009 rate of increase in unemployment amongst all Irish workers was 64.5%, for 25-34 year-olds it was 77.5%. To keep young workers in this country, we need to give up some of the tenure-based job security that our trade unions enshrined in labour laws.

Higher minimum wage and social welfare benefits depress the premium to skills and aptitude that is collected by the young workers more than for older workers. Younger workers in Ireland already face lower tenure-linked wages, bringing their real consumption and wealth closer to those employed in low-skilled jobs and those who are not engaged in the labour force at all.

The current social welfare payments and benefits exceed lower grade workers’ earnings in all broad sectors of our economy, with the gap ranging between €1,423 per annum for production workers in industry overall to €2,006 per annum for lower grade workers in manufacturing.

As an open economy, with wage premia for younger workers rise in increasingly geriatric Germany, Italy, Belgium and other advanced economies, Ireland will face a simple choice – let our demographic dividend slip to other locations or create a more rewarding and meritocratic home market.

since October 2008 a rising share of layoffs were coming from white-collar traded and domestic sectors: finance, legal, marketing, advertising and so on. And it is primarily the younger workers who are getting laid off first.

Brain drain. The boom has shown that Ireland now behaves comparably to a US state when it comes to migration.

We either put an end to permanent positions where people can get away without pulling their weight, get rid of the minimum wage, and cut welfare payments of ALL types to the bone or say goodbye to another generation.

We are already above the 1980s long term unemployed rate.
If the emigration rate keeps up we will lose more people than during the 1950s :eek:

This is nuts. Do people not realise this or are those in employment thinking "im alright jack"? Well they arent there will be nobody to pay your pension and the state is heading towards bankruptcy if we dont get competitive. We need this generation to stay at home and work more than ever.

brendansmith

blindjustice wrote: »

We need this generation to stay at home and work more than ever.

Work where? There are no jobs available

narwog81

one of the 6 desired states for an Optimal Curency Area(OCA) is labour flexibility. the US is a perfect OCA in this regard and Europe would regard this trend as a positive thing in relation to the continuing stability of the EMU. Irish membership of the euro has more to answer for than just a period of low interest rates....

Sleepy

Tenure linked salary levels have been a bugbear of mine for a very long time.

People should be paid according to their contribution, not according to how long they've been punching a time card for.

flintash

brendansmith wrote: »

Work where? There are no jobs available

Did you check www.irishjobs.ie ?
Pay attention to salaries paid.
Even Bob The Builder aint refuse these offers

johnnyskeleton

blindjustice wrote: »

This is nuts. Do people not realise this or are those in employment thinking "im alright jack"? Well they arent there will be nobody to pay your pension and the state is heading towards bankruptcy if we dont get competitive. We need this generation to stay at home and work more than ever.

Well, in order to get people to stay at home and work more than ever, we need them to be thinking "i'm alright jack".

But certainly I don't think anyone should put themselves in a less advantageous position by staying here than if they left just because we need this young generation to stay at home and work more than ever.

To be honest, I suspect that Ireland is stuck in this spiral where during bad times the best and brightest are forced to leave to keep snouts in the trough, then when times get better and they start coming back, the snouts raise up to bray out "You abandoned your country in the bad times, therefore you are not entitled to benefit during the good times." After all, it was happening even back in Joyces day, and if you look at all the successful Irish people, most of them only became successful after leaving.

Just look at all the people who returned to Ireland in the late 90s early 2000s from the US, UK etc. Many if not most of them left in the 80s and could have helped a lot if they came back here, but instead we drover them away on the basis that they weren't hard core oirish enough to stick around during the 80s.

Of course, the logical conclusion to this is that eventually we will end up with more severe distinctions between the two groups. This is why FF are how they are and why people keep voting for them. It is becoming easier with every passing generation to brand the dissenters are wierdos.