Retraining is all the political rage. To deal with rising unemployment and slowing job creation, the opposition parties are demanding a programme of retraining – in particular, those being laid off in the construction sector. No one, of course, is opposed to that. It makes sense. Yes, let’s retrain and retrain the retrained. But, as always, in recession times there are no short-cuts, no waving of the magic wand. And Marie Sherlock of SIPTU’s Research Department gives a small flavour of the challenges involved in retraining.
With particular regard to construction, the impact of the boom on employment was more a regional phenomena than a nation wide trend, to such an extent that close to one-quarter of all men in counties such as Wexford, Mayo, Donegal and Co. Galway were employed in the construction sector. Workers made redundant from traditional manufacturing industries face even greater problems of job and location mobility with little or no alternative, appropriate and decently paid sources of comparable employment available in their counties.
Ms. Sherlock points out this is compounded by lower than average educational achievement: one quarter of those employed in industrial production only had a Junior Cert (I suspect this figure might be higher in ‘traditional’ manufacturing which facing the brunt of closures) while in the construction sector nearly 40% only had a Junior Cert. This raises questions in respect of literacy, never mind familiarity with computers and digital devices.
One more sobering statistic she points out is that
‘ . . . the National Development Plan forecasts that by 2010, 62% of all net jobs created will require a third level qualification, yet at the time of the census in 2006, some 64% of the working age population only had an education up to the Leaving Certificate.’
New IDA projects coming on stream require highly-skilled workers. The new tradeable services require specific professional skills (finance, accounting, education). Factor in the fact that the most recent ESRI/FAS Vacancies Survey showed a substantial decline in vacancy rates in industry and services – you not only have a problem in retraining but in generating the opportunities to be trained into.
This is not just an uphill climb, it is a dogged crawl up a 90 degree cliff face. That’s not to say that it can’t be done but it will require nothing short of a revolution in our training policies, formal and adult education, as well as life-long learning: in other words, a proper labour market policy. As well, it will need to be buttressed by a strong, income-related, social insurance programme to protect people’s living standards while they are in retraining or back in formal education.
Most of all, it will require the institutional linkages – between training opportunities, job creation initiatives and forensically targeting particular growth-oriented sectors: a sophisticated set of integrated and uniquely public sector instruments which we don’t have.
So calling for retraining is the easy part; the hard part is figuring out the how and where and by whom in all the right measures needed to succeed.
Notes on the Front 
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