Empowering youth for independent living: addressing working conditions and labour insecurity

Facilitators: Yannis Charchantis, Sophia Dagli

 

Mangoland, Berryland, Liberlandia, Eleftherochora... These strange words are the names of four new countries born in the workshop, each of them summing up all the labour problems that can be found in the real countries where the members of each group came from. Through this idea, which combines the national with the European, the 19 participants from Greece, Turkey, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Denmark, Belgium, Croatia, and Romania were able to refer to some of the most common labour problems of their generation (unemployment, brain drain, lack of connection between education and job market), while they also linked working problems to issues such as the climate change, the artificial intelligence, the nepotism, or even the press freedom.

The top challenges they seem to face are low wages, unpaid jobs, the high competition, the difficulty of entering the labour market, the lack of information at all levels (education, training, rights, calls for recruitment, legislation) and of course all kinds of inequalities (class, social, educational, or between the private and public sectors and between urban and rural areas). Last but not least, the lack of strong unions and unionisation, which is linked to the dominant feeling that young people are not strong enough to deal with challenges because they are alone and not interconnected in powerful communities.

The solutions proposed were both personal and collective. What the individuals are called upon to do is: employers to raise wages, give opportunities and rationalise their demands and expectations, and employees to organise themselves into unions and choose protest as a means of assertion. Other solutions include promoting dialogue within civil society and, of course, active participation at various levels. On the other hand, decision-makers need to formulate labour policies (examples include shorter retirement ages and raising the minimum wage). They also have to ensure the inclusivity and representation of all age groups at labour market, to invest in education, connection and career orientation, to promote awareness and transparency of procedures, and to focus on small and medium-sized enterprises, start-ups, the local economy, decentralization. Finally, to promote a new direction for the economy, the so-called post-growth.