NOT FULL EMPLOYMENT - 'FULL EMPLOYABILITY' Since I last posted to this list the news that the new Labour govt. in the UK had resurrected talk about 'full employment', or rather, 'opportunities for full employment', which I pointed out was not the same thing, the situation has become clearer. Her Majesty's govt in the shape of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is actually talking 'full employability' rather than full employment. The term can be added, writes former- London School of Economics researcher, Peter Robinson, in a piece due to appear in the journal 'Parliamentary Monitor' to a list of buzzwords which includes 'competitiveness', 'globalisation' and 'flexibility'. As he says, 'the new Government has elevated the notion of fostering "employability" to a central position in its aims and objectives.' Like many of its other buzzwords, this means many different things to many different people. However, writes Robinson, 'Raymond Plant, who might be regarded as one of the leading intellectual lights on the centre-left [No, I hadn't heard of him either!], recently defined employability as meaning equipping individuals to face a flexible labour market, so as to foster competitiveness in the face of globalisation' [one buzzword reinforcing another!]. 'Other commentators have used "employability" to try and encompass just about everything which might impinge on employment. So fostering "employability" means improving people's skills, helping them with child care, tackling discriminatory employment practices, and having the right macroeconomic policies - indeed the whole mix of relevant economic and social policy.. no two of these menus are likely to look the same. `The Department for Education and Employment seems to be narrowing down its definition.. to focus solely on the individual and defines employability as "the skills, experience and culture that make people better able to take up a wider range of jobs." This definition then would embrace policies such as education and training to improve skills, job subsidies and work placements to help promote labour market experience, and other as yet unclear policies to change the "culture" of jobseekers.. employability as defined seems to put most of the onus on the individual to get their act together if they are to find a job. The focus seems to be mainly on individual deficiencies as the barrier to reducing unemployment. Indeed you can come close to using "employability" in a way which seems to blame the individual for their plight. Unemployment is not then a function of Governments mucking up the running of the economy. The implication is if only the skills and cultural "deficiencies" of individuals were tackled everything would come right. 'The term "employability" as now being defined by the Government, carries with it very strong assumptions about the causes of unemployment, from which flow quite a narrow range of policies to tackle unemployment. Clearly offering individuals help with education or training or job search would form an important part of any package to tackle joblessness. However, it could only be part of a package. Employability, focusing solely on the characteristics of individuals, could not be the central aim of the Government, only a component of its strategy.' Robinson ends by predicting that, like other buzzwords, for instance 'stakeholding', 'employability' could have a short run before it too fades away. Patrick Ainley.
