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News
• Europe's
youth tense over future prospects.
Warnings of volatility in state finances and the broader society
erupt as the most highly educated generation in
the history of the Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets,
writes RACHEL DONADIO.
Francesca Esposito holds a law degree and a master's and speaks e
five languages. She recently quit her
unpaid job for Italy's social t security administration.
FRANCESCA Esposito- NYT picture.
FRANCESCA Esposito, 29 and exquisitely educated, helped win millions
of euros in false disability and other
lawsuits for her employer, a major Italian state agency. But one day
last fall she quit, fed up with how surreal
and ultimately sad it is to be young in Italy today.
It galled her that even with her competence and fluency in five
languages, it was nearly impossible to land a
paying job. Working as an unpaid trainee was bad enough, she thought
seemed too much, but doing it at Italy
social security administration seemed too much. She not only worked
for free on behalf of the nation's elderly,
who have generally crowded out the young for jobs, but her efforts
there did not even apply to her own pension.
The outrage of the young has erupted, sometimes violently, on the
streets of Greece and Italy, as students and
more radical anarchists protest not only specific austerity measures
in flattened economies but a rising reality
in Southern Europe. People like Esposito feel increasingly shut out
of their own futures. Experts warn of
volatility in state finances and the broader society as the most
highly educated generation in the history of the
Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets.
Politicians are slowly beginning to take notice. Italy's president,
Giorgio Napolitano, devoted his year-end
message to "the pervasive malaise among young people", weeks after
protests against budget cuts to the
university system brought the issue to the fore.
Giuliano Amato, an economist and former Italian prune minister, was
even more blunt.
"By now, only a few people refuse to understand that youth protests
aren't a protest against the university
reform, but against a general situation in which the older
generations have eaten the future of the younger
ones," he recently told Corriere delta Sera, Italy's largest
newspaper.
Even before the economic crisis hit, Southern Europe was not an easy
place to forge a career. Low growth and
a corrosive lack of meritocracy have long posed challenges to
finding a job in Italy, Greece, Spain and
Portugal.
Today, with the added sting of
austerity, more people are left fighting over fewer opportunities.
It is a
zero-sum game that inevitably pits younger workers struggling to
enter the labour market against older
ones already occupying precious slots.
As a result, a deep malaise has set in among young people. Some take
to the streets in protest. Others
emigrate to Northern Europe or beyond in an epic brain drain of
college graduates. But many more suffer in
silence, living in their childhood bedrooms well into adulthood
because they cannot afford to move out.
"They call us the lost generation," said Coral Herrera Gomez, 33,
who has a PhD in humanities but still lives
with her parents in Madrid because she cannot find steady work. "I'm
not young," she added over coffee
recently, "but I'm not an adult with a job, either".
There has been a national debate for years in Spain about
mileuristas, a nickname for college graduates whose
best job prospects may well pay just €1,000 (RM4,077) a month.
As she spoke in a cafe in Madrid, a television on the wall featured
a report on the birthday of a 106-year-old
woman who said that eating blood sausage was the secret to her
longevity.
The contrast could not have been stronger. Indeed, experts warn of a
looming demographic disaster in
Southern Europe, which has among the lowest birth rates in the
Western world. With pensioners living longer
and young people entering the workforce later — and paying less in
taxes because their salaries are so low
— it is only a matter of time before state coffers run dry.
The problem goes far beyond youth unemployment, which is at 40 per
cent in Spain and 28 per cent hi Italy. It
is also about underemployment. Today, young people in Southern
Europe are effectively exploited by the very
mechanisms created a decade ago to help make the labour market more
flexible, like temporary contracts.
Because payroll taxes and firing costs are still so high, businesses
across Southern Europe are loath to hire
new workers on a full-time basis, so young people increasingly are
offered unpaid or low-paying internships,
traineeships or temporary contracts that do not offer the same
benefits or protection.
"This is the best-educated generation in Spanish history, and they
are entering a job market in which they are
underutilized," said Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, the leader of the
Comisiones Obreras, one of Spain's two largest
labour unions. "It is a tragedy for the country."
Yet many young people in Southern Europe see labour union leaders
like Fernandez, and the left-wing parties
with which they have been historically close, as part of the
problem. They are seen as exacerbating a two-
tier labour market by protecting a caste of tenured older workers
rather than helping younger workers enter the
market.
Yet in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spall, any change in national
contracts involves complex negotiations
among governments, labour unions and businesses — a delicate dance
in which each faction fights furiously
for its interests.
Because older workers tend to be voters, labour reform remains a
third rail to most politi¬cians. Asked at a
news conference last year about changing Italy's de facto two-tier
system, Italy's centre-right finance
minister, Giulio Tremon-ti, said simply, "You can't make violent
changes to the system."
New austerity measures in Spain, where the unemployment rate is 20
per cent, the highest hi the European
Union, are further narrowing the employment window. Spain has
pledged to raise its retirement age to 67 from
65, but incrementally over the next 20 years.
"Now people are being sent into early retirement at age 55," said
Sara Sanfulgencio, 28, who has a master's
degree in marketing but is unemployed and living in Madrid with her
mother, who owns a children's shoe store.
"But if I haven't started working by age 28 and I already have to
stop at 55, it's absurd."
In Italy, Esposito is finishing her lawyer traineeship at a private
firm in Lecce. It pays little but sits better on
her conscience than her unpaid work for the government.
"I'm a repentant college graduate," she said. "If I had it to do
over again, I wouldn't go to college and would just
start working." — NYT
The above article was extracted from : NSTP-6
Jan 2011.
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