UNI takes position on green cards

The issue of shortages of information technology (IT) professionals in the EU, and the possible subsequent introduction of "green cards" for non-EU workers in this area, has been highly topical during 2000. In September 2000, UNI-Europa's IBITS committee, representing trade unions organising IT workers, adopted a position paper on the matter.

The Industry, Business Services and Information Technology (IBITS) sector committee of UNI-Europa, the European regional organisation of Union Network International, met on 4–5 September 2000 to discuss a number of topics, including the European labour market for professionals working in the field of information technology (IT). It noted that there are some 10 million people currently employed as information and communication technology workers in Europe. This breaks down, according to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO), into 2 million people working directly in information and telecommunication industries and 8 million people working in user industries such as banking, manufacturing, commerce, insurance, communications and business services.

As this is an extremely fast-moving sector, the nature of the jobs and the skills requirements for these workers is expected by UNI-Europa to change rapidly. In addition, organisations such as the European Commission expect a steady increase in demand for suitably skilled workers, with the result that demand is expected to outstrip supply dramatically over the next two years. A variety of sources, including the European Commission, expect that the number of vacancies in this sector will rise from 500,000 at the end of 1998 to between 1.6 and 1.7 million by 2002. UNI-Europa notes that, despite the fact that unemployment is still relatively high in the EU, these vacancies are hard to fill, due to the fact that the high levels of specific skills required require long-term investment in training.

The UNI-Europa IBITS sector committee therefore adopted a position on 5 September after holding an in-depth debate on this subject. It fully endorsed a statement adopted in April 2000 by the UNI-Europa executive committee which: calls on the European Commission to develop a reliable and up-to-date statistical system so that it can analyse the current situation in the IT sector and be able to identify future skills needs; and urges the Commission, Member States and European employers to join UNI-Europa in developing short- and medium-term measures designed to address the skills shortage in this sector.

The IBITS committee takes the view that, although the introduction of so-called "green cards" (ie relaxing immigration restrictions for non-EU IT professionals) may be an inevitable short-term measure to deal with skills shortages, such schemes should be subject to a number of conditions. A number of countries, most notably Germany (DE0003252F), have recently launched green card schemes aimed at encouraging foreign IT specialists to work in their country for a fixed term in order to relieve immediate skills shortages in this sector. UNI-Europa suggests that the following conditions should apply to the launch of any such green card schemes:

1. that actual demand for IT professionals from outside the EU must be proven and that work permits must be issued only in the case of demand for qualifications not available on the domestic labour market;

2. that governments and employers must provide education and training as the main means of solving IT skills shortages;

3. that priority in terms of IT training must be given to women, older employees and unemployed people;

4. that the same terms and conditions of employment as those which operate on the domestic market should apply to non-EU IT workers;

5. that employees' representatives and trade unions must be involved in the procedure for granting work permits for non-EU IT workers;

6. that the migration of IT professionals to EU countries must not lead to a "brain drain" in their home countries; and

7. that immigrants must be given a future for themselves and their families in the host country.