Apprenticeship remains key issue in 1998

The Austrian social partners are at odds over measures for absorbing 1998's 15-year-old school-leavers into further education and training. Suggestions vary from additional schooling to tax breaks for firms offering training positions. There are also attempts to break new ground in occupations hitherto without formal apprenticeship curricula. The deadline for agreement is the end of March 1998.

A perceived dearth of openings for apprentices, in the context of the demographic trends leading to increasing numbers of 15-year-olds, was one of the major employment issues in 1997 (AT9708128F). Alerted, the Government and the social partners intend not to be caught unawares in 1998. Preparations are already underway to have the right incentives and sufficient counseling capacity in place when school finishes at the end of June. For the time being, however, the preparations are hampered by competing and conflicting evaluations of the measures taken in 1997 (AT9706116F), and by disagreement over the scale the problem is likely to assume in 1998. They are also hampered by the fact that the cost of the 1997 measures is not known.

Controversy over policy

In the view of the Chamber of the Economy (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich, WKÖ), the 1997 measures were basically successful but unjust. Companies that do not normally take on apprentices were able to have some of the cost of doing so borne by the public, while those which regularly and reliably train apprentices did not receive subsidies. The WKÖ's estimate is that the number of new apprentices was 6% higher than in 1996, this being the first time since 1978 that the number of new contracts increased. A further rise in 1998 is thought unlikely unless the cost of apprenticing is reduced. The main savings suggestion made by employer organisations in January 1998 is to exempt enterprises from having to pay apprentices' remuneration on the one or two days per week spent in vocational school. They also suggested a tax break for apprenticing and calculate that the two measures together would cost up to ATS 3 billion.

The Austrian Trade Union Federation (Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund, ÖGB), together with the Federal Chamber of Labour (Bundesarbeitskammer, BAK), has shown some concern that the problem may become aggravated in 1998. They therefore suggested creating new means to absorb the surge in 15-year-olds through a new type of full time vocational school accessible only to those who were accepted neither in an apprenticeship position nor in a secondary school. These schools, known as Berufsfachschule, would provide training in a chosen profession for one year. The curriculum would emulate time spent on a job by offering practical subjects two-thirds of the time. If an apprenticeship became available during the year, then the student would be transferred seamlessly to the regular part-time vocational school. About 4,000 students would be expected from September 1998 at a cost of ATS 300 million per year, not including something akin to an apprentices' remuneration. A second suggestion made by the ÖGB is to tax non-apprenticing firms in favour of those apprenticing.

Employers oppose both suggestions vigorously. They feel a better solution would be to introduce so called part-apprenticeships. They argue that this would provide poorly-qualified young people - who would otherwise neither get any training at all nor even be employed - with structured on-the-job training in a number of specific tasks without asking them to comprehend the full scope and scale of tasks embodied in a profession. The employers claim that roughly 45% of unemployed people are in fact "unemployable" because they lack an education, and that this applies to young unemployed people as well.

New professions and new trades

From February 1998 a revised glossary of professions will be available from the Public Employment Service (Arbeitsmarktservice, AMS), and especially from the 50 Occupational Information Centres. The update was compiled from the job offers in three Austrian and two German daily newspapers and the Economist in the course of three months, and 180 new occupations or occupational labels will be listed. The new glossary is intended as a means for all unemployed people to match their skills better with demand. However, it serves especially first-time job seekers who are trying to decide which skills they should best be apprenticed to.

At the same time, the debate over the creation of new and the amalgamation of old trades in the Trades Regulations (Gewerbeordnung) - with which the definition of new apprenticeship curricula is closely bound up - continues. In particular, such areas as new media, marketing, design, and telecommunications are thought to require an increasing number of formally and specifically trained workers. The main problem at this time is to specify occupational skills that are not likely to be obsolete in five years' time. Invariably the exercise leads to lists including little more than team capabilities, communication and language skills, sales aptitude and other similarly general skills.

From January 1998, 21 new so-called "part-trades" were created, but operators in these areas are explicitly prohibited from training apprentices. Part-trades are clearly delineated, single-task occupations that can be carried out independently. Some examples are key-cutting, installation of phones, radios and alarms in cars, bicycle mechanics, ice cream making, shoe repair and ironing. These occupations will no longer require a trades certificate. Operators are limited to a maximum of five employees.

Commentary

The social partners are scheduled to reach an agreement on reforms to the apprenticeship system in the first quarter of 1998. It will be necessary to keep to the timetable in order to settle the issues before the new crop of school-leavers come onto the labour market. This is even more true because some of the reforms will require parliamentary approval. Given the popular interest in the issue, the social partners are united in the need to take measures, and the Government will no doubt see to it that agreement is in fact reached on time. The social partners' basic approaches are so fundamentally different, however, that a settlement will be difficult. The trade unions favour measures taken within the educational system, no doubt because they provide certainty about the outcome. They also favour penalties on employers not providing training. The employers would much rather see monetary incentives to train.

Progress in respect of the formulation of new training curricula and the amalgamation of old ones is slow. It is likely that efforts to conclude collective agreements on pay and working time in telecommunications and in computing (AT9710135F) will become intertwined with and contribute to the definition of trades and especially of training curricula. (August Gächter, IHS)