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Youth employment: the very influential UIMM "calls for general mobilization"

2020-06-05T01:46:00.871Z


To avoid creating "a sacrificed Covid-19 generation", Philippe Darmayan, president of the Union of Metallurgical Industries and Trades


Faced with the challenge of youth employment, the government must present a comprehensive plan by the summer. The learning component will be revealed during the week, no doubt during the meeting this Thursday June 4 between Emmanuel Macron and the social partners. There is an emergency because it concerns 500,000 apprentices. Philippe Darmayan chairs the very influential Union of Metallurgical Industries and Trades (UIMM), which represents 42,000 companies in the automotive, steel and aeronautics industries and 1.5 million jobs in France.

Faced with the economic crisis that is coming in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic, in Le Parisien - Today in France, he launched an appeal to the government and businesses for a pact in favor of young people. "A country which does not invest in its youth is a country which renounces its future", warns the man who is also the boss of ArcelorMittal France.

As the government forecasts an 11% drop in GDP for 2020, are young people not likely to be the first victims of this recession?

PHILIPPE DARMAYAN. There is clearly this risk of creating a sacrificed Covid-19 generation. The order books have collapsed and to restart the companies are working on reducing their costs. This means restructuring, unfortunately layoffs, and a dizzying drop in hiring, the first impact of which will be on young people.

However, the state has massively helped businesses to maintain employment…

State aid will not last forever and is not enough to mask a worrying economic reality. We are already seeing the effects with a 30% increase in the number of job seekers under 25 in April. And the horizon is blocked. 750,000 young people will soon enter the job market when the hiring tap is closed: −70% of job offers in April for young graduates. There is an urgent need to act or we will leave a battalion of young people on the side of the road and a country which does not invest in its youth is a country which gives up its future.

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The first part of the plan is to be released on Thursday. What measures do you recommend?

We call for a pact and a general mobilization for youth employment. As a priority, it must go through a very strong financial incentive in favor of work-study programs: either with State reimbursement of work-study students' remuneration for at least 6 months, or with a doubling of existing aid and its extension to all companies and all diplomas. Much of the future of young people is at stake during the next school year. We have no room for error.

But these measures will not be of any use if companies are not in a condition to recruit ... What about the tens of thousands of alternating aspirants who will find themselves on the floor?

Some companies will not have enough visibility at the start of the school year, that's true. We therefore offer flexibility to avoid the September knife: that a young person who could not find an employer can continue their training for another 10 months and validate it. This would allow the 500,000 young people who want to do work-study programs at the start of the school year to start or continue their training, even if they have not found a company. And that would give companies time to turn around.

In a pact, there are reciprocal commitments, what are yours?

My call is also aimed at companies. In the industry, we have a vital need for young people and their skills. We must take into account the experience of the 2008 crisis. Companies have stopped their policy of recruiting young people and abandoned work-study programs. As a result, they lacked a trained workforce to go after the reconquest. We must not make this mistake again, which has cost France ten years of deindustrialization. If the State fulfills its share of the contract, we, the intermediate bodies of the industry, therefore commit to a general mobilization for work-study programs, with one objective: to maintain the recruitment of apprentices in 2020 at the same level as in 2019 .

But concretely, what are you going to do?

We are going to knock on the door of companies to encourage them and help them recruit apprentices when their situation allows them. Our employees and the 200 of the operator of inter-industrial competence will go on the roads to convince them to make this long-term commitment. We will strengthen our support for companies that plan to hire them and meet those who do not yet employ them. But to be successful, we need the state. It must support this mobilization by helping to reduce the cost of hiring apprentices.

More generally, and for the 750,000 other young people who will enter the job market?

We, companies, must continue to invest in youth! For this, we ask for exceptional support for the first hiring on permanent contracts through an exemption from social security contributions during the first 12 months of the first permanent contract.

And ask yourself, like some, some kind of young smic?

No, we don't take young people off! The point is not to pay them less, but to help us recruit them. Young people bring enthusiasm, creativity, skills. They will be an engine of recovery for us.

Source: leparis

All business articles on 2020-06-05

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