WEB engleska verzija end.indd - UNDP Croatia

CHAPTER 3THE SOCIALLY EXCLUDEDif it turns out to be effective. Apart from re-qualificationcourses, CES also manages short-term job search, selfassessment,and self-presentation workshops that aimto increase the efficiency of job searches. About 2% ofunemployed in Croatia attended such courses in 2005.3.7.5 Access to Employment andEmployment ServicesFor many of the unemployed, the formal labour marketremains out of reach, offering only opportunitiesfor informal, mostly temporary work, primarily in theconstruction, trade or service sector. By taking thesejobs, unemployed individuals are robbed of legalprotection and social insurance. They do, however,receive monetary and psychological payoffs and thehope of eventually obtaining regular employment.There are several employment services operating inCroatia that can be divided in three groups. The firstare job mediation agencies that operate on a commercialbasis and cater to the competitive segmentof the labour market, that is, primarily university orpolytechnics (equivalent to International StandardizedClassification of Education level 5). The secondare temporary job agencies that have recently developed,catering to all profiles, but mostly to generallabour. Despite a positive evaluation of these firms,they are a niche service, with only 4% of the unemployed(according to UNDP survey sample) claimingto have contacted them during the previous monthof unemployment. The third option for prospectivejob seeker is the CES. It was founded in 1952 and isa public institution that administers unemploymentprovisions, public employment programmes (includingactive labour market measures), and job mediationfor the broadest profile of applicants.Job seeking and job-specific training are activitiesthat demand a great deal of effort and resources(postal charges, transportation costs, clothes, etc.)which may discourage those most challenged (thatis, the least employable) from taking part in the jobsearch and training process altogether. As a result,programmes are necessary which improve theemployability of the unemployed and thus facilitateactive job seekers and promote efficient outcomeson the labour market.Croatia has a tradition of training-oriented activelabour market policies which date back to the 1970s,but in the 1990s, this focus was shifted to employmentsubsidies. Among the attempted three short-lived activelabour market measures (ALM) introduced by thegovernment (1993-1996, 1998-2001 and 2002-2005),only the middle one (1998-2001) contained publicworks and training provisions. 106 The most recentset of ALM schemes targeted employment subsidiesprogrammes, consuming approximately 0.2% of theGDP. There has been no formal evaluation of thisprogramme, but existing reviews have deemed it tobe neither effective nor efficient (Oračić, 2005., Babić,2003). The current set of employment measurespresents a more balanced approach, based on theNational Employment Action Plan. It includes training,income maintenance, public works programmes,and employment subsidies for a narrowly definedtarget population with low employability (AnnualEmployment Plan, 2006).Box 11: A sketch of the life of the unemployedAfter finishing his education in mechanicalengineering, Filip got a job in a big pharmaceuticalcompany in the mid 1990s. The company did notpay him regularly, so he resigned. In the followingsix years, he worked as a waiter, but employersdid not register him. He was paid “under thetable”, and was given no job security – whichresulted in his termination when Filip was in hislate twenties. He started to look for a new job;he went to interviews and sent applications ande-mails. He tried one job, but it turned out tobe too strenuous for his health, and he is nowlooking for a job that would be less physicallydemanding. Filip is not the only member of hisfamily who cannot find a job; one of his brothershas a job, but the other keeps circulating fromthe employment service register to temporaryjobs and back to the employment service. Filipis attending an educational course organised bythe unemployed persons’ association, where hehas received significant social support, but he hasstill not found a job.80106 Although not very big in scope (2670 participants), public works programme performed in 1999, done in cooperation with localgovernment, was one of rare programmes to be subjected to thorough evaluation. Results of the evaluation indicate that that the publicworks program did not have a discernible impact on the employability of the participants, yet participants generally rated programmewell, as it has increased their material and psychological well being. On the expenditure side, the costs of public works program peremployed person proved to be high in comparison with most other active labour market policy measures.