“The dynamic economy that Maltese entrepreneurs are competing in requires a well-trained yet flexible workforce. On the other hand while today’s workers seem keen on embracing the new employment regime they want to have a substantial amount of security and the consistent protection of workers’ social rights,” Education Minister Louis Galea said yesterday at the opening of the Malta Employers’ Association conference on ‘Dealing with labour Shortages’ which is focusing on strategies to make better use of a limited human resource.

Dr Galea said flexicurity was an integrated approach intended to enhance flexibility and security in the labour market contemporarily. Within the Lisbon Strategy, it was a means to successfully manage change and progress employment and welfare reform to meet the challenges of globalisation, technological innovation and an ageing population.

It was in this light that Malta’s employers must view the issue of labour shortages, not merely through the narrow view of skills shortages. Whilst lack of flexibility might be fatal for companies in the global market, lack of security might be keeping essential human resources away from the local labour market, he said..

Dr Galea said Malta had a considerable growth in labour supply; at 2.6 per cent it was more than double that of the EU average which stood at 1.1 per cent. Malta also had an unemployment rate which was lower than the EU average. At the end of 2006 the unemployment rate stood at 7.3 per cent in Malta and 8.2 per cent in the EU. This year these figures should continue to improve.

Dr Galea said the government was committed to continuing to develop a flexicure labour market, through four main initiatives, namely, making work pay; making employment legislation as flexible as possible while providing reliable protection to workers; through active labour market policies that helped the unemployed enter the labour market; and through lifelong learning.