You get to listen to discussions against precarious employment all over the place. The question remains: in reality, what serious measures are being implemented against the practice of employing people while allowing theminexistent or minimal social protection, with miserable wages and work conditions that give full control to employers?
The problem can be discovered everywhere in Europe. However recently I had to doubt whether there is sufficient good faith to overcome precariousness. I asked the European Commission how it defines the phenomenon, about which it has published quite a number of reports.
To my surprise I realised that the European Union does not have one robust and clear definition as to what constitutes precarious employment. I asked again for a better clarification of how the EU recognizes precarious conditions of employment. This got me nowhere.
How can you run an effective policy against precarious employment practices when you have no clear idea as to what these really consist of?
I would not be surprised if precarious employment continues to spread. Meanwhile no doubt rhetoric against the practice will alsocontinue to prevail.
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BARROSO
The news that the ex-President of the European Commission Barroso is being engaged by the global financial firm Goldman Sachs as a front rank director, triggered a widespread negative reaction. Barroso took on the job without infringing Commission rules about how an ex-Commissioner cannot secure such employment until eighteen months have lapsed from his having left Berlaymont.
The firm he is joining is considered as a main player in the 2008 financial crisis and Barroso played a central role in shaping EU policy to deal with it. Over the years he was greatly criticised for not having been sufficiently proactive, simply reacting to events as they developed. He was also denigrated for having totally neglected Europe’s social dimension.
With his new role, Barroso seems to have confirmed the impression that he was always on the side of the big multinational corporations. With them he feels comfortable, and will go on backing their interests.
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TREES
The initiatives to plant more trees in Malta that are being mentioned can only be applauded. Over time, successive governments launched different programmes on the same lines that either were failures or lost impetus.
During the sixties of the previous century, when Malta’s countryside still looked like countryside, a worthwhile project was the setting up of a grove to commemorate John Fitzgerald Kennedy at Salini.
During the seventies, the then Labour government promoted for a number of years afforestation schemes, with the planting of olive and other trees that were adapted to local climatic conditions.
More recently, a similar exercise was attempted at Magħtab to replace a rubbish dump with a small wood. It would not seem that the project succeeded very well. Meanwhile, many palm trees were destroyed by an infection that could not be eliminated.
In the long term, we need a new afforestation strategy for the Maltese islands.