For decades, employment promotion policies focused exclusively on the unemployed and on vulnerable groups as regards gender, age and time unemployed. The most usual actions tend to be aimed at improving their employability and empowerment (career guidance, job-seeking techniques, occupational training). Most of these actions do not tend to include the labour needs of the productive fabric or local territorial particularities. There is currently an asymmetry in the labour market with a high level of unemployment and precarious working conditions (temporary work, low salaries) and an uncovered demand by companies for professional profiles. This situation is acute in industry, especially in jobs linked to scientific, technological and digital transformation.
To confront this situation, in 2015 Barcelona Provincial Council (BPC) created the ‘Employment in Local Industry’ (ELI) programme. This programme aimed to reduce the imbalance between supply and demand of labour in local industry, through a paradigm shift in the conceptualisation and design of policies. The purpose is to promote employment, addressing this problem from a perspective of economic, social and sustainable development of the local territorial environments, respecting their particularities and differentiating their needs. It is a local policy which strategically and complementarily aligns the characteristics of the:
- industrial productive model (supply of labour);
- human capital and talent (demand for labour);
- territory where there is an intersection between demand and supply.
In short, the concept of employment promotion policy becomes one of labour market policy.
When the programme was first considered in 2013, unemployment in Catalonia was 21.87 %, and 48.92 % for people between the ages of 16 and 24. The only sector which appeared to be maintaining existing establishments, turnover and workforce was industry.
A project had to be devised, which also takes into account the framework of powers of the local administration in the sphere of employment. This includes the diversity existing in the organisational dependence of various local departments (employment, business, education, social affairs), without an integrated system of formal compulsory and post-compulsory vocational and occupational training, with early school leaving figures of 17 %. The majority of companies also had certain characteristics:
- SMEs with a limited ability to train employees, a high number of businesspeople and workers retiring in the coming years, under 2 % investment in RDI;
- declining numbers of people studying for technical professions;
- women under-represented in executive and technical positions and, in general, throughout industry;
- the proportion of people with compulsory education 36 %, vocational training 23 % and university education 41 % not adapted to the needs of companies.
The first step was to analyse sources of information, to interview professionals and academics from the industrial sector and to hold meetings to contrast and exchange opinions with local experts from the province’s town councils. It was a question of optimising the coordination of the project’s strategic lines to provide an optimal response to the objective pursued, guaranteeing sufficient flexibility for each territorial environment to adapt its own actions.
BPC is an institution which promotes the progress and welfare of citizens within its territorial sphere – Barcelona province – a network of 311 municipalities, representing 24 % of the total area of Catalonia and 74.4 % of the total Catalan population. It acts directly, providing services and, above all, in cooperation with councils.
The BPC area managing the ELI programme is the Labour Market Service (LMS). The LMS mission is to promote efficiency and foster the innovation of the local public employment system, favouring dynamism, sustainability and adaptation to the territorial structure of the labour market. The service offers local bodies technical and economic support to contribute to reducing unemployment rates, fostering stable recruitment and adapting to the socio-economic situation.
The LMS is aligned with European, state and regional strategy on promotion of the industrial sector. In 2014, the industrial sector began to be positioned at the base of a new productive model. On the European level, The Europe 2020 strategy for growth was disseminated, on a state level the Agenda for Strengthening the Industrial Sector in Spain was established and on a regional level, ‘Industrial Catalonia: a shared objective’ and the RIS3CAT strategy were published.