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Interview with Lucia Valente, the Lazio Region’s Deputy Governor for Jobs (November 16th, 2015)

Di 16 Novembre 2015News

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(Italian version here)

Hello Lucia, could you introduce yourself?

Lucia Valente: I was born in Gaeta, I am a lawyer and I am the Lazio Region’s Deputy Governor for Jobs in the Zingaretti Administration.
I am also a Professor at “La Sapienza” the University of Rome in the Law Department.
Since 1991, the year of my graduation, I have been dealing with Labor Law.
My CV and other information are available on the website of Regione Lazio Administration.

What are the goals of the Regional Governor for Jobs? Which are the Lazio Region’s prerogatives in this field?

The principal objectives of the Regional Governor for Jobs  are to give a new impetus to the “active labor market policies” that are dealing with the protection of the people in the job market: in particular, fighting youth unemployment and facilitating the re-employment of those that have lost their jobs.
The economic crisis has deeply changed the labor market in Italy and in our region.
It was a structural crisis, not just an economic one. It affected the production system, changed the structure of consumption and investment, and had inevitable repercussions on the economics, social structure and employment in our area.
In the face of these changes, the answer cannot only be the use of social welfare. It is useful in the emergency situations to ensure income support, but not very effective in the medium and long term, instead it brings heavy social and financial repercussions.
We need to govern the processes of transformation.
We must try to mitigate the negative effects by implementing all the tools to create new stable job opportunities for qualified jobs in the most promising economic sectors, both for the domestic and international markets.
For this, as the Lazio Region, two and a half years ago we made a 10-point strategy that aimed to give the immediate and effective answers which would make a more dynamic and inclusive labor market.

What are these 10 points?

The 10 points of our strategy – revised based on our available resources and compliant with the European Community requirements – are the following:

  1. Relocation Agreement. The aim is to support people who have lost jobs, accompany this active job search, whether independent or dependent, with the support of a new system of employment services focused on cooperation between public and accredited active entities.
  2. Activational Income. The Lazio Region aims to be close to those who have lost their jobs and have no social safety net, as well as to accompany them in the search for a new job with financial supports.
  3. Apprenticeship. We published the Regulations Act on training profiles for all three levels.
  4. Periods of Orientation and Training. We implemented the guidelines on the regulation of internships with the approval of the Council of the DGR 199 in 2013.
  5. Reform of the Employment Centers. The aims is to facilitate the match between demand and supply of labor, simplify procedures and complement, where appropriate, the public with the private (i.e. accreditation). This is to ensure basic services to all citizens. To this end, we set up a consultative body for the employment centers of Lazio.
  6. Through regional training, we will improve the use of European Social Funds (ESF) in the search for new jobs until 2020.
  7. Special Plan for Female Employment. We joined the National Program Intesa2 and together we have financed a number of female micro-enterprises with over a million Euros and have helped them to achieve a better work-life balance.
  8. Protection and Safety. The regional health and safety committee which I chair has the task of cutting red tape and simplifying the rules to allow all businesses in Lazio, even small and medium-sized ones, to know and practice safety laws in the workplace.
  9. Disabled People. We approved the regulations concerning job placement of people with disabilities, to facilitate procedures and guarantee them certain times of entry into the labor market. We funded the D.G.R. N. 511/2013 for internships for social inclusion.
  10. Single Regional Jobs Regulation. We have computerized many of our activities, for example as the program of online internships and the regional observatory at work. Next we want to collect all the regulations on regional jobs together in a single text in order to make them easy to consult.

What stage are you at in this process?

I can say that we are well under way, but we will not stop.
In the next few days, we are going to publish the first list of the recipients of the 10 million Euros regarding  job relocation and activational income.
We received 14 thousand applications and – at this early stage – we can accept only 2 thousand.
But at the beginning of 2016 we will publish a new public announcement regarding funds.
We have taken steps to organize services for jobs.
With resolution on accreditation we have created a “Lazio model,” based on cooperation between public and private sectors, strengthening and enhancing synergy through the keywords public governance and private activities. Now we are about to sign the Agreement with the Ministry of Labour and social policies on the management of new employment services, in view of the birth of Anpal, the centralized agency for active policies.
We are working towards the creation of a regional observatory in the workplace and a “Consolidated law” on regional work.
It is important to decide the policies to implement, the results and the performance of those already in place.
This is in order to return positive employment data to growth.

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Recently you participated in the “Jobs Conference” of the Lazio Democratic Party with a contribution on the theme of “Active Policies for Jobs.” Can you explain what “Active Policies for Jobs” are?

The “Passive Policies” aim to tackle unemployment and the hardships connected with it, by providing supportive measures such as income support, while “Active Policies” refers to all the initiatives undertaken by the institutions – at a national and local level – to promote employment and job placement.
The “Active Policies” consist of four elements indicated before in the Lisbon Agenda and then in the European Employment Strategy (EES):

  1. Employability: improving the ability of an individual to enter the labor market
  2. Adaptability: updating individual knowledge to make workers compatible with the requirements of the market
  3. Entrepreneurship: developing quality and entrepreneurial spirit to start up businesses and help self-employment
  4. Equal opportunities: promoting policies of equality to increase women’s employment rates.
    The Lazio Region in 2015 allocated 73 million euro for the passive policies and 130 million for the Active ones thereby reversing the previous approach.

Can you give me some concrete examples of “active policies” for Jobs on which the Lazio Region is working?

Among the active labor market policies are initiatives related to “contracts of relocation.”
These establish a 6 month path for unemployed people aged more than 30 years.
Subscribers are brought to new jobs through a path made with a training body, which aims to form and help the members to reposition themselves in the world of work.
If the path is unsuccessful, the agency will not receive the incentives of the Lazio Region, or rather it will receives only a small part. We experimented first with workers of Alitalia 2014, using the Active Fund policies financed by Europe in October. The next will open in 2016.
Another initiative of active policies concerns “Youth Guarantee.”
Youth Guarantee is an European program aimed at young people aged 15 to 29 that are not enrolled in school or college, and also do not work and or receive training.
With “Youth Guarantee,” Lazio Region invests 137 million euro to guarantee young people training or work. The Youth Guarantee is an opportunity that, in addition to encouraging young people NEET in our region, allows us to experience a new system of services and active policies for the job.
The Lazio region would like that the paths and the Agreement Relocation become structural measures.
This is only the starting point: the region remains committed to combact unemployment

Which funds have been allocated to “Apprenticeship” and “Youth Guarantee”?

With the publication of public notices concerning apprenticeship and advanced training and research on transnational labour mobility and territorial cohesion, we have at our disposisition for members of “Youth Guarantee”, all the measures envisaged by the Regional Implementation Plan and we have committed more than 110 million Euros, about 137 million for the Lazio Region, in less than a year.
The framework is now complete.
We fielded four million Euros to promote the activation of apprenticeships to higher education and research, through recruitment incentives and the funding of training courses at universities, higher technical institutes and research organizations.
The goal is to ensure that young people hired under this type of contract training consistent with the demands of enterprises, so investing in human capital of the young people of our region.
However we have invested over two million and a half on finance those between members of Youth Guarantee, choose the activation of work experience or training abroad or in another region, including through the EURES network .
The financing consists in providing an allowance to support young people in all activities affecting their transfer, both in a different region or in a different country.

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October 15th, 2015 you took part in the “Jobs conference” of the Lazio Democratic Party. What issues did you face?

The “Jobs conference” was a moment of confrontation between the “Jobs Department” that I lead and the political “Jobs Commission” of the Lazio Democratic Party which is analyzing the situation in order to establish proposals for increased employment in our region.
It was a very interesting initiative, with many participants, and on the conclusion of which, we identified a number of initiatives on which to work together.
Now let’s get to work!

Thanks Lucia

Thanks to you

(byi Agatino Grillo for https://pdlazio.codesquare.biz/)

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Contacts

The “Jobs conference” of the Lazio Democratic Party

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See also

Democratic Party of Lazio

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