Thank you very much for your comment and very interesting question. As you mention, work-sharing, or short-time work schemes, partly or fully subsidised by public authorities, exist in many European countries. Most of these countries have either introduced or modified the characteristics of their short-time work schemes, to try to mitigate the social consequences of the economic crisis. Not only are these important safety nets for workers but, in some countries, the impact of the economic crisis on labour markets has been cushioned through adjustments in working time, notably through some form of short-time work arrangements (e.g. in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg).

The Turin Centre provides a number of training courses for the private sector both for company representatives and employers’ organizations, including in the field of employment policies. However, the Centre does not offer so far courses for company representatives on Human Resources Management nor specifically on how/when to use short-time work.

Your idea is certainly very interesting and I would like to invite you to contact my colleagues in charge of training activities in these fields Mr Valter Nebuloni (v.nebuloni@itcilo.org) and Mr Arnout de Koster (a.dekoster@itcilo.org).

Patricia O’Donovan,
Director,
International Training Centre of the ILO

My question – We both know that unemployment is a major issue in the U.S. and in the EU as well. In the U.S. the Dept. of Labor has just launched a major initiative to promote “Work Sharing” in place of mass layoffs, the largest source of unemployment in the U.S..

In their marketing of W.S. to employers – the U.S. DOL often praises certain E.U. countries as leaders in employer use of W.S. Can I assume that educational courses for senior enterprise managers exist that teach the complicated strategy and practices that add up to – applying Work Sharing – not layoffs – to cope with problems of worker redundancy. If such special courses in corporate governance as applied to labour do exist in Europe, would they be found in Turin, at ILO-ITC?

I would hope so, even expect so, since employment security is a major dimension of the DECENT WORK concept preached world-wide by the ILO. I aspire to introduce such a course into higher education in the U.S., starting at Cornell University. It would be tremendous if such a course could be imported from Turin and adjusted for use in the U.S.

Thank you for a potentially valuable insight.

Harold Oaklander, Ph.D.