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A generation of temporary employee

Internship after internship, a 6-months job after a 3- months job and you never acquired enough work experience to make it for a junior position. The young generation ( I am in it!) spends couple of years of more doing temporary jobs in order to gather experience and to collect little money (form which usually you can barely survive on).

Couples can barely live together and, if they do, they live with the constant fear of being laid off. They question if next month their contract will be renew and if they will be able to pay the rent, to buy grocery, to go out take a beer with their friends. Life is just uncertain. You try to look at the positive aspects of it. You still think over a little bit more...Ok, there are some positive aspects. You try to make the best out of it. You might move to another city for a job so you take it as the beginning of a new adventure. Meet new people, new colleagues, learn to adapt to everything new in your life. Your are not ye trapped in a life which you would not like in 30 years.

But still, you live in uncertainty. You cannot move together with you partner because you are constantly moving from one place to another in order to find a decent job, a new opportunity. You actually do not even try to have a stable relationship because you know that in 3 months you will have to relocate. You meet "friends" that you probably never see again.

You change work place. Basically the time you arrive and you adapt then you leave. We are the most well prepared generation from a educated point of view. Most us have the possibility to study, we hold a bachelor degree, a master degree, we all speak at least 3 languages, we can use the computer, we can use social media, we go study abroad, we can do anything but IT IS NEVER ENOUGH. But the story does not end here. When you look for a job, we have to have work experience (often also for a traineeship), we need a nice CV and a proper motivation letter. Moreover, multinationals ask for a attitude test and then maybe you arrive at the last step - the interview- to actually hear, after, that someone else has been chosen because she "fits better" the job profile.

To sum it up, you spend days looking for a decent, often underpaid job, after you have studied an average of 5 years at university. You have debts with the government or your parents in order to cover your studies and after that you realize that finishing school is just the end of the beginning.

#temporary jobs #workplace #job #working #newgeneratio

goodideaexchange

I have a unique perspective on what work layoffs are like. On the one hand, I’ve written for executive leadership and taken part in crafting the messages that announce the layoffs and justify them to the people who remain with the company. On the other hand, I’ve been laid-off several times and...

How men still think that women have to choose them over their own life

In an ideal world, men and women will live on love, be happy and not face problems related to career and money. Perhaps a man will have a well paid job, find a nice house and start to plan for a family.The woman will just follow with the flow.

However this is not the ideal world. Women finally have the possibility to choose to have a family or to have their career, to support themselves economically or to choose to cope up with both (although very difficult, there is always a trade off).

I wonder what will have happen is roles are exchanged. Will a man choose his love for a woman and leave his "dream job"? I personally doubt it, but this is also my personal opinion. If roles would be exchanged, men and women will find themselves arguing all the time because a man thinks that he has the right to go to work, to make money and to have its own work related satisfactions in life.

A men will not always understand why a woman is looking for something else in her life. A men will have difficulties to support his love in a different sphere which is not also related to him. Men are facing a new generation of women that want to achieve something is their lives. Women are understanding how they can be happy by themselves and not always rely on someone. They understand that they can make it on their own and that they want to take their time.

Social pressure and how society taught us how to live should be abolished. Everyone should find his/her way of living. Loving someone means to understand the other and to support him/her as much as possible. Loving someone means to let her free of making her own choice without judging but finding a solution together.

Imposing a way of living on another being just because it is intrinsically embedded in society does not make us free. Conventions and tacit norms limit human being's freedom. Love as we think of, as society think of, is just a social convention.

Love is sacrifice between two people which want to achieve something together because they really want it, not just because society told them to do it, not just because society told up that we have to find the right person, marry him, have children and die together. This fake values are just created to distract us from what we really want.

Women have always been considered as having a lower position is society and this is because men are scared of their power.

#womenpower #society values #personal freedom

Does love really exist?

There is pretty much a lot of research about the labor market and the link between the former and human capital and how it can be employed in the most efficient way to enhance productivity. What is often shadowed is the impact that the labor market has on people. In this article I would like to point out only one side of the story, regarding love and how the labor market has changed it.

Migration is never been as fast and as “normal” for society as now. We move from our countries, regions or cities for many different reasons but the most common one is job related. Often we do not want to leave our beloved ones and our land but we leave with the hope to find a better future. Besides the luckiest one, which move for the pleasure to do it, moving for a better job or to find a job is one of the main cause of migration.

Movement of people has never shaped human relations as it is doing now. New couples are formed and some couples which have been together break up due to distance. European babies are born where the mother comes from the Netherlands and the father from Italy. Distance relationships are always more common. Therefore a new feeling is being added to other related to “love”.

Besides jealousy, happiness, joy, madness, there is the feeling of missing someone because of the distance. It is a feeling which has different consequences on the partners. First of all, they both have two parallel lives. One is when they are “single” because the partner is away and the other is when they are together. By saying “single” I do not necessarily mean that one of the partners is having other relationship outside the couple’s environment. Being “single” means having its own life, with its own spaces and its own path, and not taking into consideration the other within the everyday life since he/she is not physically there. Therefore there are much more nights out with friends, drinks with colleagues, going to the movie and different events. However there are also many days where you are lonely and you miss your partner. In this case a person usually learns to adapt to the situation and learn that being by him/herself is not actually so bad. The parallel life with the partner goes on as well. Everything seems perfect when you are together; you tend not to fight since you want to enjoy the little time you have.

The tradeoff between love and having a career –or simply a job- is quite visible: 1) you decide to break up with your partner, 2) you live a parallel life for a long time until one of the two give up on the job, 3) you spend the rest of your life adapting to the two lives. The choice between the three options is very personal and depends of what you want in life.

Then another question comes under the spotlights: Does the idea of orthodox love really exist? In other words, are two people meant to be together? Not really. If you think about it, meeting a person is just a matter of circumstances and probabilities. You move to another city and you meet someone you like. You do not move to another city because you are meant to meet someone. People that usually have some similarities link with each other. Before globalization, there were very less mixed couples. You were born in that town, you grew up there, you probably met your future wife in your earlier twenty and you married and had kids. You probably only moved when you went to vacation. The chances to marry someone from your home town were the highest since that was the only world you knew.

Real love- conventional love- does not exist. We think of the concept of love as being perfect, as being two people meant for each other, as being this feeling of full joy, as being sacrifice for a little bit of happiness. Love is just a combination of probabilities on whether you meet a person or not. That person then can make you feel happy some days and unhappy others.

Date: 21 October 2014

#labor market #love #conventional love #parallel life

Small thought of the author

It happened to me that I was wearing a pair of shoes all day long which was too tight for my feet. Really I could not handle the pain. At my work place was fine because I could stay barefoot. On the way home, I decided to walk without shoes for about 1.3 km. The silly thing is that I have noticed how many people look at the ground while walking instead of enjoying what’s around them.

#walking barefoot #shoes

onlinecounsellingcollege

Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.

Unknown (via everydaymermaid)

Africa and its apocalypse

Tuesday I have attended a conference at the Naumann foundation about free trade in Africa, the fastest growing continent in the world. The speakers, Olivier Kamitatu[1] and Sean Woolfrey[2], were invited to address the problems of Africa and to assess a solution. After a long preamble – both speeches were actually just a long preamble- about the problems that affect the continent such as the high property rate, the unemployment rate, corruption, political instability, lack of good infrastructure and energy supply, they both affirms that trade are fundamental to improve African economic conditions and to increase growth.

GDP growth was 4.8% and 5.3% in 2013 and 2014 respectively; however Africa needs an annual growth of 7% in order to reduce poverty. Trades are therefore one of the solutions: Intra and Extra African trade. Intra African trade is fundamental to sustain the domestic economy. In order to boost the economy, African countries need to collaborate with each other and eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers. Extra African trade is also important especially with countries such as the EU.

Nonetheless, when it comes to practice, African countries just go backward. Recently, several countries of the East African Community (EAC) had not ratified the free trade agreement signed with the EU, incurring great loss for their economy. This show how there is a big gap between speaking and acting. When it comes to make a real decision it seems they cannot reach it.

It is true that African countries have been colonized and their natural resources exploited for many years however it is time that they get conscious of their actions. They have been helped with aids coming from developed countries and they have enjoyed a special position in trading terms (for example, with the EU they were trading under the Generalized Scheme of Preference[3]).

The speakers were very good at explaining the problems that characterized many African countries making them quite repetitive. I think we are all aware of what is going on in Africa and the issues that have been listed by the speakers have been affecting the continent since ages. It is time to address the reality and assess how we can practically improve the situation and what Africa is doing to help itself.

[1] President of Africa Liberal Network and the Leader of the Alliance puor le Renouveau du Congo (ARC)

[2] Policy Officer in the Food Security and Economic Transformation and Trade Programmes

[3] The Generalized Scheme of Preference enables developing countries exporters to pay less or no duties on their export to the EU (European Commission).

Date: 15 October 2014

#african trade #Olivier Kamitatu #Sean Woolfrey European Union #GSP #africa

forbes

Facebook and Apple have both announced an uncommon program to help their female employees lean all the way in. The tech giants will now cover the cost of egg-freezing treatments for women (and their male partners) who want to delay their family plans in favor of advancing their careers.

aboutactuality

There are thousand of ways in which a woman can bring a positive contribution to the workplace and at the same time plan to have a child. A woman has the right to decide for her career but she should not be put on a crossroad, she should be able to do both things. Just remember: At the end, multinationals are made of people.

The trade off between Nature andTechnology

Yesterday, 14th of October, the United Nations proposed a movie titled “Project Wild Thing”. Very inspirational and very well done, the movie centered the story on David Bond, the film’s director, which entitled himself “Marketing Director of Nature”. Frustrated because he could not convince his kids to go to play outside and enjoy nature, he decides to promote the experience of the outdoor. The movie remains linked to the personal life of the director. The camera follows him during his attempt to “sell” nature to kids as an alternative to sit in front of the TV or to play with video games. David Bond is inspired by his own children and he wants to create a better life for them. In order to do so he targets parents, which often are the real reason why children do not play outside. Parents are afraid that kids will get hurt in some way or another. They are actually afraid of the outside and they make the mistake of projecting their fear on their kids.

It seems a paradox how technology can ease our lives and at the same time make it worst. It is scientifically proved that human beings have an inner connection with nature. Just imagine how much happier we are when the sun is shining and we are enjoying a fantastic view next to a river for example. We are social animals and we like to play and to enjoy our natural environment. However our natural environment changed through time. We did not adapt to the environment like any other animal, we adapted the environment to us. Therefore, in order to make space for the continuous growth in population, we design cities which could host all of us, obviously, at the expenses of natural space.

It is difficult to find the real cause of why kids do not play outside then. David Bond asked a very interesting question during the debate:”Is it because they do not have enough space to play or because they do not choose to go outside?”We tend to focus mostly on the former question whereas the latter can instead be the real reason. If we think about it, kids are boomed by cartoons, video games, tablets, phones which often replicate nature. Kids always see nature on a screen but they miss the real experience. Therefore they grow up with the idea that nature is dangerous and not fun.

I believe that children have a propensity to play, to get dirty, to discover, to touch, to smell, especially when they are in the early age. They are generally curious and most of what they experience in everyday life is new. Nonetheless, children’s way of thinking can be easily shaped especially when they are young. It is fundamental how parents and how societies helps shape their minds and help them decide to prioritise one thing over another and, in this case, outdoor over indoor activities.

Nevertheless, we cannot only blame the parents. We must be realistic. Our way of living changed through time and we reached a level of development that past generation has never seen before. Although very honourable the movement that David Bond started, we should and that it can directly influence their personality, but technology is part of our life and we cannot eliminate it from young generation since they see it every day. I think we have forgotten that kids have a lot of fantasy and that they are able to develop a game by themselves. Parents should start to think that nature can be part of their life, even once per week or once per month whereas policy makers should start to design cities that are green- friendly.

Date: 15 October 2014

#wildthing #nature #david bond #united nationa #project wild thing #children #outdoors

Economic Freedom is NOT political or social freedom

Scientifically proved, economic freedom leads to prosperity. Countries that are characterised by institutions that promote economic freedom benefit from higher investment rates, fastest growth, high income levels and rapid reduction in poverty. Open markets allow countries to have a comparative advantage in the world economy and to become more competitive in the global value chain.

This was the main subject of the event I have attended on Tuesday 7th of October at the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung Institute. The speakers were launching a new index to measure economic freedom based on 5 basic components: size of government, legal system and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally and regulation. Data are freely available on the website (http://www.freetheworld.com/) and the index can be used as a proxy for economic freedom in research studies. Nonetheless the conference was just a launch of the world index and therefore it was very descriptive. Final remarks were made by the exhausted MEP Olli Rehn, which jumped into the conversation at the last moment. His speech had little to do with what the other panellists had said previously. I believe that he confused economic freedom with human or civil rights. For how much all of those three concepts can be linked to each other, they are quite different.

Civil rights ensure a person ability to participate in social and political life without discrimination or repression. Human rights are instead intrinsically linked to the human beings’ nature. The United Nations Universal declaration of human rights states, above all, that we are all born free and equal, that we have the right to life and that we are all equal before the law. Undoubtedly, civil and human rights are crucial for the development of a nation however they fall into a different category with respect to economic freedom.

Instead, economic freedom is based on four main pillars: 1) personal choice, 2) voluntary exchange coordinated by markets, 3) freedom to enter and compete in markets, 4) protection of persons and their property from aggression by others (Economic Freedom of the World, Report 2014). Economic freedom occurs when individuals have the right to make economic transactions and make benefits from them, in respect of others’ property rights.

In defence of Mr. Rehn I must say that the day of the conference he was coming from a meeting with the Parliamentarians and he was rushing through time. I guess we can justify him this time. Nonetheless, although the link between political and social freedom is thigh with economic freedom, we should use those concepts carefully and be aware of their limits.

Date: 9 October 2014

#economic freedom #civil rights #olli rehn #european parliament #european commission #european union

FairTrade debate: Are we missing the core goal?

Yesterday, 7th October 2014, the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) held a friendly and young event near Saint-Gilles. Personally, I have to say that it was one of the first conference were the majority of the participants were young people. I really appreciated how the event was organised. The panellists were coming from different fair trade branches and from different countries and they were mediating four debates. There were basically four questions open for discussion:

1) How to deal with North “FT” products?

2) Should be fair trade sold in supermarket?

3) How can we convince citizens to buy Fair Trade? How can Fair Trade be promoted at local level?

4) Should the governments/international institutions keep their hands off fair trade or should them promote Fair Trade? What is our role on it?

I personally attended the 4th and the 2nd group. The 4th group was mediated by the WFTO Advocacy’s Director. It came out that International institutions should sustain the FairTrade movement but they should not interfere with the internal making process of the WFTO. Fair enough. As all the organizations in Brussels, also the FairTrade movement wants to lobby to change the system.

The second workshop was quite controversial. Apparently the “FairTraders” are not prone to help sell products in supermarkets because they believe that they do not use fair terms of trade. Usually goods sold in the supermarket are more visible when they are in the middle or “consumer height”‘s shelves. FairTrade goods are usually less visible and FairTraders are afraid that consumers will not recognise them for what they are. Their ideal world is made up of shops were only FairTrade products are sold.

Is this a solution? In an utopia, possibly. But in the real world where big sharks are playing and where the free market is enhanced, this solution should not even be under discussion. On the one hand, you have multinationals which have the resources to produce a low costs and therefore sell a lower price, which they can move a plant abroad where labour standards are barely developed and were labour cost is quite low. On the other hand, the FairTrade movement wants to help those farmers in developing countries accessing a market in a developed country when they could not even think of doing it by their own. Nice cause, quite fair I would say. However we are missing the big picture.

Is your goal to support farmers in developing countries having a better life? If the answer is yes, you should not even argue about selling or not products in supermarkets. If the trade off between selling products in supermarkets is to help raise awareness among consumers and the public and increase the demand for FairTrade products so that those farmers could have a decent life, what are we arguing about?

Dear FairTraders, the world is moving fast and you are losing your train. Do you want to change the system? Are you really trying to modify capitalism and laisser-faire? The fight becomes difficult. But there is one thing you can do. If you cannot fight it, adapt yourself to achieve your goals.

Your aim is not only to do advocacy. Your aim is to help farmers reaching developed countries. Your aim is to make the world a better place where inequality is diminished, where a farmer in a developing and least developed countries can afford to send its kids to school thanks to the FairTrade movement.

Date: 8 October 2014

#fairtrade #wfto #brussels #developing countries #supermarkets #awereness

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