Itions, salaries should be made y – MEA Director General

in itself wrong – but we need to be careful that the private sector, which is the motor behind the economy, does not depend mainly on foreign workers and that the Maltese all end up working in the public sector.

Despite the influx of migrants coming to work in the country, recently the MEA has spoken of a labour shortage; do we still find this shortage prevalent in Malta?

The demand for labour is continuously on the increase. A lot of private companies are not finding people to work, so they are falling back on hiring foreigners.

There is an important change to note in this as well. Up until a few years ago, the majority of foreign workers in Malta came from the EU while those that we call third country nationals were few in number. Today, this trend has been reversed. Since a lot of European economies are now recovering and generating their own work, less and less EU nationals are moving in search of work. Therefore the ratio of EU to third country nationals is skewing to- wards the latter, and a lot of workers coming to work here are coming from outside Europe.

Unemployment is going down across Europe – some countries, such as Germany and Hungary even have less unemployment than Malta. Hence, there is now going to be a Europe-wide competition between these countries for the same third country nationals who are, at the moment, coming to Malta. If these third country nationals see that the situation in other countries is better than in Malta, they will go there. That is already happening to some extent; the rental situation is affecting foreign workers, including professionals, like it is the Maltese. We have a lot of reports of foreign workers coming to work and then leaving after a short time because it is simply not worth living in Malta from a financial point of view.

Something else which was brought up during the Malta Business Weekly’s most recent business breakfast was the need for more flexible family measures. What are employers ready to grant to provide for a better worklife balance?

As an association we are fully in favour of family friendly measures. It is a culture that is coming into our country; a lot of private companies already have a lot of family friendly measures implemented.

What we do not want however is that there is an imposition by which anyone can ask for any family friendly measure. At the business breakfast, a case of a maid who asked for tele-working was brought up by one of the members of the audience. We know what the maid wanted – a shorter working week with full pay; obviously she knows full well that her job cannot be done via tele-working. These are the things that cannot be tolerated in the private sector.

Family measures today are becoming more widespread in the private sector as I said. However, it has been suggested that there is a link between family friendly measures and the fertility rate – that we can encourage women to have more children with more family friendly measures – as if the weight of the birth rate in Malta is going fall on the shoulders of the employer as well.

I would like to point out that when Malta had the lowest rate of female participation in the workplace in Europe, we still had a fertility rate which was very low. This is a very complex issue and you cannot just snap your fingers and solve it, but what is definite is that there is no direct correlation between family friendly measures and fertility rates.

One of the big complaints heard are about companies that are facing big turnovers in workers, meaning that companies end up training and retraining more people. Is this a reality, and what is the solution if it is?

When you have a labour shortage, the employee looks for what is best for him. So if he or she has a package and another company offers to add five to seven per cent to it – the worker is going to try his or her luck at this company. You can understand that.

Turnover can, up to a point, be healthy – but when it goes above a certain level it can become a serious threat. It can even affect the decision of companies whether to provide training or not. I mention again the fact that 30 per cent of workers in the private sector are foreigners. If many foreign workers are leaving Malta soon after they arrive, it could be holding employers back from providing training, as they would want a certain measure of stability. Training is a cost from which they expect a return.

In terms of a solution, every company has its own strategies to retain employees. There are companies that throughout the years according to seniority improve the employee’s package, something which is an incentive in itself. Career progression is another one – someone with a certain measure of experience at a company has more of a chance to gain a promotion there rather than starting over elsewhere. Some companies even offer retention bonuses, awarding employees who stay for a long period of time. All told, there are a number of means that can be used to reduce turnover.