The Labour Divide | Page 7

set wages. Wages and unemployment benefits are perceived as complementary economic stabilizers (contra the business cycle).
Another possibility is a Guaranteed Wage Plan – Employers assure minimum annual employment or minimum annual wages or both to those employees who have been with the firm for a minimum of time.
Firms and trade unions must forego the seniority treatment (firing only the newly hired – LIFO, last in first out). The firm should be given a free hand in hiring and firing its employees regardless of tenure.
Labour Disputes Settlement
The future collective agreements should all be subordinated to the National Employment Contract. All these agreements should include a compulsory dispute settlement through mediation and arbitration. All labour contracts must include clear, compulsory and final grievance procedures. Possibilities include conciliation (a third party bring management and labour together to try and solve the problems on their own), mediation (a third party makes nonbonding suggestions to the parties) and arbitration (a third party makes final, binding decisions), or Peer Review Panels – where the management and the employees together rule on grievances.
I recommend allowing out of court settlement of disputes arising from the dismissal of employees through arbitration, an employees' council, trustees or an employer-employee board.

Unconventional Modes of Work
Work used to be a simple affair of 7 to 3. It is no longer the case.
In Denmark, the worker can take a special leave. He receives 80% of the maximum unemployment benefits plus no interruption in social security providing he uses the time for job training, a sabbatical or further education, or a parental leave. This can be extended to taking care of old people (old parents or other relatives) or the terminally ill – as is the case in Belgium (though only for up to 2 months). It makes economic sense, because their activities replace social outlays.
In Britain, part time workers receive the same benefits in case of layoffs and wrongful dismissals and in Holland, the pension funds grant pensions to part time workers.
Special treatment should be granted by law and in the collective agreements to night, shift and weekend work (for instance, no payment of social benefits).
All modes of part-time, flextime, from home, seasonal, casual and job sharing work should be encouraged. For example: two people sharing the same job should be allowed to choose to be treated, for tax purposes and for the purposes of unemployment benefits, either as one person or as two persons and so should shift workers. In Bulgaria, a national part time employment program encouraged employers to hire the unemployed on a short term, part time basis (like our Mladinska Zadruga).
Macroeconomic Policies
The macroeconomic policies of Macedonia are severely constrained by its international obligations to the IMF and the World Bank. Generally, a country can ease interest rates, or provide a fiscal boost to the economy by slashing taxes or by deficit spending. Counter-cyclical fiscal policies are lagging and as a result they tend to exacerbate the trend. Fiscal boosts tend to coincide with booms and fiscal contraction with recessions. In view of the budget constraints (more than 97% of the budget is “locked in”), it is not practical to expect any employment boost either from the monetary policy or from the fiscal policies of the state in Macedonia.
What I do recommend is to introduce a “Full Employment Budget” (see details in Appendix number I). A full employment budget adjusts the budget deficit or surplus in relation to effects of deviations from full or normal unemployment. Thus, a simple balanced budget could be actually contractionary. A simple deficit may, actually, be a surplus on a full employment basis and a government can be contractionary despite positive borrowing.
Apprenticeship, Training, Retraining and Re-qualification
The law should be amended to allow for apprenticeship and training with training sub-minimum wages. Mandatory training or apprenticeship is a beneficial rigidity because it encourages skill gaining. Germany is an excellent example of the benefits of a well-developed apprenticeship program.
Most of the unemployed can be retrained, regardless of age and level of education. This surprising result has emerged from many studies.
The massive retraining and re-qualification programs needed to combat unemployment in Macedonia can be undertaken in collaboration with the private sector. The government will train, re-train, or re-qualify the unemployed worker – and the private sector firms will undertake to employ the retrained worker for a minimum period of time following the completion of his or her training or retraining. Actually, the government should be the educational sub-contractor of the business sector, a catalyst of skill acquisition for the under-capitalized private sector. Small business employers should have the priority in this scheme.
There should be separate retraining and re-qualification programs according to the educational levels of the populations of the trainees and to the aims of the programs. Thus, vocational training should be separated from teaching basic literacy and numeracy skills.