Globalization, responsibility and openness: the issues discussed at the plenary meeting of the Labou

The plenary meeting of the 2nd St. Petersburg International Labour Forum took place on 2 March at the ExpoForum on the topic “Labour of the Future: Talents, Technologies, Creativity”. The experts assessed global processes in economy, science and society and the consequences of digitization for the training and retraining system in Russia and all over the world.

As the Chairwoman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Valentina Matvienko said, it’s required today to know how to foresee and efficiently forecast the future.

“We are living in an amazing time, when the borders between past and future are being erased, and the new technological reality has an impact on all aspects of life. There is a need to retrain people and make the human capital agenda actual. We in the Federation Council treat this Forum as a scientific venue”, she said.

According to Ms. Matvienko,Russianeeds to modernize its professional training system – first of all, in professions related to applied technology. The infrastructure to reveal talented people and the system of professional tutorship are also in demand.

“We have to overcome gender barriers as well. The topic of strengthening women’s role will form the agenda of the Second Eurasian Women’s Forum in September 2018 in St. Petersburg”, she said.

Vice-Chairwoman of the Government of Russia Olga Golodets remarked that one hundred years ago, in 1918,Russia adopted an important decree, setting forth equal rights for men and women, as well as work and rest time. The International Labour Organization, set up in 1919, is based exactly on this document.

“Russia is still a country with high labour standards. And one of our main tasks is getting rid of low minimum wages. The minimum wage in Russia will be raised to the subsistence level from 1 May, and this is a very serious measure”, Olga Golodets said.

As she pointed out, the quality of labour is a new challenge for the economy, and development of professional standards has become the norm. However, there is a need to transfer to forming flexible standards and react quicker to the changing labour market.

St. Petersburgis one of the leaders of the labour market if we take Russiaas a whole. Thus, the unemployment level here is one of the lowest in the country – just 1.5%, and it takes people looking for jobs no more than 4 months to find one – St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said on the subject. As he says, the final purpose of any innovations is to improve the quality of people’s lives – this principle is the basis ofSt. Petersburg’s development strategy.

“St. Petersburg in the 21st century is turning into an engineering centre, and blue-collar workers are greatly honoured and respected in the city”, the Governor of the Northern capital said, noting that the city was one of the candidates to host EuroSkills, the young workers’ championship, in 2022.

“It’s important to engage not only young people, but also people from the older generation into active labour”, the city head emphasized.

Yevgeny Makarov, Vice-Chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, said that “it’s difficult to make plans for many years ahead if the economy is sick”. In his words, work takes up the biggest part of human life. And precisely because of our jobs, we have career progress, social status, a cultural environment and inter-individual communications.

“We don’t want to drag non-paid wages, poverty and grey schemes into the future with us”, the speaker emphasized.

Dmitry Cherneyko, moderator of the meeting and Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Labour and Employment of the Population, brought up important events on the first day of the Labour Forum: the conference of the World Association of Public Employment Services, in which employment services from all regions of the Russian Federation participated, took place at the venue, and the professional standards organization was actually “born” there.

Françoise Kuyl, Executive Secretary of the World Association of Public Employment Services, mentionedthe importance of forecasting phenomena on the labour market and timely responses to them.

“We need new approaches and vision. Automation changes jobs – we need to help people in a changing world, we need to overcome the gap between training and the job”, the expert said.

Vsevolod Vukolov, Head of the Federal Service for Labour and Employment (Rostrud), said that the digital economy and digitization are the tools for comfortable work, but that is still just talk for the most part, and not creation of a new environment.

“Our Jobs in Russia website is one of the three leading websites. But the Employment Service still operates as in the past. Today’s task is to create a new environment with the available tools”, he said.

As he explained, Rostrud and Sberbank are developing an e-check-up system, which will help to quickly issue an auditor’s conclusion on enterprises’ documents. In addition, 300,000 active enterprises were checked online over the 2.5 years the Rostrud self-check-up system has been operating, and assessed the state of affairs in occupational safety and abiding by labour laws.

The experts came to the conclusion that in order to develop human potential, it’s important to follow trends attentively and forecast the future, taking globalization, responsibility and openness into account.

More

Globalization, responsibility and openness: the issues discussed at the plenary meeting of the Labou

The plenary meeting of the 2nd St. Petersburg International Labour Forum took place on 2 March at the ExpoForum on the topic “Labour of the Future: Talents, Technologies, Creativity”. The experts assessed global processes in economy, science and society and the consequences of digitization for the training and retraining system in Russia and all over the world.

As the Chairwoman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Valentina Matvienko said, it’s required today to know how to foresee and efficiently forecast the future.

“We are living in an amazing time, when the borders between past and future are being erased, and the new technological reality has an impact on all aspects of life. There is a need to retrain people and make the human capital agenda actual. We in the Federation Council treat this Forum as a scientific venue”, she said.

According to Ms. Matvienko,Russianeeds to modernize its professional training system – first of all, in professions related to applied technology. The infrastructure to reveal talented people and the system of professional tutorship are also in demand.

“We have to overcome gender barriers as well. The topic of strengthening women’s role will form the agenda of the Second Eurasian Women’s Forum in September 2018 in St. Petersburg”, she said.

Vice-Chairwoman of the Government of Russia Olga Golodets remarked that one hundred years ago, in 1918,Russia adopted an important decree, setting forth equal rights for men and women, as well as work and rest time. The International Labour Organization, set up in 1919, is based exactly on this document.

“Russia is still a country with high labour standards. And one of our main tasks is getting rid of low minimum wages. The minimum wage in Russia will be raised to the subsistence level from 1 May, and this is a very serious measure”, Olga Golodets said.

As she pointed out, the quality of labour is a new challenge for the economy, and development of professional standards has become the norm. However, there is a need to transfer to forming flexible standards and react quicker to the changing labour market.

St. Petersburgis one of the leaders of the labour market if we take Russiaas a whole. Thus, the unemployment level here is one of the lowest in the country – just 1.5%, and it takes people looking for jobs no more than 4 months to find one – St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said on the subject. As he says, the final purpose of any innovations is to improve the quality of people’s lives – this principle is the basis ofSt. Petersburg’s development strategy.

“St. Petersburg in the 21st century is turning into an engineering centre, and blue-collar workers are greatly honoured and respected in the city”, the Governor of the Northern capital said, noting that the city was one of the candidates to host EuroSkills, the young workers’ championship, in 2022.

“It’s important to engage not only young people, but also people from the older generation into active labour”, the city head emphasized.

Yevgeny Makarov, Vice-Chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, said that “it’s difficult to make plans for many years ahead if the economy is sick”. In his words, work takes up the biggest part of human life. And precisely because of our jobs, we have career progress, social status, a cultural environment and inter-individual communications.

“We don’t want to drag non-paid wages, poverty and grey schemes into the future with us”, the speaker emphasized.

Dmitry Cherneyko, moderator of the meeting and Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Labour and Employment of the Population, brought up important events on the first day of the Labour Forum: the conference of the World Association of Public Employment Services, in which employment services from all regions of the Russian Federation participated, took place at the venue, and the professional standards organization was actually “born” there.

Françoise Kuyl, Executive Secretary of the World Association of Public Employment Services, mentionedthe importance of forecasting phenomena on the labour market and timely responses to them.

“We need new approaches and vision. Automation changes jobs – we need to help people in a changing world, we need to overcome the gap between training and the job”, the expert said.

Vsevolod Vukolov, Head of the Federal Service for Labour and Employment (Rostrud), said that the digital economy and digitization are the tools for comfortable work, but that is still just talk for the most part, and not creation of a new environment.

“Our Jobs in Russia website is one of the three leading websites. But the Employment Service still operates as in the past. Today’s task is to create a new environment with the available tools”, he said.

As he explained, Rostrud and Sberbank are developing an e-check-up system, which will help to quickly issue an auditor’s conclusion on enterprises’ documents. In addition, 300,000 active enterprises were checked online over the 2.5 years the Rostrud self-check-up system has been operating, and assessed the state of affairs in occupational safety and abiding by labour laws.

The experts came to the conclusion that in order to develop human potential, it’s important to follow trends attentively and forecast the future, taking globalization, responsibility and openness into account.

More