Does the current 'perfect storm' offer the perfect opportunity for more decent work? On Friday, November 25, we attended the conference 'Decent work as a standard', organized by Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (HU).

Please note: this article was translated using a translator app

Potential

 There is a lot of 'untapped potential' – or is it 'invisible' potential? Whichever way you look at it, a significant part of the working population (1.1 million people, 8%) is now not active in the labor market - for whatever reason. There are currently 143 vacancies per 100 unemployed people. The shortages on the labor market are now spread across all professional groups.

 Add to this that we are dealing with several crises (nitrogen, housing market, Ukraine, climate, asylum), and also various social issues in the areas of aging, flexibilization and sustainability of the economy, and you can conclude that we are in a ' perfect storm'. Although this sounds somewhat depressing, it also offers an opportunity: to look at things in a different way, to come up with new solutions that better suit the time and phase we are in.

Decent work

 “Organizing decent work requires efforts from all stakeholders, especially for the 1.1 million people who are still on the sidelines,” says Leendert de Bell, Lecturer at the HU. “It is a 'wicked problem': a complex issue involving so many contradictory dependencies that it seems impossible to solve. This can only be achieved through a joint, coordinated approach and effort. That is why we are here today.”

Distance

 Various conversations show that the context of someone's life is important. You simply cannot ask a single parent who does not have access to childcare everything. Nor does someone who is also an informal caregiver. Or a status holder who has been given a home in a remote village and is dependent on public transport. Bartel Geleijnse, founder of The Color Kitchen: “Unused, unseen or invisible potential – we always talk about people 'distanced from the labor market', but shouldn't we turn it around? Doesn't the labor market have any distance to those people?”

 Fatimazhra Belhirch, director of the UAF, gave status holders a voice in the panel. “Only 40-42% of status holders still have a job after five years. And it is not even always at their level. Considering the current tightness in the labor market, you would expect things to improve. Status holders bring so much talent and therefore offer a wonderful opportunity for many employers. Unfortunately, this is not yet sufficiently seen.”

Canvas ceiling

 We expanded on this in the workshop by Wilma Roozenboom (director of Refugee Talent Hub) and Leendert de Bell (who specifically focuses on promoting sustainable labor participation of refugees). We discussed what obstacles there are at an individual, organizational and societal level for people with a refugee background. And how – thought from those three perspectives – we could lower the barriers.

 This includes language, diplomas, vacancy texts or recruitment systems (which automatically filter out people with a gap of more than two years on their CV), and the social image that is fed by the media. The sum of these factors is also called the ' canvas ceiling '. We came to the hopeful conclusion that we would like to try to break through the canvas ceiling with a coalition of like-minded people by turning the knobs at all three levels.

Sustainability & dignity

 In the conversations over coffee and lunch, during the workshops and in the final plenary session, it became clear: we are here with a group of about 100 people who are all convinced that things can be done differently. That everyone deserves decent work. And it deserves to be able to contribute and be seen, in order to grow. And that we want to do our best to do more for all those people, from different perspectives. So that everyone can feel permanently a worthy part of our society.

 The Decent Work as a Standard Congress was organized on November 25, 2022 at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, by the Organizing Decent Work Lectorate.