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PERSONNEL FILE
Page 93
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• The Confederation of Britsh Industry has joined the ;rowing clamour for better ;kills training for young emiloyees. In a hard-hitting rerort out this week, the CBI warns that "UK workers are ;enerally less skilled than their :ounterparts in Britain's main :ompetitor economies".
According to the confederaion's Vocational education and raining task force, too many 3ritish employers put 16 to 18rear-old school leavers into 'dead-end jobs without any vorthwhile structured training" tnd this "must be stopped".
As the Government prepares o wind down the scope and ole of the Road Transport Inlustry Training Board, and the oulage industry struggles to ecruit and keep HGV drivers nd commercial vehicle fitters, he CBI fights back.
"In spite of the £18 million a
year employers invest in training," says the confederation, "we urge an increase in employer spending and a redistribution of Government cash for the young to close the skills gap."
Some 40% of our school leavers have no useful qualification to show for 11 years of full-time education says the CBI, and it warns that we are falling further and further behind the rest of our international competitors a message that road transport groups like the Brewery Transport Advisory Committee (BTAC) has been promoting for a long time.
The CBI believes that, on average, children in the UK are two years behind the Japanese in basic mathematical competence, and less likely to develop foreign language skills than the French, Germans or Scandinavians. They also have a lower level of economic awareness, and fewer and lower level educational qualifications than in most of Britain's European competitors.
The report adds: "There is no longer any good case for under-18 employment which is not at the same time raising skill levels. By 1992, all 16 and 17-year-olds should be undertaking education and training relevant to their needs." 0 Nearly half the companies in the UK are planning to reduce or eliminate the use of paid overtime, according to a second CBI survey published this week. The findings are summarised in the CBI's latest Employment Affairs Report. This shows that the methods of cutting overtime planned by employers include the recruitment of more full, part-time and temporary staff, more flexible working patterns and the introduction of shift-work.
The survey, which covered 277 companies employing a total workforce of 1.4 million, looks at a range of issues related to basic weekly hours, overtime and shiftwork. Some of the other key findings of the survey are; El Only 2.9% of companies reduced the length of the basic working week in 1988;
0 This low level of concession is expected to continue, with 5.7% of companies anticipating a reduction in hours in 1989; 0 The current level of basic weekly hours varies greatly, but the most common level for manual workers was 39 hours, particularly in manufacturing; El The most common working week for white collar staff was 371/2 hours for manufacturing companies and 35 hours for service companies.