Glass
29th May 2015, 11:26 PM
In France they have been using fake companies processing fake orders to keep the unemployed occupied and at the peak of their working game.
Europe Has A Solution For The Unemployment Problem: Fake Jobs
The jobs gap that has characterized the global economy since the crisis has cost some $1.2 trillion (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-20/global-demand-dearth-costs-12-trillion-lost-wages-37-trillion-gdp) in lost wages and nearly $4 trillion in GDP. Employment growth worldwide has been just 1.4% since 2001, well below the 1.7% pace that prevailed prior to 2008. The result: there are 61 million fewer people employed globally than there would have been if pre-crisis trends had prevailed.
In the eurozone, where unemployment stands at 11.3% and where some countries — Spain being a prime example — are struggling under unemployment rates that approximate what the US experienced during the Great Depression, the ECB has been forced to effectively abandon its “single mandate” of promoting price stability in favor of a stance that’s more in-line with the Fed’s dual mandate that encompasses both price stability and maximum employment.
Against this backdrop, many Europeans are struggling to find work, but have no fear, Europe has a solution: fake jobs. The New York Times has more (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/business/international/in-europe-fake-jobs-can-have-real-benefits.html?_r=0):
At 9:30 a.m. on a sunny weekday, the phones at Candelia, a purveyor of sleek office furniture in Lille, France, rang steadily with orders from customers across the country and from Switzerland and Germany. A photocopier clacked rhythmically while more than a dozen workers processed sales, dealt with suppliers and arranged for desks and chairs to be shipped.
Sabine de Buyzer, working in the accounting department, leaned into her computer and scanned a row of numbers. Candelia was doing well. Its revenue that week was outpacing expenses, even counting taxes and salaries. “We have to be profitable,” Ms. de Buyzer said. “Everyone’s working all out to make sure we succeed.”
This was a sentiment any boss would like to hear, but in this case the entire business is fake. So are Candelia’s customers and suppliers, from the companies ordering the furniture to the trucking operators that make deliveries. Even the bank where Candelia gets its loans is not real
Candelia is one of a number of so-called “Potemkin” companies operating in France. Everything about these entities is imaginary from the customers, to the supply chain, to the banks, to the “wages” employees receive and while the idea used to be that the creation of a “parallel economic universe” would help to train the jobless and prepare them for real employment sometime in the future, these “occupations” are now serving simply as way for the out-of-work to suspend reality for eight hours a day. Here’s The Times again:
These companies are all part of an elaborate training network that effectively operates as a parallel economic universe. For years, the aim was to train students and unemployed workers looking to make a transition to different industries. Now they are being used to combat the alarming rise in long-term unemployment, one of the most pressing problems to emerge from Europe’s long economic crisis.
Ms. de Buyzer did not care that Candelia was a phantom operation. She lost her job as a secretary two years ago and has been unable to find steady work. Since January, though, she had woken up early every weekday, put on makeup and gotten ready to go the office. By 9 a.m. she arrives at the small office in a low-income neighborhood of Lille, where joblessness is among the highest in the country.
While she doesn’t earn a paycheck, Ms. de Buyzer, 41, welcomes the regular routine. She hopes Candelia will lead to a real job, after countless searches and interviews that have gone nowhere.
“It’s been very difficult to find a job,” said Ms. de Buyzer, who like most of the trainees has been collecting unemployment benefits. “When you look for a long time and don’t find anything, it’s so hard. You can get depressed,” she said. “You question your abilities. After a while, you no longer see a light at the end of the tunnel.”
More lunacy at the ZeroHedge (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-29/europe-has-solution-unemployment-problem-fake-jobs)
Am interesting alternative to the Barista led recovery we are having down here.
Europe Has A Solution For The Unemployment Problem: Fake Jobs
The jobs gap that has characterized the global economy since the crisis has cost some $1.2 trillion (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-20/global-demand-dearth-costs-12-trillion-lost-wages-37-trillion-gdp) in lost wages and nearly $4 trillion in GDP. Employment growth worldwide has been just 1.4% since 2001, well below the 1.7% pace that prevailed prior to 2008. The result: there are 61 million fewer people employed globally than there would have been if pre-crisis trends had prevailed.
In the eurozone, where unemployment stands at 11.3% and where some countries — Spain being a prime example — are struggling under unemployment rates that approximate what the US experienced during the Great Depression, the ECB has been forced to effectively abandon its “single mandate” of promoting price stability in favor of a stance that’s more in-line with the Fed’s dual mandate that encompasses both price stability and maximum employment.
Against this backdrop, many Europeans are struggling to find work, but have no fear, Europe has a solution: fake jobs. The New York Times has more (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/business/international/in-europe-fake-jobs-can-have-real-benefits.html?_r=0):
At 9:30 a.m. on a sunny weekday, the phones at Candelia, a purveyor of sleek office furniture in Lille, France, rang steadily with orders from customers across the country and from Switzerland and Germany. A photocopier clacked rhythmically while more than a dozen workers processed sales, dealt with suppliers and arranged for desks and chairs to be shipped.
Sabine de Buyzer, working in the accounting department, leaned into her computer and scanned a row of numbers. Candelia was doing well. Its revenue that week was outpacing expenses, even counting taxes and salaries. “We have to be profitable,” Ms. de Buyzer said. “Everyone’s working all out to make sure we succeed.”
This was a sentiment any boss would like to hear, but in this case the entire business is fake. So are Candelia’s customers and suppliers, from the companies ordering the furniture to the trucking operators that make deliveries. Even the bank where Candelia gets its loans is not real
Candelia is one of a number of so-called “Potemkin” companies operating in France. Everything about these entities is imaginary from the customers, to the supply chain, to the banks, to the “wages” employees receive and while the idea used to be that the creation of a “parallel economic universe” would help to train the jobless and prepare them for real employment sometime in the future, these “occupations” are now serving simply as way for the out-of-work to suspend reality for eight hours a day. Here’s The Times again:
These companies are all part of an elaborate training network that effectively operates as a parallel economic universe. For years, the aim was to train students and unemployed workers looking to make a transition to different industries. Now they are being used to combat the alarming rise in long-term unemployment, one of the most pressing problems to emerge from Europe’s long economic crisis.
Ms. de Buyzer did not care that Candelia was a phantom operation. She lost her job as a secretary two years ago and has been unable to find steady work. Since January, though, she had woken up early every weekday, put on makeup and gotten ready to go the office. By 9 a.m. she arrives at the small office in a low-income neighborhood of Lille, where joblessness is among the highest in the country.
While she doesn’t earn a paycheck, Ms. de Buyzer, 41, welcomes the regular routine. She hopes Candelia will lead to a real job, after countless searches and interviews that have gone nowhere.
“It’s been very difficult to find a job,” said Ms. de Buyzer, who like most of the trainees has been collecting unemployment benefits. “When you look for a long time and don’t find anything, it’s so hard. You can get depressed,” she said. “You question your abilities. After a while, you no longer see a light at the end of the tunnel.”
More lunacy at the ZeroHedge (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-29/europe-has-solution-unemployment-problem-fake-jobs)
Am interesting alternative to the Barista led recovery we are having down here.