JobBridge to nowhere obvious - Village Magazine

34May 2015

Regarding the honour of the Freedom of Dublin City

– it is indeed an honorary position and it is the preroga-

tive of the Lord Mayor (and indeed of a single member

of the council placing a motion before the council). The

procedure is very clearly laid down in standing orders.

That is not the case with Aosdána whose procedures or

rules are not properly explicated, as I have pointed out

in my correspondence to you. For instance, unlike with

the Council, there is no procedure for the members to

make nominations. Nor, according to the registrar of

Aosdána, need members be told that a vacancy arises.

The only time there was an oﬃcial call for nominations

was when the number of Saoithe was increased from

ﬁve to seven.

The Chair of the Toscaireacht must know that there

is an anomaly and ﬂaw in the process. It would be

better even for the Toscaireacht to have the sole right

to nominate anyone it deems worthy of the honour of

Saoi and then present that to the members rather than

perpetuate the rather confused, undemocratic process

that is being operated at present.

I’ve always felt there were problems with the nomi-

nation and election procedures of Saoithe but, mindful

of Aosdána and its sensitivity, I chose not to raise them.

However, I did confer with certain members before I

raised my motion which was seconded by Alice Han-

ratty, and did indeed have some support on the ﬂoor.

But it didn’t have majority, or much, support. In your

rather vitriolic words it was overwhelmingly rejected.

That being said the matter is far from over and I

would imagine that the other members of Aosdána who

feel uneasy will raise their concerns.

You mention in your letter to Village that I am eco-

nomical with the facts. I am stringent with the reality

of your modus operandi and I in turn would ask you to

at least have the honesty to accept that the present

arrangements are undemocratically ﬂawed and that

Aosdána as a matter of principle should not operate in a

way that is not democratic.

In conclusion, I am now calling on the Toscaireacht

to initiate a full independent review of the entire elec-

tion process, especially the nomination process, for

Saoithe to take account of Aosdána’s established modus

operandi.

Kind regards,

Mannix Flynn

Aosdána member

Dear Toscaireacht and members of Aosdána,

I am replying to the letter of th April from the

Toscaireacht about my article published in last month’s

Village magazine.

It is apparent that anyone who challenges Aosdána’s

processes is wrong in the Toscaireacht’s eyes. Aosdána

deemed it wrong of me to raise the issue of artists

endorsing Arts Council guidelines on protection of

children in the aftermath of the Cathal O Searcaigh

scandal; equally it said I was wrong to raise the issue of

the inappropriateness of undermining the dignity of

the Garden of Remembrance by siting the proposed

State memorial for victims of child sexual abuse there;

and here we are again.

The point about elections to the honorary position of

Saoi is that, once nominated, nominees are almost

assured of election. Members are loath to vote down a

fellow artist eminent enough to have been proposed.

This means that particularly acute attention must be

paid to how nominees are nominated. That is the point

of my intervention.

We all know how things are done. It’s the secret guar-

antee, the insiderist nod. What gives conﬁdence to that

nod is the failure of the Toscaireacht and the general

Aosdána assembly to engage in any systematic way on

this issue. It is disingenuous for the Toscaireacht to

deny Aosdána’s established modus operandi and to fall

back on obfuscating references to the election being

fair, when the fact the nomination which precedes the

election is handled unfairly is the problem, a problem

that necessarily taints the entire process.

Nor is it normal not to draw members’ attention to

vacancies. In democratically-driven organisations the

process is notiﬁcation of members about forthcoming

democratic procedures, not condolence.

Your response to my article takes a rather high tone

in relation to my motion insinuating that it would be

inappropriate for the position of Saoi to be, in your

words, competitive. You quote Mr Dorgan’s view that as

an honour freely conferred by the membership it would

be inappropriate to make the position of Saoi the sub-

ject of a competitive election of multiple candidates

but this in fact touches on my very point. For it is that

already. The Aosdána modus operandi is that whoever

is ﬁrst through the letter box for nomination van-

quishes all, because of Aosdána’s characteristic and

understandable reluctance to vote down an eminent

nominee. An unseemly rush to nomination is the symp-

tom of the competitiveness. The issue is not

competitiveness, which is there already, the issue is

transparency and democracy.

From Mannix Flynn

to Aosdána, in reply

to a letter published

in this edition of

Village

(page 4)

An open letter about democratic decision-making

May 2015 35

he JobBridge internship scheme in the education sector

is disguising the impact of the recruitment embargo, at

times displacing jobs, and providing some interns with

a low-quality experience, according to recent research spon-

sored by the IMPACT Education Division. It conﬁrms trade

union members’ sense of the improper use of the scheme

within the sector. We oﬀer constructive proposals for better

and targeted labour activation internship schemes that are

ﬁt for purpose in a recovering economy.

Open-market active-labour-market programmes are

always open to displacement of entry-level jobs and to dead-

weight. The  Indecon evaluation of JobBridge suggests

% displacement of entry-level jobs. It suggests up to %

deadweight, where the progression outcomes associated

with the scheme were as likely to occur without the scheme.

While JobBridge has beneﬁted many, this is a high price to

pay and there are serious questions about whether the price

it too high in terms of entry-level job displacement and value

for money.

Labour activation measures need to be constantly adapted

to reﬂect changing realities. JobBridge was established in the

context of high employment and emigration in .

Renewed economic growth means displacement and dead-

weight are more likely. This necessitates a refocusing,

resizing and ultimately a restriction of the use of such

internships. Any justiﬁcation for JobBridge as an emergency

measure has dissipated. It is now time to take stock and

address the gaps in regulation, monitoring and quality.

The research recommends restricting the number of

places available, reserving them for people who need them

most , and restricting embargoed public-sector employers

and low-value-sector employers from participating. Every-

one who takes up an internship programme must be entitled

to a quality experience which oﬀers training and mentoring

opportunities, career progression pathways, social insur-

ance cover and fair reimbursement. Take up should always

be voluntary.

The growing culture of open-market internships as a per-

vasive feature of our economy needs to be stemmed. Overuse

and misuse of internships must not be allowed to displace or

replace full-time paid employment, or drive down basic

terms and conditions for workers. The research notes that,

internationally, some limited progress has been made in

rolling back a pervasive culture of using such internships.

This was achieved by constant and proactive monitoring

and enforcement of minimum wage laws.

Low Pay Commissions, internationally, have played a mon-

itoring and preventative role in relation to use of internships

in high-risk sectors such as fashion, entertainment and

media industries. The British Low Pay Commission for exam-

ple proactively targets online job advertisements for interns,

ensures statutory oﬃcials provide adequate and clear infor-

mation brochures and posters to alert employers about

National Minumum Wage obligations, and encourages

enforcement, including naming and shaming as well as back

dating pay awards. While bad practice should be named and

shamed it is also necessary to support good employers by

acknowledging them through kite marks and allowing them

be distinguished from the bad press associated with

JobBridge.

The leadership of the trade union movement is vital. All

unions, throughout ICTU, need to rise to the challenge of the

wider regulation of internships, stamping out the culture of

unpaid work as the entry route to paid employment in Ire-

land, and playing an oversight role in the use of internship as

labour activation programmes. Professional associations

can also play a monitoring role in regulating internships in

speciﬁc industries.

A national governance framework would enable collabora-

tion across the full range of these actors, including Solas for

youth apprenticeships and traineeships, the HEA for gradu-

ate internships, the Department of Social Protection for the

long term unemployed, and the Low Pay Commission for

open market internships. This framework needs to address

the weak culture of programme evaluation in Ireland and

adopt robust evaluation processes using control groups.

It should make more eﬀective use of gender-segregated

administrative data systems to monitor longitudinal out-

comes across a range of social, economic and

communit- level outcomes. Recent moves to publish the

numbers participating in labour market programmes in the

CSO live register reports oﬀer greater transparency and

accountability.

The numbers being sanctioned and reasons for sanctions

should also be published in this manner. •

48% of the beneﬁts would have

happened without it.

By Kevin Callinan

JobBridge to nowhere obvious

NEWS JobBridge

Any

justiﬁcation

for JobBridge

as an

emergency

measure has

dissipated

“

Kevin Callinan is

Deputy General

Secretary of IMPACT