EMPLOYABILITY AND SECURITY IN A FLEXIBLE GLOBAL LABOUR MARKET Germany and Italy. Germany was also one of the countries with the greatest inequalities in reading, with poor performing students dragging down the average. More information on the PISA report can be found at www.PISA.oecd.org Enterprise role increasing Further vocational training has already undergone change, with in-house learning and training becoming more important. From the 1980s onwards this trend has been linked directly to production processes, which are usually company specific. Training within the company became an informal process, giving employees experience but not recognised transferable qualifications. At the same time new ways to manage human resources and organise production have emerged. Training has thus changed from a highly regulated, single event to an ongoing, integral part of working life and career advancement. However, skills transferability to other companies or labour markets is not possible in an informal system. A link between learning at the workplace and formal qualifications needs to be created. Government pins hopes on alliance for jobs initiative Unemployment has been persistently high in Germany in recent years. More than 4 million people are now officially registered as unemployed. A major issue of the 1998 election campaign in Germany was employment. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder promised to establish an‘alliance for jobs’ to increase the number of people in work. Although earlier attempts to initiate formalised tripartite consultation failed, the government places great hopes on a new alliance, the Bündnis für Arbeit, Ausbildung und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit(Alliance for Jobs, Training and Competitive­ness). The Alliance is modelled on the Dutch Labour Foundation(Stichting van de Arbeid). Following the Alliance’s first meeting in December 1998 senior representatives of government, trade and employers’ associations and trade unions issued a common declaration that set out the structure of the Alliance: • The highest-level committee(the Spitzengespräch) is chaired by the Chancellor. Other participants are leaders of trade unions and trade and employers’ associations. • A steering committee is responsible for co-ordinating and directing nine expert groups as well as preparing for the Spitzengespräch. 27 © Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society