Lottery? THE Way To Find A Job
The mayor of Alameda, a small town in Southern Spain, has been distributing
municipal jobs through a lottery for 5 years in response to the world economic
crisis.
The story began in 2008, while the world economy was going through a phase of instability. What
began as the bursting of the real estate bubble in the United States caused a
chain reaction disrupting commodity prices and threatening the foundations of
the global economic system. Spain was one of the countries facing this collapse
and with it the difficulties in creating jobs. Nowadays, the unemployment rate
is still high at 27%.
D.
Juan Lorenzo Pineda ClaverÃas, the mayor of Alameda, a small town in southern
Spain, decided to allocate council jobs thanks to a lottery system in order to
reduce corruption in the job market. At first, in 2008, there were 30 contestants. Now, in 2013,
there are more than 500 although Alameda has fewer than 5,500 inhabitants.
As the phenomenon has been on the rise, it is nowadays far more publicized. In
this way every month, when the lucky draw takes place, the event is recorded
and broadcast on local TV stations. The purpose is to ensure the absence of
fraud.
There are no
dream jobs at stake: the last winner is now selling tickets at the municipal
swimming-pool for two months. Only unskilled and temporary contracts are offered
and no public celebrations are allowed so as to spare the feelings of the unsuccessful job hunters. The citizens
of Alameda are grateful for this system because they find random allocation quite a good
solution, as fair as possible in a country where your family network or skin
colour can be a determining factor in your professional life. On the other hand, the
partisans of the rights of the employees protest against what they consider
"an infringement of work principles and thus, of human dignity”.
In the same way, Jean-François Amadieu, director of "L'Observatoire des Discriminations" at the Sorbonne gave his opinion: “One starts with the assumption that all the applicants have equivalent skills for the same job, so that (non-random) selection would be based on discriminating criteria. Yet, even for a position of swimming-pool ticket seller this postulate can be reconsidered. Candidates must be chosen based on legitimate reasons, thanks to very simple tests concerning the job, in order to avoid any opposition.”
In the same way, Jean-François Amadieu, director of "L'Observatoire des Discriminations" at the Sorbonne gave his opinion: “One starts with the assumption that all the applicants have equivalent skills for the same job, so that (non-random) selection would be based on discriminating criteria. Yet, even for a position of swimming-pool ticket seller this postulate can be reconsidered. Candidates must be chosen based on legitimate reasons, thanks to very simple tests concerning the job, in order to avoid any opposition.”
Spain has
been in recession for approximately 2 years. In July, the number of
unemployed people decreased for the fifth consecutive month but is still high at
4.70 million. One should also be aware of the enormous uncertainty still
clouding the future for the Spanish and European economies more than five
years after the international financial crisis first broke.
So. Living in
Europe? Looking for a job? Buy a ticket at Eurojob.eu and you get
one chance out of 26.521 million [1] of being successful! Good luck!
"One chance out of 26.521 million". Is it a joke? Such a low rate in order to find a fixed term contract of 2 months to sell swimming-pool tickets - it is pitiful. You better play to the Euromillions! However, more seriously, I would never have believed it was possible to play like that with people. Governments have the moral duty fo find jobs for their nationals, and certainly not to play with their hope. It is certainly a good thing for the lucky winner, but what do the thinking heads do with the 26.520 million which have not been chosen? Maybe they could throw them in the Atlantic, and the survivor has the job... I am sarcastic about it, but instead of spending money and time to develop the lottery and make it work, they should find real solutions. They are (well) paid for it, isn't it?
ReplyDeletePaul-Louis H.
Thank you for your comment, I see that you feel upset concerning this phenomenon, but I think you shouldn't!
ReplyDeleteAlameda is a very small town in Spain, so contrary to what you think it didn't take so much time and money to set up the lottery. Corruption is excessive out there, so the mayor decided to launch this system in order to keep job hunting more or less "fair".
I totally agree with you concerning the fact that "luck" souldn't be mixed with "professional skills", but considering the circumstances, isn't that a way to keep the ball rolling? There are no jobs for everyone, so it allows job seekers to work at least 2 months for their town, isn't it?
Anyway, sorry about the "One chance out of 26.521 million", I think you have misunderstood, I was just trying to make a little joke, generalizing the process to the whole Europe (because I am sure european people would love the concept (joke again)) so the figure 26.521 million represents the number of job hunters in Europe.
Lisa N