Non-EU workers trained at home: an innovative but time-consuming route

From Lima a group of 11 social and health care workers arrived in Italy and have already been working for a few months, after training in their homeland, at an Rsa in Padua of the Opera Immacolata Concezione Onlus Foundation, which manages 12 residential centres for the elderly, also in Vicenza, Treviso, Mantua and Gorizia, with 1,500 employees of 51 nationalities. The 11 workers worked in Peru as nursing technicians and arrived in Italy last March, with accommodation provided free of charge by the Foundation for six months. "The biggest difficulty," explains Karin, one of the workers, "is the distance from my children, aged 17 and 11, who remained in Peru.

The Foundation's human resources manager, Chiara Serafin, emphasises the advantages but also the criticalities of the procedure: 'We have a lot of difficulty,' she explains, 'in finding health workers in our area. The foreign training channel makes it possible to plan recruitment, to have clarity on the documents to be produced and to bring in workers with certified skills. The timeframe for the issuance of permits and visas, however, is still too long, especially for some countries. This is true both for the company that has to recruit, for which a month's delay can be problematic, and for the workers who leave their previous employment in their country with a view to arriving in Italy, and in the meantime still need to support themselves'.

The need to speed things up is also central for Daniele Albanese, head of European projects at Talent Beyond Boundaries, an NGO specialising in work corridors for refugees and partner in programmes to train non-EU workers in Jordan, Colombia, Uganda and Egypt. 'On 7 October,' he explains, 'a group of Syrian goldsmiths from Jordan that we helped train will arrive and work in Turin. Article 23 offers a regular and dignified entry channel for workers, who have excellent skills. One point that can be improved,' he adds, 'is the certainty of time, because theentry procedure is the same as for other non-EU workers. Moreover, the very long times for family reunification can make Italy a less attractive destination than other countries'.

The competition for talent is in fact global, as explained by Arnaldo Carignano, Talent director of Randstad Italia, which is supporting many companies in training projects abroad: 'In a context of difficulty in finding personnel, the competition,' he says, 'is not with other agencies, but with other countries: Canada, Germany, the Arab Emirates. Economic support for Italian language courses would be very useful, perhaps through international cooperation funds'.

A project using European funds is what the National Confederation of Crafts and Small and Medium Enterprises (Cna) is working on, together with Spanish and Egyptian companies. "The starting point is the need for manpower," says Cna president Dario Costantini, "because it is already an urgent need and it will get worse. The project aims to train 350 Egyptian workers, part of whom (200) will remain in Egypt, while 150 will come to Europe: 130 in Italy and 20 in Spain. The courses should start at the end of the year after the final go-ahead for the use of European funds.

"It took us a long time but we are trying to build a structural project,' Costantini continues. 'For small businesses such as artisans, an employee can represent 50 per cent of the workforce and training is fundamental, not only on the job but also on the Italian language and the rules of our country. We need these people to be able to integrate into the social fabric and remain in Italy'. The project aims to create professional corridors to fill the labour shortage in the sectors of mechatronics/mechanics, fashion,food, tourism and catering. In Italy, it will mainly involve companies from Emilia Romagna and parts of Umbria and Tuscany, while in Spain it will mainly affect SMEs from Catalonia. The planned expenditure is about two million euros that will be used for the training of workers and for theaccommodation and integration in Italy and Spain.