Krsto J. Pejovic
President of Trade Union of Financial Organizations, Montenegro

New skills for new jobs

In a modern society, every national economy and its strategic development mostly depend on educational quality of human resources. Therefore, overall strategy of a global society imposes a need for new system of education, with new jobs and new skills as its main focus. This is fully accepted by the state of Montenegro. Without it there would be no valid creation of economic knowledge that is prerequisite for development, progress and prosperity all together. If a general premise suggesting globalisation process necessarily requiring comprehensive change in businesses is added to the previously said, one then comes to an inevitable conclusion that development of new knowledge, skills and initiatives as well as the life-long learning concept that one cannot escape from are essential preconditions for economic survival.    

Modern economy is characterized by discontinuity and changing labour conditions. Only those organizations or companies i.e. legal subjects that are capable of keeping up with the current changes but also finding possible combinations of available production factors, equally respecting either subjective (profit) or objective (labour force/employees) factor – capital, are bound to succeed. In line with that, contemporary vocational education needs to provide new skills and qualifications for new jobs that are to do with improving new tasks, which make room for operational thinking, logical concluding, individual planning and cooperation, along with learning possibilities at work places through courses, programmes, seminars, and learning of foreign languages – and all this with a single aim of permanent education and training.  

Given that the work is a process of labour force use and that its quality is determined by the level of work force knowledge, the general position arising from this is that the quality of work is determined by knowledge and skills of the employed. New skills and initiatives, therefore, have to be treated as an economic factor, as a measure of competitive capability of an economic society or as economic investment. Simply put, nowadays and under the current circumstances, we must know “how” and “why”, since work force is the only factor that produces, thinks, and creates.

Having in mind that Montenegro is “at the doorstep” of the European Union (EU), it is important to underline that new jobs and news skills are integral part of the major EU goals, especially through learning and spreading languages of its member states but also through incentives focusing on labour mobility and exchange of information and experiences that are of common interest for systems of education and employment. All this is necessary in order to ease adjustments to changes by vocational qualification and pre-qualification, aimed at smoother integration of both employed and unemployed to reintegrated labour markets.    

However, all previously stated is surely not enough. Process of acquiring new skills is followed by an explosion of commercially based education market. There are already many groups and companies that offer and provide services such as programmes, courses, seminars, faculties and universities and see this as “fertile” grounds for industry in education, for which participants in these forms of training pay dearly from their own pockets. Competition, experimenting and incentive are embedded in all of this but as labour sociologists would put it, also a “brain drain”. Still, besides such a conclusion, harmonization of new skills and knowledge creates a situation in which the gap between technology and education lessens and modern technology or rather the work process ends up in the hands of smart and creative people whose success potentials are limitless, at least in theory.  

Since economy of new jobs and news skills requires computer-literate labour force, it becomes ever so clear to Montenegro that education can and must have a role in fulfilling these requirements. Moreover, young people of today are being born to and grow up in information and media societies, in which terms such as “virtual reality” and “wall-less classrooms” are rooted. We have to take acquiring new skills for new jobs as a fact, should one wish to have real job, and even more so since we live in a truly interactive environment that negates long time-present abstract perception of a “rooted worker” or  a “jobs for all times”. If one manages to achieve new relationship to the modern labour culture, it would become clear that education and professional capabilities for new jobs’ new skills are the starting point for employment opportunities and success in a career. They lead to “bank of knowledge”, which is the ground for life-long vocational learning, be it at “University of industry” or “University for Services”. 

Krsto Pejovic is President of Trade Union of Financial Organizations in Montenegro. He used to work as a legal adviser of former Service of Social Accounting (SDK) and in management of Trade Union of Financial Organizations. He published numerous reviews and articles in legal publications in Podgorica and Belgrade. Pejovic took part in the drafting process of new laws on labour and volunteering at work as well as in general collective agreements for banks and other insurance and financial institutions. He holds BA Degree in Law from the Law Faculty of the Belgrade University.

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