Work and play
With labour and skills shortages high on the list of challenges facing the shoe industry in Europe, CEC hopes a new game can help bring young people into the sector.
The general secretary of the European Confederation of the Footwear Industry (CEC), Carmen Arias, has said the sector needs to do more to encourage young people in Europe to come to work in footwear manufacturing. She also says the industry needs to work with parents and teachers to convince them to accept that technical training and manufacturing jobs are good choices for many young people.
Ms Arias has been active in encouraging schools to take students to see how shoes are made today and says she hopes more education professionals will follow suit. Her view is that many school-leavers at the moment are unlikely to consider applying for a job in shoe production because they have an outdated idea in their minds about the way footwear factories work. “We have had some success in convincing footwear manufacturers to open their doors to young people,” she tells World Footwear. “Earlier this year there was a very successful visit by students to factories in Elche. And part of its success was that it won the support of parents.”
Bridge-building
On the wider subject of skills development and future-proofing jobs in the European footwear industry, CEC is a partner in a number of initiatives. Often, it works on these alongside organisations that represent textiles, clothing and leather. The European Union (EU), which provides all-important funding for many of the projects, has grouped the four fashion-focused industries together under the umbrella name of TCLF.
One such project, TCLF SkillBridge, launched this July. Co-financed by the European Commission, the focus of this project will be on 25 different regions across the EU that still have “a strong concentration” of manufacturing companies from one of the TCLF industries. For footwear, the most important clusters include those in Le Marche, Tuscany, Veneto, Campania, Lombardy, Apulia and Emilia Romagna in Italy. Those in Elche, La Rioja, Almansa and Mallorca in Spain are also part of the picture, as is the cluster in the Norte region of Portugal.
Keep skill levels high
The project partners want to develop “reskilling and upskilling action plans” specific to each region. Local authorities and education institutions, including universities and vocational education and training providers, will help deliver these action plans, providing support to small- and medium-sized companies in particular. The idea is to help those companies help their employees keep skills up to date so that businesses can continue to meet “the evolving demands of the market”.
Education and training programmes need to align with these regions’ economic priorities, Ms Arias says. She adds that the wider labour market is evolving and, in a global context, she says CEC is committed to helping footwear companies in Europe keep skills high and maintain a competitive advantage. She adds that it should be easier for qualified people from outside Europe to receive recognition for training they have completed in other parts of the world and for experience that they have built up in factories elsewhere. This, the CEC general secretary argues, will make it easier for people to find good jobs in Europe. It will also help European shoe manufacturers address the labour-shortage difficulties that they face.
Retirement age
Of course, skilled workers will still retire, often taking decades of craftsmanship know-how with them. Official retirement ages have gone up recently in a number of EU member states. Portugal’s state pension starts at 66 + 6 months, as it does across the border in Spain, although it is scheduled to move to 67 in Spain in 2027.
Many people will be in their mid-to-late sixties before they receive the state pension in Italy, but anyone who started working and paying contributions in Italy immediately after leaving school, as many footwear factory workers will have done, will qualify for a pension at or around the age of 60.
Game time
This brings us back to the challenge of attracting new generations of school-leavers into the industry to replace those departing. As part of its effort to spark interest in shoe production among today’s high-school students, CEC used previous funding from the Erasmus+ education support programme to create a video game about the industry.
Footwear professionals from Belgium, Romania, Spain, Portugal, and Greece all helped in the development of Shoe Game, which aims to introduce children to the footwear business in a “challenging and entertaining” way.
Young people can play the game on desktop computers or tablets. It consists of a total of 25 challenges that require observation, strategic thinking and soft skills. It takes about 45 minutes to complete. If players perform well, they can see the fictitious company that they are in charge of grow in terms of revenue, profits, customer acquisition, workforce stability and sustainability.
Students, teachers and members of the public have had the opportunity to try the game out, including at organised events and through social media channels. It is also possible for teachers to use it in a classroom setting as an educational resource for subjects such as economics or business studies. It is available in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Italian and French.
Around 5,000 users tried the game in the first two months after launch. “It is proving to be popular among teachers and their pupils,” Ms Arias says. “It involves a business scenario in which a fictitious shoe company faces going out of business. Players of the game have to come up with ideas that can turn things around.” Her hope is that it will help young people discover what working in a shoe factory in Europe in the 2020s consists of. Some players might develop a lasting interest in and love for footwear. After all, lots of fashionable young people adore shoes. Why shouldn’t they fall in love with the industry that creates them?
Lots of fashionable young people have a passion for shoes. It’s time to encourage them to love the industry that creates the products they adore.
Credit: Micam
