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Shaping Solutions for Mobility

 
Welcome to the 18th edition of our Future as we Move campaign series!

While the automotive industry is gradually resuming production, the deep evaluation is gaining momentum of the future of the sector and its subsequent needs going forward. Human capital is a main driver underpinning the sector’s transformation, and the assessment of the future workforce and its skills needs will be part of a successful recovery and long-term planning.

As part of the key actions for a sustainable recovery, automotive suppliers are promoting a sectorial skills pact for the automotive industry, to help guarantee sector competitiveness and help preserve its position in the economic fabric across member states and regions. This was presented at yesterday´s webinar Automotive Sector - Skills and Transformation together with the main findings of other initiatives dealing with the evaluation of skills needs of the sector, the whole value-chain and specifically for SMEs (COSME Project).

Concrete actions are under development, including immediate crisis-time online courses to help companies to re/upskilling the workforce, available via the European projects DRIVES and ALBATTS. 
 
Do you want to know more? Read further!

Skills and competences: new needs, new opportunities

 

The European automotive industry is renowned for providing attractive employment and offering plenty opportunity to learn and develop new skills while contributing to the future of regional economies. This stability is challenged by the Covid-19 emergency, which abruptly halted automotive operations, massively hurt liquidity, and interrupted supply, production and demand in a way that may have a lasting impact on the economy.

Since the start of the crisis, guaranteeing the health & safety of the more than 13 million employees in the wider automotive sector has been the first priority since day 1 of the current situation, with several measures taken by companies even before the mandatory measures issued by governments were in place. CLEPA, together with the European association of automotive manufacturers also signed a “Code of business conduct”, to support a rapid, safe and smooth restart of the automotive industry and called for common criteria, standards and conditions under which employees can return safely to restart production.

This crisis is accelerating the need of having a European workforce able to support the transformation of the sector. The high value of the competences of the sector has become vividly apparent in the critical phase of the crisis, where several automotive companies have dedicated all their capabilities and know-how to support with manufacturing medical equipment and personal protective gear, see here for a few examples. The quickness of these actions showcases that flexibility and quick adaptation of the labour force is essential to guarantee the current and future competitiveness of the European automotive industry.

But also, it has accelerated the need of adapting to new environments and it underpins innovation as key element for the sector´s recovery. Decarbonisation and digitalisation remain urgent in the current scenario, and the new societal needs on mobility are demanding a quicker uptake of emerging technologies such as automated driving solutions, or pushing, as part of the coronacrisis recovery package, for a European stake in critical technologies such as the hydrogen economy and battery cells production, to boost Europe’s strategic autonomy.

In recent conversations with Nicolas Schmit, Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, CLEPA has underlined that the importance of sustained policy action to re- and upskill Europe’s workforce, as also outlined the recent publication 25 Actions For a successful restart of the EU's automotive sector. CLEPA, together with the other three associations representing the automotive sector (equipment, tyre suppliers, vehicle manufacturers, dealers and workshops) anticipates the delivery of the updated EU Skills agenda and urges to accelerate the establishment of a sectoral Skills Pact for the automotive sector.

In this light, CLEPA welcomes the recent announcement by the European Commission, together with the European Investment Fund (EIF), to launch a 50€ million pilot to develop skills and education across Europe.

Also, through the Project DRIVES in which CLEPA actively participates, set up to modernise the skills framework in European countries, enhance labour mobility across Europe and enhance the effectiveness of apprenticeships, a series of online course have been made available to support the reskill and upskill home education of the workforce in the automotive sector.
 
The European automotive sector is undergoing a structural transformation, and only with the right labour force the industry will be able to guarantee its sustainability and competitiveness long-term. Because employees amongst every company’s most valuable assets, industry will keep working to guarantee the safest work environment and the access to training to help bring about the new mobility of the future.

 >>Read more

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