how the lisbon treaty fails at social services

today´s task is to show at one example why the lisbon treaty does not work. does not work means in this terms that in case a task job is done due to a private company instead of municipality owned organization it can not be done properly and quality of work has to suffer.

the lisbon treaty ment in one way that in municipalities local areas private companies have to compete against each other to get an assignment of the municipalities for doing a work that is done publicly previously. their goal is to make the european union the most competitve and most effective organisation or market in the world. it is done to be competitive against the usa and the new asian economies.

water, waste water, electricity, trash collection, public transportation, clinics i.e. Hospitals and other public services are now done through private owned companies. some are still done by municipality owned organizations and still wait to be privatized.

lately they reached out to privatize some part of social services or better give assignments to private companies that are done previously by state owned or church owned organizations. instead of delivering social services now they should deliver a service that is being accounted and the companies (church, privates, unions) should compete each other regarding the service and more likely the price and the cheapest supplier will get the assignment for a certain period of time. after the period a new public writing will be done and the serivce providers have to compete again regarding the price of the service with each other to get the assignment.

i work in one of these private companies delivering social services locally for nearly ten years and want to show in one example, why this system, and through this the philosophy of the lisbon treaty does not work.

the company i work for got the assignment for a social service. in this case after school treatment of schoolchildren in a primary school. the task is give the children in two seperate rooms in the ground floor of their primary school after their regular schoolday from 8 a.m. to 11.00 and sometimes 12.00 and 1 p.m. following services, depanding for their finishing school day. first common noon meal. second helping them doing their homework, helping to cope and reeducate their defficiancy and make them prepared for the next schoolday and getting their homework done. also contact of teachers and parents to report their problems so they can get adapted. in case some children finish their homework first then as a third task to organize free time with the children play games and similar things till 2 p.m. when afternoon education is done and parents take their children back.

now we come to the part that interests us in this article. due to the price competition the company i work for can only provide two regular workers for the assignment. a regular third worker in the task would be too expensive for the company, since they are get paid for the hour done and the company wants to make some earning from the job, because it is a private company and not a regular social service provider. the company has a fix hour and price arranged with the school i.e. government. that means the company can´t work more to earn more or assign more workers to get more per hour payments of the state. with a fix budget for the task it has to work the next contract time usually a year.

due to the tight budget the company i work for assignet two regular workers. one with a tempory contract to the company that is renewed again and again with a limited time period to run and the other worker has not a proper contract at all. due to overload of work they had to assign me too for a limited time period. you have to note that my wage group is way ahead of the collegues working their. they are former school teachers. both fix assigned employee´s are part time workers. they have no full contracts i.e. the regular full i think 177 hrs a month work for this type of work. i don´t count me in since i am only temporary there and my assignment ends in the week of the 5th october 2009.

we have to look for a group of 22 children and have two class rooms seperated for us. one employer is looking for one room the other room is looked after by the other fix employee and part time now by me till october 5th. many of the children we look for are in need or deep assistance in managing their homework. (we talk about first, second and third graders only a few o them are fourth graders. as i know their are four of them in the fourth grade) many of the children have difficulties to cope with the homework due to the conditions they have at home. since the home they come frome are not supporting to adapt to the requirements of the school many children struggle to keep up with the demand of the school. programms like this should make it possible that the children keep up with the curriculum and don´t fall behind the other children. some of the children are their because that makes it possible that their single parents can work longer in the afternoon while their children are looked after.

many times one child requires that amount of attantion that you can not draw away from him or her and put your attention to another child, because that will lead to the failure of this child in his task homework. mostly they have so many gaps i their learnings, some from migrant families do not understand the local language at a sufficiant rate, since they live in ethnic neighborhoods, and don´t speak the native language their at all, amongst themselves.

at that time if another needy child raises their hands to draw attention from the educators it has to wait until the educator is finished with this child to explain the work it has to do, some need constant attation at one task during that subject. when an educator is occupied with one child not seldomly two or three children raise their hand to demand attantion from the educators to explain them a task of their homework.

to properly do the assignment that team at primary school requires four full time employers i.e. educators and one intern that will play with children that has already finished their homework. the private company can not provide this since it would be too expensive to deliver the service properly.

it can not raise the price since the price is fix and if it demands more money in the next period the assignment will propably go to another cheaper compatitor, so the company will remain at his low lever pricing to not loose the assignment once achieved. the company is now at a point where it has to deliver a service where it would require four full time employers and one intern to do the promised taks and can not deliver since delivering that promised service would be too expensive, cost more money that was arranged when achieving the assignment. now it has two full time employees and for a brief time a third one (me until october 5th, after that date they drop again to two employees). right now we can not deliver the full service for all children with three educators in one week i will drop out and they will remain two for a job that can not be done with three college educated people properly. a massive drop in the quality of service will result. and some children will turn home from this homework services with all their homework done and some will turn home with homework done not properly full of mistakes and the parents will think why should i send my child somewhere when it´s promised work is not done.

the school can show off we have a homework and afternoon service at our school. the only proper thing this service will deliver will be the regular meals and the parents have to pay for that extra.

a homework service that does not deliver properly and a social service by name not by service is the result of the lisbon treaty in this small community in central europe.

Tags: budget, cheapest supplier, children, eu, european union, lisbon treaty, municipality, price competition, primary school, private company, public services, schoolchildren, social services