Nedelino Municipal Council approved on 19 May a set of internal employment rules for the newly established Social Enterprise for Urban Development. The document, however, appears to have been cobbled together from fragments of unrelated texts, making its practical application highly questionable. This did not stop all 13 councillors from approving it unanimously and authorising its immediate implementation in the name of “particularly important public interests”.
An administrative “Frankenstein”
Nedelino Municipality is setting up the social enterprise to provide employment for people from vulnerable groups through the maintenance of public spaces. On paper, the idea sounds like a model of European social policy. The rules, however, create institutional confusion rather than a clear framework for work.
The document mixes different organisational structures and job titles that do not correspond to the social enterprise as described elsewhere. In one section, the enterprise mysteriously becomes a “company”. Elsewhere, a “manager” appears to be responsible for staff holidays, while a “director” is given powers to impose disciplinary sanctions.
At the same time, the heads of various subdivisions – directorates, departments or units – are instructed to prepare holiday schedules. Yet the Municipal Council’s decision assigns overall organisational and financial responsibility for the enterprise to the relevant deputy mayor.
A structure that officially provides for five positions for members of the target groups and one employment mentor thus becomes populated in the rules by directors, managers, subdivisions and other positions whose place in the actual organisational structure is never explained.
Enter “bathhouse manager”
The most revealing example appears in the section dealing with labour discipline.
It states that “workers in OP BKS and OI” are obliged to observe discipline and that supervision is entrusted to the “immediate supervisor/mechanical engineer, mechanical organiser, bathhouse manager”.
The phrase is clearly a fragment left over from another document and never removed before the rules were submitted for approval.
The appearance of a “bathhouse manager” in a document governing a social enterprise whose work is supposed to focus on landscaping and maintenance is not merely an administrative curiosity. It suggests that the text was approved without even a basic check that all its provisions actually referred to the structure for which it was being adopted.
Even the arithmetic does not add up
The problems are not limited to the wording.
In the justification for the urgent implementation of the rules, the administration refers to “six people from vulnerable groups”.
But the figures in the actual proposal are different. Five positions are allocated to members of the target groups – three for people in a disadvantaged position and two for people with disabilities. A separate position is provided for an employment mentor.
In other words, six people appear in one part of the document as members of vulnerable groups, while elsewhere the six positions include the mentor.
There is also uncertainty over the future of the jobs. The proposal speaks of sustainable employment opportunities, while at the same time specifying that support for the employees will last for 12 months.
What happens after that period – whether the municipality will continue funding the enterprise or whether it will simply remain a completed project – is not explained.
This raises the broader question of whether Nedelino is establishing a genuinely sustainable social enterprise or merely creating a structure designed to deliver a particular project before its future is reconsidered.
The councillors’ silence
The rules were approved by the Standing Committee on Budget and Finance with five votes in favour.
In the council chamber, all 13 councillors present voted for them. There was no debate.
No one asked why the social enterprise suddenly becomes a “company” in parts of the document, who the mysterious “manager” is, where “OP BKS and OI” came from, or what a “bathhouse manager” is doing in rules governing an enterprise for urban maintenance and development.
A document intended to regulate the day-to-day work of a new social enterprise was therefore approved without a single question, despite the obvious inconsistencies contained within it.
