Youth Fight For a Future
This summer sees 600,000 school, college and university graduates leave education and enter the world of work.
Leah Ganley
Many will be searching for a job for the very first time, but all will have a difficult task getting a job with over 2.2 million people already unemployed across the UK, with this figure set to reach 3.5 million within a year. Princes’ Trust research shows that youth unemployment is costing Scotland £2 million a week and the number of 18-24 year olds claiming Job Seekers’ Allowance has soared by 72% in the past year.
According to recent research, only half of “graduate employers” will be taking on graduates or school leavers. It is predicted to be the hardest year in a generation for those leaving education to get a job. This unemployment crisis is the biggest problem facing young people today, the biggest problem facing the future of tomorrow.
What has the government done to try to alleviate the problem? Provide a few extra apprenticeships which don’t guarantee the minimum wage or a job at the end of the apprenticeship period. Which in reality is way to provide cheap labour to businesses. The scheme for 35,000 extra places, set up by Gordon Brown has already run out of money according to the Observer.
The government are not talking this issue seriously, they’re too busy working out how much money they can screw out of taxpayers using the expenses system. Neither Westminster nor Holyrood have any real solution to the problem. The Westminster parliament’s Universities Minister, David Lammy recently said that graduates should think about moving abroad to find work.
The Youth Fight For Jobs campaign is stepping up our campaign over the summer including a fortnight of action from June 27 to July 10 to highlight this crisis and demanding urgent steps to tackle this crisis.
Our campaign is being backed by the civil servants union, the PCS, the transport workers RMT union and the postal workers union the CWU. These are among the most left wing and progressive trade unions in the UK, so it is a tremendous boost to the campaign and to the ideas that we stand for. To the idea that we need a to fight for our future.
There will be events across Scotland for the fortnight of action, including protests, meetings and publicity stunts. Get involved today
