Newsflash!
Youth Fight For Jobs march 2 April 2009, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
On 1 October a number of Future Jobs Fund placements began. These temporary schemes are designed to artificially push down the number of long term unemployed youth (see previous articles). Young people can be told to work wherever employers want, including in workplaces where the workers are on strike, or where they’re making cuts to permanent jobs.
Also on 1 October, the minimum wage went up by 4p an hour for 16 and 17 year olds, 6p for 18-21 year olds and 7p for those over 21. These tiny increases are insulting. Yet the minimum wage is the rate that many young workers, and many on the Future Jobs Fund-backed schemes, will be forced to live on. YFJ calls for a wage that you can live on with no youth exemptions.
It’s not the same for everyone involved in this scheme however. Blackpool council is advertising for a permanent post of ‘Future Jobs Fund administrator’ on up to £32,000 a year. Will the wages of those on the schemes or the other council workers be topped up to a similar level?
Not everyone has to fight for jobs! Adam Applegarth, former failed Northern Rock chief executive, received a £760,000 payoff when he left Northern Rock. Not for him the dole queue. He has just landed a job as an adviser at Apollo, a private equity company, continuing to gamble on the stock market for a living.
HBOS and RBS banks got £37 billion in government bailouts – enough to abolish university fees for three years. Pity the thousands of people employed by Alliance Boots, where Adam Hornby, former HBOS chief executive, is now in charge. Never mind doing up your CV, RBS disaster overseer-in-chief Sir Fred ‘the shred’ Goodwin has enough spare cash to hire a PR expert! The bankers and the rich get rewarded for failure while young people get punished for a crisis not of their making.
Join the fightback!
Join the march for jobs & for free education
Saturday 28 November, London
Campaign update
- Thousands of pounds have come in from trade union branches supporting the Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ) demonstration, including £600 from three NUT branches in the South West area.
- Sussex students union has agreed to book a coach and help publicise the demonstration.
- Vestas workers, fighting to keep green jobs on the Isle of Wight, have agreed to support the demonstration.
- “Vestas workers campaign to make sure more green jobs are created, building a strong trade union movement attracting younger people, supporting and showing solidarity with other workers’ struggles both on the island and nationally.”
- YFJ activists have met hundreds of people at freshers fairs interested in the demonstration, and had a lot of interest over the internet. Ross from Worcester says: “I will be attending in November for sure! What can I do to help organise it/ publicise it?”
- PCS union young members are holding meetings around the country, together with YFJ, to advertise the campaign and build for the demonstration.
- Yorkshire YFJ members are holding protests around their region on 14 October, the date of the next set of unemployment figures. In Huddersfield, a demonstration and march is being organised from the university to the council meeting, where Save our NHS councillor Jackie Grunsell will be raising questions about what the council are doing to oppose youth unemployment.
- London YFJ are organising a gig on Saturday 24 October. Urban Bar, Whitechapel Road, 8pm-Late Magnetic Attraction + Many more!
