Adam Gillman, south east London Socialist Party
Young people leave university today with mountains of student debt, an increasingly bleak future with the shadow of climate change and war, and public services such as the NHS and mental health services devastated by cuts and privatisation. And on top of all that, a terrible and worsening job market. Graduate jobs are down by 33% compared to last year – the worst level since 2018.
Many students will have gone to university and taken on thousands of pounds of debt in the hope that at the end of it they will have access to better jobs, but increasingly that is not the case.
If you are a young person, with or without a degree, you spend hours and hours filling out job applications. If you do find a job you get low pay, zero-hour contracts and long hours just to get by.
The media has blamed developments in new technology, particularly artificial intelligence, for the drop in graduate opportunities. If we accept that argument, it shows how the bosses would use technology to drive down the conditions of working-class people and increase their profits instead of using it for the good of us all.
We pay the price
But that’s not the only reason – young people are increasingly expected to pay the price for the decaying capitalist system’s failures. The chronic lack of investment over years, and the loss of decent jobs that comes with it, is the fault of the bosses not young people. Big business prioritises short-term profits for a few. Gambling on the stock markets and asset stripping public services is more profitable than things which would create the high-quality jobs we need. Projects which use the skills and resources available to better our lives are held back by the way capitalist society is organised.
And Starmer’s Labour government is clearly on the side of the bosses not the rest of us. The infrastructure investments announced, like an extra runway at Heathrow airport or wasted money on carbon capture, won’t drastically improve the lives of working-class people but will make a handful of private businesses and individuals a lot richer.
Instead, we need public investment, under democratic workers’ control, not just cash handed out to the bosses. A mass programme of council house building, transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables, and using new technology to improve the NHS would not only benefit society but also generate millions of jobs. And now, we have people desperately looking for work at the same time as others have to work multiple jobs just to get by. Sharing out the work, with no loss of pay and a shorter working week, would improve the lives of all of us, apart from the bosses.
But if we want any of this, we have to fight for it. The trade unions, which have over six million members, are the most potentially powerful force in society that could take the lead with a campaign for the jobs, homes and services we need.
By democratically planning production and distribution – nationalising energy, water, transport, the banks and the top 150 companies – the wealth and resources in society could be used by workers to improve the lives of us all instead of just the bank balances of those at the top.
