The Socialist 22 September 2009

No cuts in public services

Prepare political challenge to cuts agenda

Higher education - cuts cuts cuts!

Universities in crisis - Join Socialist Students

Defend education - stop the £2 billion cuts in spending

Brown declares war on workers

TUC congress: Anger on the fringes, inaction at the top

Afghanistan: An unwinnable war

Postal workers strike as national ballot continues

Warrington mail centre

Vestas workers determined to continue fight for jobs

Youth unemployment hits record level

Future Jobs Fund - massaging the figures

Campaign for a Salford workers' MP

Energy rip-off

Threat to Coventry homeless

Socialist Party MEP denounces "campaign of fear" on Lisbon Treaty

Workers' fightback grows in Italy

Engineering construction: Stewards' forum recommends bosses' offer Workers should reject!

Portsmouth shipbuilders vote for strike

Bosses ask JCB workers for sacrifice

Battle over pensions means strike threat at Corus

Liverpool bin workers score victory

Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy

The Dirty Thirty - Heroes of the Miners' Strike

The Anti-Flag album 'The People or the Gun'

Previous issues, etc

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Youth unemployment hits record level

Youht Fight For Jobs protest outside parliament , photo S.Sachs-Eldridge (Click to enlarge)

THE ANNOUNCEMENT by the government on Wednesday 16 September of 2.5 million unemployed was met by public protests organised by Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ).

Officially UK unemployment is 7.9% of the total workforce, up from 5.6% only one year ago. Of the total unemployed nearly one million are young people aged between 16 and 24 years - a 14 year high. This means that one in five young people cannot find work and the situation is likely to get worse with only one quarter of employers planning to hire workers aged between 16 and 18 years.

Despite finding hundreds of billions of pounds to rescue failed banks, the government's response to solving youth unemployment has been totally inadequate. Chancellor Alistair Darling has trumpeted the government's one billion pound Future Jobs Fund (FJF), available to private and public employers.

However, FJF lasts for only six months and doesn't apply to 16 and 17 year olds. It only applies to the long-term unemployed, fuelling the suspicion that FJF is all about massaging the unemployment figures rather than providing real jobs.

Another fear is that FJF placements will simply occupy positions which otherwise would have to be filled by workers on better wages and conditions.

Youth Fight for Jobs is campaigning for permanent jobs at decent rates of pay and working conditions. The jobs crisis is a product of the general crisis within capitalism, so only socialist policies can provide a lasting solution. YFJ has called a national demonstration on 28 November for real jobs, for free education.