Youth walkout 20 November

Mila Hughes, West Midlands Socialist Students

Young people can’t afford to wait around to see whether a new face in Downing Street changes anything. We have a new Labour prime minister, Andy Burnham, but we still have low pay, insecure work, and an increasing youth unemployment crisis. And his appointment of John Healey as his Chancellor, who resigned from Starmer’s government because cuts weren’t swift enough to pay for more war, sends a message about Burnham’s intentions.

Our future

We are told to accept a future of zero-hour contracts, short-term employment and dwindling pay. A ‘job’ that offers no guaranteed hours, security or way to comfortably think about their future is not a real job.

Employers have pushed to replace stability with precarious work so they can rake in megabucks in profits, paid for with our worsening pay and conditions. Real jobs mean permanent contracts, guaranteed hours, and decent conditions.

That’s why we’ve been out campaigning to raise the minimum wage to at least £15 an hour, as a start, with no age exemptions. On campaign stalls, we regularly hear that bills, food, fuel and the rest are all going up but wages seem to stay the same.

The demand for £15 an hour is not impossible; it’s the bare minimum needed to live in this cost-of-living crisis and it’s already the demand raised by trade unions. Paying young workers less for the same work is not a ‘starter wage’, it’s exploitation, and it exists only because bosses think young workers are less likely to fight back.

We are building a movement of young workers and students prepared to take action for real jobs and decent pay, standing together with workers already fighting the same battle in their workplaces

Get organised

Socialist Students will be helping young people to get organised to walk out of their classes and lectures on 20 November to “fight for our future, not their wars!” We call on all young people to join us. To fight further cuts and declining services, an unemployment and NEET crisis, and against ramping up bosses’ war and division. Join us to fight back for a better society – a socialist society in which the working class democratically makes the decisions, so society can provide a decent job, a good standard of living for all, not just look after the super-rich.