Youth walkout on 20 November
Leon Turner-Denham, Stoke Socialist Students
Behind the figure of ‘one million youth – not in education, employment, or training’ are people desperately trying to get a foothold. The effects go well beyond having less money.
What should be an exciting start to adult life, instead becomes a struggle to find any kind of security. Unemployment damages confidence, worsens mental health, and leaves young people feeling isolated.
The soon to be published Milburn Review has brought attention to the scale of this crisis. But rather than confronting the lack of jobs and opportunities, young people are being blamed for our situation.
Labour politician Alan Milburn has suggested cutting welfare spending to supposedly fund ‘employment support’. We’re expected to take responsibility for a crisis we didn’t create.
What are young people supposed to do? We can’t create jobs that don’t exist. Or magic up experience that employers refuse to give us.
Cutting support won’t fix that. We need free, fully funded education and training.
We need a major expansion of apprenticeships offering proper training, secure employment, and decent wages. We need a mass programme of council house building, and investment in renewable energy and public services, creating thousands of skilled, well-paid jobs.
But these demands also raise a bigger question: who controls the wealth and resources in society?
There is no shortage of work that needs doing, or wealth to pay for it. Yet under capitalism, decisions about investment and employment are made according to the profits of big business, not the needs of ordinary people.
We need socialist change: public ownership of the major banks and big businesses, under democratic workers’ control and management, so resources can be used to meet social needs rather than private profit.
After leaving uni, I spent months looking for work, applying for 100 jobs in a single week. Eventually, I accepted a minimum-wage job, completely unrelated to my degree.
This is the reality facing young people, doing everything expected of us, gaining qualifications, but still struggling to find decent work.
Across Britain and Europe, young people are fighting back. On 20 November, students will walk out under the slogan ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars’.
By linking up with workers and trade unions, we can build a movement to fight for a different future. We don’t have to accept a system that puts profit before people.
A socialist society, democratically run in the interests of the majority, could give young people the future we deserve.
