MILLION

YOUNG
PEOPLE
UNEMPLOYED
Youth Fight for Jobs

For real jobs

t Fees
Campaign to Defea

For free educ ation

demonstrate
28 november
london • assemble 12 noon

www.youthfightforjobs.com
officially supported by the RMT, PCS and CWU trade unions
 Unemployment for under-25s is rapidly
approaching 1 million. Bankers’ bonuses
are returning to their ‘normal’ heights of
millions of pounds, but for young people
and workers this recession is far from over.
Job vacancies are still decreasing and, for
people working and looking for jobs, a
decent life is still unaffordable.
The situation is especially desperate if
you are young. Wasn’t the message when
we were growing up: try hard, do well?
What a lie that turned out to be! There is
massive anger from young people finishing
school, college and university expecting to
be able to find work. Instead of financial
independence and the first steps on
the career ladder we are thrown on the
scrapheap.
Those young people who are in work
face the massive stress of ever greater
job insecurity because it is cheaper and
easier to sack young people when penny-
pinching bosses cutback to protect their
profit margins. The huge government debt
rung up by the bank bailouts means young
people staying on or returning to education
will find limited places, cuts to education
budgets and a poorer quality education
with no guarantee of a job at the end. Why
should young people be made to pay for a
crisis that was created by the bankers and
the big business politicians?
No to the Future Jobs ‘Fraud’
The response of the New Labour govern-
ment has been pathetic. The government
is setting up a number of schemes to
combat developing mass youth
unemployment. The largest of these
is called the ‘Future Jobs Fund’ (FJF).
Unfortunately the scale of the FJF is
completely inadequate, with 150,000
temporary jobs being created for around 2
and a half million unemployed people.
Young people need to have been on the
dole queue for approaching a whole year
before they can get on this scheme! The FJF
is not open to sixteen and seventeen year
olds at all. In fact a sixteen year old school
leaver will never get a job through the
FJF because the funding will have run out
by the time they are old enough to qualify!
For those in unemployment black spots
like Hull, Barnsley and Hastings, this is a
bleak future.
If you manage to secure a place on an FJF
scheme, the placements are limited to six
months and there is no guarantee of a
permanent job at the end. The minimum
terms and conditions for FJF placements
are that they provide twenty-five hours of
work, paying at least the minimum wage.
This is a pathetic £119 per week for eighteen
to twenty-one year olds! This is less than
I would like to get involved in Youth Fight for Jobs  Annual membership fees £4 waged / £1 waged
I want to help organise a protest in my area 
Name..........................................................................................................................................................................
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Please return to Youth Fight for Jobs, PO BOX 858, London, E11 1YG
• youthfightforjobs@gmail.com • 020 8558 7947 • www.youthfightforjobs.com • PO BOX 858, London, E11 1YG • Find us on facebook •
half the money that the government makes
available for these schemes. If this happens,
where will the other weekly £131 go?
The Future Jobs Fund could see the
introduction of temporary workers on the
minimum wage into workplaces alongside
workers who may well be on better pay
and conditions, often won and defended
through trade union struggle. Employers,
looking to pay as low a wage as they can
get away with, could use young cheaper
workers from the FJF to do similar work
as the existing workforce, leading to the
loss of better paid, more secure jobs!
To prevent any undercutting of existing
workers we demand that permanent jobs
and training schemes are created with
wages comparable to the current workforce
WE CAMPAIGN
or the industry standard.
The un-coordinated way in which the
FOR
jobs are being set up will mean there will • F or all FJF work to lead to
•
be huge variation in the type, quality and permanent jobs, not be limited
conditions. In addition to the FJF, schemes • to six month placements. For the
like the ‘Graduate Talent Pool’ will give right to a decent job for all.
young graduates the opportunity to
demonstrate their ‘talent’ for free! • F or all job creation schemes to be
• open to all, regardless of age and
The press is full of headlines and warnings
about a ‘wasted generation’. This will length of time unemployed.
be the reality if something isn’t done to • F or all employers to give FJF workers
change it. Young people cannot wait for
the big-business politicians to act on our a wage and conditions comparable
to the present workforce, or
•
behalf. The politicians bailed out the banks
without breaking a sweat. If they really industry standards.
cared they would do the same for young
• F or a massive public programme
people. But they don’t!
of house building, renovation
Youth Fight for Jobs is determined to
•
organise a fightback and build a mass and infrastructure projects. No to
campaign to guarantee a decent future profiteering private companies
for all young people. We demand socially running these projects.
useful work for all that want it, which pays
a living wage. We demand free, high quality • F or the right to a decent job for all,
education and training for all that want it. with a living wage of at least £8 an
We demand that job shedding companies
are taken into democratic public ownership hour. No youth exemptions.
to safeguard jobs. If the government says • W
e won’t pay for the bosses’
it is ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unaffordable’, we say
the pro-big business policies that caused crisis!
the recession are unaffordable and we need • B
ail out workers not bosses.
an alternative way of running society.
Nationalise big industries
Workers have shown a whole number of threatening closure or large-scale
times this year how a fightback can be job losses.
mounted. At the Lindsey Oil Refinery, the
Visteon car parts factories and the Vestas • F or fighting trade unions,
wind turbine factory, workers used their involving young workers and the
collective strength to deal blows against unemployed.
penny-pinching bosses determined to
drive down their wages and get rid of their • F or a mass campaign led by the trade
jobs. Youth Fight for Jobs has the backing unions and young people to create
of three major trade unions. We need to jobs and end unemployment.
organise to bring mass pressure to bear on
the government to force it to enact policies • N
o to university fees. Support the
that will guarantee our future. Be part of Campaign to Defeat Fees.
the fightback. Join the Youth fight for Jobs.
March on November 28th. • S hare out the work. For a 35 hour
working week with no loss of pay.