SSY has already reported on the astronomical levels of youth unemployment that Britain is suffering from during the recession. The Government is currently trying to curb it by introducing funding into the “Future Jobs Fund” – a fund which ostensibly exists to provide funding for jobs specifically for those unemployed for 6 months and 18-24 years old.

These jobs are almost always minimum wage however, will only create 150,000 jobs (out of youth unemployment of 2 million) and are only guaranteed to last for 6 months. This will be good for Labour’s election prospects in the short term as youth unemployment falls slightly, but not for stopping another generation from being lost.

The Tories think they have the right idea, and they’ve got backing from none other than Michael Caine. Cameron’s launched a “National Citizen’s Service”, the aim of which is to get young people into voluntary community work – helping old ladies, painting fences, etc. The plan has proved popular in recent opinion polls, and with youth unemployment so high what could be wrong with giving young people work – particularly when it appears to be socially useful work?

Well for a start the work is unpaid. If your under 18 (and Cameron’s plan is directed to 16 year old school leavers) you cannot apply for benefits. With the economy in such dire straits, school leavers today are going to have as much trouble finding jobs as their counterparts did in the 80’s. These lack of options mean that many young people may go into a National Service plan not out of choice but because there is nothing else for them to do.

Not only is there no proper wage in these National Service plans but there is no guarantee of a permanent job, apprenticeship, training or education. It would serve as a good way of getting young people off the unemployment figures but not provide them with much of a future after their National Service is over (and the service will only last for 2 months).

The biggest danger is that the national citizen service plan is a stepping stone to “workfare” – where unemployed young people will be made to work for their beneifts (and not a wage). This was what happened during the last period of mass youth unemployment in the 80’s, where the Tories introduced Youth Training Schemes. This forced school leavers to work for pittance wages for employers.

There’s still a similar scheme like it today, called Skillseekers where some jobs for 16-17 year olds are not minimum wage and young people can work a 40 hour week and take home only £50.

These kind of schemes do not reduce youth unemployment – they are only used as a short term pool of extremely cheap labour for employers. This pool of cheap labour means that companies who need to take on extra staff won’t take them as school leavers on the minimum wage – they’ll wait till they’re on the dole and employ them for £1 – 2 an hour. Both the Tories and New Labour clearly believe that having an army of low paid young workers are necessaries to allow companies to become profitable again after the recession.

What’s the alternative then? Well there’s nothing in principle wrong from community work for unemployed young people – far from it, done properly it can be a socially useful job far more rewarding than working in a bar or a call centre. There are plenty of communities in Scotland suffering the worst levels of poverty in Western Europe who desperately need assistance in making the streets cleaner, safer, providing childcare, running youth centres, assisting the elderly etc. But the SSY and SSP wants jobs like these to be available for unemployed young people on a decent wage, on permanent contracts and with full trade union rights. That can be easily funded if we enacted a greed tax on the hyper-rich in the UK. It may not have many celebrity supporters, but it is an idea which we believe will have a lot of support among young people in Scotland today.

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