UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis, speaking today to the union’s Young Members’ Forum in Devon, will warn that the new government holds out little hope to a generation of young people facing unemployment and disaffection.
Dave Prentis will say:
“We have a generation of young people poised on the cliff-edge of disaffection. The recession has hit their job prospects hard – a scandalous 48% of young black people between the age of 16 and 24 are unemployed and 20% of white people of the same age.
“These young people are in danger of becoming a lost generation, with no job and no immediate prospects of work.
“And I fear that the new government is not holding out any hope to them. A few days before the election, David Cameron launched the Tories’ promise to young people. He spoke about a school sports competition and volunteering for hiking with the army. He didn’t mention jobs or education. The LibDems promised 800,000 work placements for £55 a week for 3 months. That’s barely £1 an hour; that’s poverty pay and an attack on the principle of the minimum wage.
“Crucially, the Tory/LibDem government is committed to cutting £6 billion from public spending – a move that will swipe away whatever hope those young people had of getting a job. If you cut public sector jobs, you close off opportunities to the young. If you cut public sector jobs, you damage local economies. For every £1 a public sector worker earns, they spend nearly 70p of it in the local economy – the local shops, the local hairdressers, local bars, local businesses.
“The prospect of drastic funding cuts has fuelled calls from universities for higher tuition fees and higher interest rates on loans. If this
happens, only the rich will be able to continue in higher education, and the divide between the haves and have-nots will create a explosive cocktail of social unrest and dislocation.
“We have a fight on our hands, to oppose those cuts and to collectively offer help to all those young people who deserve a lot better than this government is offering them”.