My Speech on Youth Unemployment/Student Fees

The broken employment conveyor belt: From graduation straight to the Jobcentre, this is the reality for many young people today.

For the benefit of those who weren’t there, here is the unedited speech I wrote and read out for the Berwick Trades Council/Peoples Assembly event last weekend:

As Tony just said before he nicked off for the football, the Peoples Assembly aims to work with those from all walks of life. But the Berwick branch should probably not invite the Russians round as you’ve been at war with them for nearly 200 years.

What’s Berwick’s view on Scottish independence? Does it mean that you will have to take your passport with you to the shop around the corner?

I’m suitably qualified to do this speech on Youth Unemployment as:

1.  I’m 22
2. I’ve been unemployed for over a year
3. This is only the 2^nd time I’ve ever done any public speaking so it’s basically like most replies I get from prospective employers, I don’t have enough experience

I’ve been unemployed since I graduated from university in June 2012, so I’m going to talk about education first because that’s when future employment problems start, whether you leave after school, sixth form/college or uni; I’ll talk about the latter as it’s what I’ve experienced.

One of the many thing that you have to take into account when choosing where you are going to go to get your degree is living costs. If you are going further afield and this can effect your choice if you are short on funds. I could have gone to Bournemouth on the south coast, one of the better universities for my chosen subject (Media Production) but I chose to stay local and go to the University of Sunderland to stay at home.

No disrespect to Sunderland but this dilemma is brought about because you have to think ‘Can I afford to go to the best university?’ instead of the question you should ask ‘Can I actually get into the best university based on my grades? And this is because of the next point I’m bringing up, tuition fees.

Before 1998, University was free in the UK and a lot of people from working class backgrounds took advantage of this to get better qualifications and get on in life. From then on tuition fees were introduced, starting at £1,000 a year and steadily rising to past £2,000 then to just over £3,000 by the time I came in 2009.

It didn’t seem a huge concern to me and my fellow students at the time, but then along came Mr Clegg promising before the last general election to abolish fees all together. So we went into campus one day with Lib Dem badges on trying to get students from outside the area to register in Sunderland so they could vote for them.

This proposed policy didn’t affect us, but we felt that we could play a part in getting rid of these fees for students in the future. Then the coalition happened and instead of abolishing or even lowering tuition fees, they tripled them…

So a coach load of us who had voted Lib Dem (and curiously 1 Tory) went down to London, occupied Millbank, threw a fire extinguisher off the roof and got kettled. Just think of how many students must have vote for Clegg on that promise, and then think how seats his party will lose come 2015 because of this failure to come through with the goods, he’d basically betrayed a whole generation that year, I feel sorry for the people of Berwick for having one as your MP for so many years, are you glad he’s retiring?

I joined Labour for the first time soon after Ed Miliband was elected leader, I don’t really feel much affinity to the party, it was really the lesser of three evils. I couldn’t support the Lib Dems after what they did to the students. And where I live in South Tyneside you’d get lynched if you voted Tory, so I didn’t really have a choice.

I was told fairly early on that my chosen industry (TV,film,Radio & journalism) was a very competitive one for jobs, and that was before the credit crunch. So I was under no illusions when I graduated that I couldn’t just walk into a job, but I didn’t expect to be still looking for one to this day.

I was optimistic about gaining some form of employment when I first signed on, the clerk at the Jobcentre asked me what work I was looking for and said that alongside me applying for jobs, they will also actively look for work on my behalf.

I that’s when the lies started, I’m now going to tell you the truth. Not what the coalition consider as true; like the first answer a government minister is required to say under pain of death during an interview ‘We are cleaning up after Labour left the finances in a mess’ like we are the only country in the world that wasn’t effected by the GLOBAL RESSESION! The key word there is GLOBAL!

No, this is the actual truth. Since I first signed on I have NEVER been offered an interview or even information on a job opportunity from the Jobcentre. Every time I go in the place I feel worthless and I get treated with suspicion and distain. My appointments degenerated into them just making sure I hadn’t been committing fraud in the last fortnight and getting me to confirm my address so they know where to come and arrest me if I had been.

I’ve applied for over 1,500 jobs, I’ve had less than 100 replies and 5 interviews, one of which was all the way down in London with a days notice. From August to November last year I didn’t receive a penny because I had put down some voluntary work on my CV (which I thought would help me find a job) because they had to investigate whether I was being paid for a weekends worth of work, the clues in the name VOLUNTARY!

This situation only resolved itself when I called them on their premium rate helpline every day for 2 weeks. I’m lucky I still live with my parents because if I’d been renting somewhere I’d had been on the streets for 4 months, and they wouldn’t care a jot.

After a year you are fobbed of on the ‘Work Program’ to some private recruitment company. I mean a least they actually attempt to find you something, even if 9 times out of 10 it’s in a call centre based on commission, but more of that later.

Let me now tell you some facts, not coalition friendly facts from the Office of National Statistics; facts from the Office of National Facts, (otherwise known as real life).

• The youth contract, (the scheme put in place to get more 16-14 year olds into work by basically bribing their potential employers with a few grand) doesn’t work. There currently 958,000 young unemployed people in the UK. Only 4,700 of those found work because of this scheme, that’s less than half a percent.
• 2,500,000 people are unemployed in this country, there are only ever 500,000, half a million job vacancies at any one time, and that doesn’t go up. So 4 in 5 are guaranteed to not get employed every time they apply. And it’s much more than that in more specialised industries like media where it’s more like 99 in 100.
• That’s not counting those on disability and incapacity benefits, so the number of those out of work is more like 4,000,000. And you have all seen ATOS’s attempts to perform miracles to get more than 600,000 disabled people back into work. Some of those have degenerative conditions like cerebral palsy which will only get worse over time, how are they well enough to work?
• Unemployment is not going down. The truth of the situation is that most reasons for the number going down are people either voluntarily (because in some cases you can claim £5 a fortnight if you’ve previously been self employed) or have been forcibly taken off the list as they just cannot find you a job, thousands of usually older jobseekers just thrown on the scrapheap. People who lose there jobs are being made to wait an unprecedented 2 months before signing on.
• Another problem is chronic underemployment, with masses of people that are overqualified in their current jobs and what could be 5.5m people on zero hour contracts, not knowing if you will get paid week to week, that’s actually worse than being jobless
• Recently, 4,000 people applied for a minimum wage bar job in Newcastle, this gives you an idea of the scarcity of jobs out their.

When I apply for jobs I always get one of 3 replies.

1.  There has been an unprecedented number of applicants for this position (i.e we had so many CV’s sent to us we couldn’t be bothered to look past the first 10
2. You don’t have enough experience (thing is I can’t get more experience as I can’t get a job) even work experience is off limits. I recently applied for some unpaid openings; I got a reply saying that over 2,000 people had also applied.
3. You are overqualified for this position (nice to hear when you have spend 16 years straight in education in order to get a decent job at the end of it and then get turned down for the cleaning job) that fact is that most apprentiships are more valuable than a degree these days (I’d wish I’d known that 6 years ago)

I was reading this article the other week entitled ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’ which says that with the current technology at our disposal, people in developed countries should be well on their way to working 15 hour weeks in full time posts. This is done my eliminating all the stuff that can be done just as well by machines and computers.

But instead of this, many working weeks are getting longer not only because the machines aren’t there, it’s also because the ruling class is actually creating what the article calls ‘Bullshit Jobs’. These positions are totally unimportant and pointless in the running of businesses or the country itself.

Some examples include:

• Most call centre jobs, I’m kidding. All call centre jobs are bullshit!
• A lot of administration and legal areas are utterly pointless
• Dare I day bankers, stockbrokers and hedge fund managers
• I would be sounding a bit too much like Russell Brand if I said Politicians…

Even people with useful qualifications find themselves ending up whole industries with have no solid purpose to them whatsoever, like PR, for example. You wouldn’t (or perhaps you would if your phone didn’t ring all the time) if insurance and PPI claim salespeople suddenly disappear off the face of the earth. But you certainly would if say, bin men, teachers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, rail workers, bakers and cleaners (shout out other jobs) all vanished one day. Yet these are the industries being constantly cut.

This takes us back to Uni; I had a total debt of around £10,500 when I graduated from university last year. I received a letter from the Student Loans Company during the summer to say that my debt had risen by £350. I was slightly confused, I hadn’t received any additional education since leaving, it turned out that you get charged 3% interest a month on your student debt, even when you are still studying, never mind afterwards.

So this means that I am being fined £350 a year as I am not earning thus not paying back any money. Now this is where it gets interesting but also more complex. Now that fees have risen to as much as £9,000 a year. Those who graduated last summer have a debt of an eye watering £27,000 over your usual 3 years, that’s not including maintenance loans for transport and materials, rent, food and all the other stuff associated with uni (alcohol). The interest to the fees alone comes to £700.

But that’s not all. A couple of weeks ago I heard that the coalition are planning to increase tuition fees to £16,000 a year, that’s £48,000 in total with a massive £1,500 of interest a year. That’s like having a mini mortgage around your neck before you have a house.

But that’s still not all, the current government intends to sell all remaining student debt from 1998 to private creditors who may raise the interest rate up to 12%, yes 12%. That means the yearly interest bill on top of your £48,000 fees would be close to £6,000. These future students may be in debt for the rest of their lives if it’s still this hard to get a job when your young.

This government seems determined to completely ruin the working and non-working lives of not only young people but middle aged people, pensioners, disabled people, people with too much space in their council homes, basically anyone who didn’t go to Eton and wasn’t in the Bullingdon Club.

Students have to think about how much it’s going to cost when deciding between the best universities in the land and their local former polytechnic, or even if they can afford to go at all. This is the Tories plan to price normal people out of higher education, allowing it once again to be the reserve of the wealthy.

This will have a massive impact on the bright working class kid’s ability to have a chance to become doctor’s, scientists, lawyers, teachers, academics or even the next Owen Jones.

This is why we need to do something about it, the 99% under the foot of the 1% in this country needs to start talking to each other, getting angry and fighting back we need the People of the UK to assemble and get organised, and this is why the Peoples Assembly is here. Their will be many setbacks along the way but you have heard of victories already today and you will hear of many more in the future I’m sure.

Together, we will say to Cameron, Clegg, Osborne, Gove and even Pickles (I’m sure he has a degree in Pie Eating) that when you are all old and grey, the youth that you so brutally betrayed will still be here, we will outlive you and we will have our revenge!