Youth must fight cheap labour scheme

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Many of us will have witnessed at labour movement conferences the spectacle of genuine militants and trade union bureaucrats alike labelling the Government's Youth Opportunities Programmes as cheap labour schemes.

Our attitude towards YOPs has to go much further than this.

YOPs embrace 440,000 workers who have never been in contact with the trade union movement at all and are one of the most blatantly exploited sections of the working class.

Approval

Despite the criticisms of YOPs voiced by the majority of unions, TUC General Secretary Len Murray lined up openly with the Tories, the CBi and a dozen or so top employers to show his complete approval of the YOPs in a recent full page advertisement published in the Daily Mirror.

It called on employers to 'give our youth a chance' by taking them on at their firms for up to one year. How can they lose? After all instead of the bosses paying these workers, the government will pay the bosses to hire them!

Trade union leaders, for all their verbal criticisms are in fact participating in the setting up of YOPs. They are taking a fight up in the unions not for decent jobs, but for co-operation by stewards with the YOPs.

Readers of Employment Newswill have seen the rapid growth of these schemes. But we need to be informed more of the truth of YOPs to be in a position to fight them.

Control

YOPs were set up by the last Labour government, with close co-operation by the trade unions. Both were looking for a way of covering up the rapid rise of youth unemployment brought about by Labour's right wing economic policies. 80% less in labour costs.

The factory has 80 YOPs workers, and is split into five different sections beginners section who 'learn' drilling and welding in order to make trailers and horse boxes to be sold privately; an assembly section: and a spraying section. Two other sections are a woodwork and upholstry section, both producing for private sale.

The allowance for YOPs is £23.50 for a 40 hour week. The workshops are run very much like normal factories with some exceptions. Whereas in a normal factory you have foremen, in a YOPs workshop you have supervisors who have the power to sack, suspend, or fine workers on the spot. (These foremen are recruited through the unions).

Training schemes' The WEEP schemes last anything from six weeks to 12 months. They are supposed to be training schemes' These consist, for example, in an engineering factory of one month 'learning' drilling, or welding "courses" based 99% on production.

In a council direct works scheme, 'training' would be 12 months cutting grass, digging holes or stacking bricks.

According to MSC sponsors, recruitment is based on four categories: 1. 'Extra sub normal (ESN)' 2. 'Lowest normal achievement' 3. 'Intelligent but' 4. 'Acceptable, intelligent, unlucky'.

'Special provisions' are made for the first two categories. In the Hamptons factory, the ESN's were used for washing up, cleaning toilets, sweeping the factory and a special patch was reserved for them outside so they could do gardening.

The LNA's are moved around from scheme to scheme, rejected by the supervisors, until their time runs out or they are sacked.

The 'intelligent buts' are usually the youth who have been in trouble with the law.

As for the unlucky' ones-well they must be victims of the system and presumably the rest are not.

It should be quite clear from this brief description just what these schemes are.

The Tories won't pay youth on the dole, so they. are making them work for their dole money instead.

If you refuse to go on a YOPs scheme, your dole money is stopped for six weeks. In reality they are compulsory.

Its not good enough simply to stand up and call the YOPs 'cheap labour'as they obviously are.

With trade union bureaucrats critica we ha some ship. whole quite happy to give I support to the YOPs, ve to give these youth direction and leaderWe must attack the basis of YOPs.

Fines

The problems that face the youth in fighting back are enormous. As they are paid an allowance and not a wage they are not covered by the Employment Protection Act. This then makes it legal to deduct fines from the allowance. (Fines were used in the Leicester factory to discourage mass meetings).

In November 1980 the workers were due to get a 7% rise. This was stopped by the government. Action on a local level was laughed at by the MSC-since they said it was the government who had stopped the pay rise and to fight them you had to have a national strike.

This was largely true. The only action we could take was on issues at the employers' discretion such as fines.

For the WEEP workers, the situation is worse. In some cases there are ones and two's working at a place and it is impossible to reach thern. Some youth AN guard the Prince tore off his uniform as soon as he was off duty and joined the antiBritish demonstration!

(Despite the life and death nature of the struggle, comedy is somehow never far away. The British government has now sent two officials to the US to counter the propaganda successes of Irish Republicans-conjuring up pictures of Thompson and Thomson from Tin-Tin).

The "serious' papers cannot afford the luxury of hit and miss attacks.

'Royal creep'

The Sunday Telegraph made standard noises in its editorial:

"Disgraceful though it is that the Heir to the Throne cannot visit a great city of Britain's closest ally without shouts of 'British murderer' and 'Royal creep' being hurled at him, nobody is going to confuse this carefully orchestrated abuse with the attitude of the American government or of the American people at large."

But a half page article in the same paper by Henry Miller plumbed the fuit depths of the humiliation.

He said:

"Relatives of the men who starved themselves to death in the Maze Prison near Belfast were among the demonstrators, and their bitterness undoubtediv intensified as they zazeri have even been taken the army.

The only way that a fightback can take place is through united action by the trade unions. This does not mean just condemning the schemes: it means taking up the fight to unionise the YOPs.

On the WEEP schemes workers should take up the fight to black all workers who are not paid full union rates and at the same time get the YOPs workers into the unions.

Unionisation

This has been done to some extent in the co-ops and the NUT has taken it up in some places.

A new body has been set up to co-ordinate action on a national scale, the National Council for Young Workers.

It is campaigning for full trade union rates and rights and for unionisation of all YOPs.

Trade union branches and Labour Party wards should be affiliating to this body and keep contact with the YOPs on a national scale. through the windows of Avery Fisher Hall and watched elegantly dad guests at a pre-ballet reception."

Some guests were pelted with eggs, and during the ballet protestors shouted at the Royal Box.

The response of one woman-according to the wherever in are disturbed at play.

She called out:

"Kill the bastards. They are ruining the evening."

Miller went on:

"In truth, many people considered the whole visit whecky and could not understand the justification for such an expensive security operation... They could not fathom why his first visit to New York should have been for such a purpose as helping to raise funds for the Royal Ballet, the English Speaking Union and the Metropolitan Opera Association."

"The New York Post had pointed out that the visit raised $250,000 and cost $300,000, and asked "Is it churlish to point out that without the visit, the city could have given the ballet company 250,000 dollars and still have come out ahead?"

For the hunger strikers and the struggle against imperialism in Ireland, however, it was money well spent!