Youth labour, cheap labour

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YTS looks like being not much different from YOPs THE Tories' aim is to restruclure Britain's economy and workforce, to make British capitalism competitive in world markets on a new basis.

Reducing youth wages, and creating a new pool of mobile, theap, easily disposable but trained labour, is central to this strategy.

The business magazine Economist reckons that 'Britain's job-providers will need to pay a lower real level of average wages — particularly to roung people" • The statefunded National Institute of Economic and Social Research complains, "the incentive to provide training is much lower for British employers than for German or Swiss ones. They save to pay trainee wages as a proportion of skilled worker zarnings which' are twice or hree times those in the to Continental countries."

There are two prongs to the Fories' plan. First, they are incouraging the decline of ipprenticeships, to be replaced by YTS trainees. Second, they tave tried to cut youth wages tirectly through the Young MAN: •HA HOWARS 3**7**K03 ME la Workers' Scheme.

Under the YWS the government gives £15 a week to employers for each young person on wages below £40, and £7.50 for each on between So far it has had little success. In September 1982 the government reported that 100,000 workers were employed under YWS subsidies, but the total under-18 labour force is over 1.1 Surveying 1981-2 wage agreements, the Labour Research Department found that young workers had generally maintained their position relative to adult wages since 1978. Official figures for 1982 showed that average earnings for under-18s were £59.80 for males, £53.90 for females.

The drive to reduce youth wages had however scored some successes. In electricity supply, young workers and apprentices received no increase at all.

And with a new term in office the Tories will be determined to make sure that more successes follow. No jobs on the board....

Chapple: has signed deals cutting youth wages JOHN HARRIS Most youth didn't vote Labour -THE trade unions occupy positions on the Manpower Services Commission itself, as well as on the local boards of the MSC.

Indeed tradé unions justify accepting such positions by the argument that from such vantage points they can protect young workers from abuse: prevent job substitution whereby employers use OPs not for work experience but for getting rid of real workers and real jobs; protect wage rates and apprenticeship schemes from being undermined by the YOP rate and conditions; and finally ensure that YOPs are encouraged to join a union and thus begin to organise against their own exploitation.

In a work published by RKP in 1982 entitled 'Youth Unemployment and State Intervention" the editors, Atkinson and Rees, conclude that, whatever the good intentions, trade union control over YOP schemes was virtually non-existent. Figures cited above show that the majority of YOP schemes are but what had Labour done for them? did receive lists of smaller schemes but without any details at all Some local authorities took on a large number of YOPs, sometimes a few hundred, and secured approval from the local area board. The authority would then arrange to disperse the young workers to WEEP schemes without further reference to Msu, and predictably the majority of such schemes were in small, non-union, low-paid, private sector workplaces.

Often an employer expanded his scheme for YOPs after the first year. Perhaps initially cautious, it took a little while before many employers took full advantage of the near total absence of monitoring controls. But expanded schemes were approved 'on the nod' by the area boards, as were renewals of schemes originally passed without any real investigation.

The unavoidable conclusion is that trade unionists sat on area boards rubber-stamping