Stop This Conscription!

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Commission, the careers service and the Department of Health and Social Security are using bully-boy tactics to bludgeon people into joining the YTS. It is against all morality and principles of the scheme."

Those are the words of Mr Jeff Wedgewood, quoted in last Thursday's Birmingham Evening Mail. Believe it or not, Mr Wedgewood is the director of a YTS private training agency, Midland Training and Recruitment Services, whose dubious activities (sending out mail shot letters to students studying under the 15 and 21 hour rules) we recently exposed in Socialist Whatever Wedgewood's motives for speaking out, what he says in undoubtedly true. YTS is still officially described as "voluntary" (and the TUC €61.70 "Working" 'Youth only agreed to back the scheme in the first place on condition that it was). But for some time it has been effectively compulsory for most unempioyed school leavers.

And all the signs are that the elements of compulsion are being rapidly tightened up.

Careers Officers have been instructed to send reports on youth who refuse a YTS scheme (or leave one before completion) to the DHSS, who can then cut a benefit by 40% - taking it to below £10 per week. the goods a 3 has gon this or esignated "approved train, and so the scheme's places are treated as normal job offers and benefit can be cut if a "reasonable" offer is refused.

But NALGO members in the careers service are resisting these developments: in London, Sheffield and Birmingham, NALGO have now voted to refuse to report "refusers"

In Birmingham, NALGO balloted all members in the careers service and achieved a majority for the following policy.

"A) refuse to complete any documentation or reveal by any other means information in respect of young people refusing , to lâke part in the YTS which may be used by the Department of Employment to withhold or reduce the state benefits those young people would normally receive.

B) refuse to enter into negotiations with unemployment benefit office staff on the circumstances of young people leaving a Youth Training Scheme.

C) refer ex-YTS trainees to local welfare rights agencies with a view to making an appeal against any reduction in benefit that may have been imposed."

Decide

Careers officer and NALGO activist Barry Johnson explained how most workers in the careers service felt about the issue: 'It should be up to a youngster to decide whether to 101n the scheme — not up to the careers service or the DHSS. We strongly object to eing used as grasses. Wo won't spy on those who come to us for help.

The campaign against compulsion on YTS is presently organising activity around the country, centred upon a series of lobbies on March 21 and April 5.

A major part of this campaign must be to contact local NALGO branches, and to press them to adopt a policy of non-cooperation, along the lines of the Birmingham resolution.