Schemes Are So Good - Why Onto Them 2?

Scan page 7

THE Youth Training the Tory working class. FOKLE UW. With YTS they want to create, among young workers, a pool of cheap labour, available to work without the rates and conditions that have been won by trade unions over decades. And they want to carve up education.

In place of the concept of all-round education for everyone - feeble though the resemblance of the present system to that ideal is - they want to move to a two-tier set-up, traditional education for a (dwindling) elite, and job-centred 'training' for the rest.

The Tories want to expand YTS to cover all school-leavers. Already they are moving towards making it in effect compulsory. Young people who 'unreasonably refuse' to go on YTS, or who leave a scheme halfway through the year it is supposed to last, can have their dole cut by 40 per cent.

For years the Tories have been trying to push down youth wages. The entrenched strength of the unions stopped them - until they brought in YTS, forcing hundreds of thousands of 16-17 year olds to work for a year at £25 a week, less than half the current average wage for under-18s of £50 to £60. Now under-18 wages generally are beginning to fall behind adult wages.

YTS links up on the one hand with the Tories' New Technical and Vocational Educational Initiative (presently at the pilot-scheme stage), which will put a whole chunk of 14-18 year old school students into 'work experience' instead of proper education; and, on the other, with the Tories' proclaimed drive to abolish all time-served apprenticeships by next year.

Yet the TUC supports YTS. "The trade union movement" , it says, "has long campaigned for training opportunities for all young people. The YTS is a mighty step in that direction"

In fact the 'Mode B1' YTS schemes which might provide some real training are being shut down; while 'Mode A' schemes which do no more than provide cheap labour to small cowboy employers are encouraged.

"Training' on the schemes will (generally) lead to no recognised qualification, jer Coulson but only to a mickey-mouse 'YTS certificate'. Most of it is done not in local authority colleges, but by profit-gouging private firms.

"The Manpower Services Commission will monitor schemes" , says the TUC. Not even that is true. The MSC carries out practically no inspection of most schemes. Safety-at-work provisions are nil on many of them.

The YTS is not what the TUC claims it is - and the trade union movement is beginning to wake up to that fact. This special Socialist Organiser/Class Fighter supplement provides the facts to expose YTS, and ideas on how to fight it. cria patron

Scan page 8

he answer: get organised nder way. It lAth Certificate has participated in & Youth Training Scheme approved by the Manpower Services Commission The started and finished The Scheme combied traming and work experience related to employment Socialist Organiser no.174 April 11 1984 Page YTS is well under way. It isn't as successful as the government would like.

The low take-up rate is a headache for them. There are too many schemes which are community or workshop based, they reckon, and not enough which are led by an established employer.

Unions like the NGA, NUM and POEU have stopped schemes from starting. And all over the country unions have boycotted schemes where they involve job substitution, undercutting union rates, or a reduction in the number of apprentices being taken on.

There is formal agreement that no scheme can start in an unionised workplace without the unions' consent.

Youth have boycotted the schemes themselves, but as YTS becomes compulsory and schools more geared up to channelling youth onto schemes, more and more youth will be going onto a scheme.

So trade unionists and socialists can't stop at condemning YTS. We need campaigns to unionise trainees, to monitor the Manpower Services Commission, to stop rip-off schemes from even starting. Jane Ashworth looks at how to fight the scheme.

ists and trade union militants have a duty to help youth organise to stop it.

Socialist Organiser argues that the TUC should withdraw its endorsement for the Youth Training Scheme, and end its collaboration with the Tories in the Manpower Services Commission.

No compulsion stop benefit reduction for 'refusers'.

Unions must demand full information on where schemes are operating in their area, and set out to recruit the youth involved.

• The basic non-negotiable demands should be:

*Trainees' pay to be topped up to trade union rates, *Union membership for trainees.

These demands strike at the basic cheap labour purpose of YTS, and are a starting point for further demands. They can be won.

Where they are not conceded, the unions should campaign openly and strongly against the schemes being introduced.

The most important other This is to certily that with XYZ HOTELS plo on 21 Beptember 1983 10 Hotel and Cataring Tadustry Yan Чая JOHN P BROWN on 2 September 1984 Signature Managing Agent Sponsor Position in Organisation SPECIMEN XYZ HOTELS

----- pull-quotes -----

CONSCRIPT THE

Socialist Organiser Class Fighter