YTS Action Special The rip-off merchants oPS LIVING WAGE WHO CONTROLS?

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Youth began to organise on YOPs, the forerunne "Students tend to have somewhat glazed, zombie-like expressions" during classes at Sight and Sound, according to the Sunday Times. The ompany treats students like battery hens, with highly routinised meth. ods of teaching. Sight and Sound's YTS business involves around f8 What are the powers of the Area Manpower Board (AMB)?

When they were established we understood that they were to approve schemes within a budget. That budget and an area pian were both to be agreed by the AMB.

Now, we learn in the new guidelines published this year that "scheme contracts are with the MSC' Decisions to close schemes are therefore for the Area Manager to take. Boards will only be informed of closures and the reasons for them. They don't even say that Boards will be consulted.

Similarly, renewals of schemes which are "straightforward" will be done by the Area Manager and officers of the MSC, not by the Boards.

In Fife, last November, the Board rejected a scheme but were overruled by the MSC.

Mode B schemes run by local authorities and voluntary agencies are being cut - have you been able to stop this?

The government wants to move the running of YTS towards private companies. Moreover, Mode B schemes have been seen as a way of keeping off the streets kids whom companies don't want.

Trade union representatives in alliance with the voluntary sector representatives on the Birmingham Board rejected the proposals for cuts first time round and sent a letter to the MSC, saying that such cuts should not be made, especially in inner city areas.

However, at the next Board meeting, the chair informed us that Mode B places had to be cut as there was only a certain budget available. We found, in fighting to save two voluntary sector schemes singled out for closure by the MSC, that we were forced to make cuts in Local Education Authority schemes.

In effect, the Board was doing the Tories' dirty work in deciding where tọ cut.

At the same time, 42% of places in Birmingham and Solihull are with private training agencies, many of which are involved in YTS just to make a profit and are not necessarily providing good training.

In view of this, do you think socialists should be on AMBs?

My position from the beginning was that the TUC should not be involved in AMBs or in the Youth Training Board. As long as Paul Mackney, president of Birmingham Trades Council, spoke to Andy Barrett the TUC is involved, socialists should be on Boards but should campaign for withdrawal by the labour movement as a whole. We should withdraw collectively, not as individuals.

This was my position at the start of YTS. Since then, many things have happened to make this more important.

YTS came out of a compromise report called the Youth Task Group Report - if you look at that report and what YTS is now, you can find about 20 examples of where that agreement has been ratted on.

• For example, job substitution 1s now rite in spite of a complicated formula called "additionality, which was supposed to prevent this. The trade union veto on schemes no longer exists. AMB decisions can be overturned.

There was supposed to be 13 weeks off-the-job training - now that's often as little as ten weeks or even less, and on some schemes this involves working at home from study packs or just writing essays which of course is quite cheap for programme providers.

The TUC thought they'd scored a major victory by making the schemes voluntary and ensuring the right to supplementary benefit of people who didn't want to go on them but now your benefit can be cut if you refuse to go on a scheme.

The £25 a week allowance was due to be inflation-proofed, but it has remained at £25. Also, examples of racism and sexism are becoming more apparent on schemes.

Private training agencies, not mentioned in the initial government report, have mushroomed.

To what extent has the fact that there have been trade union representatives on AMBs helped trainees and unions?

When schemes come before the Board, the most vocal opponents are the trade union representatives. We have managed to achieve quite significant changes in some schemes, but that has been detailed tinkering with a scheme that is in many senses rotten.

Within the limitations of the amount of work that the MSC officers can do, almost all the information I have asked for has been given. Part of the problem for trade union representatives is the large amount of information they get, and, more important, what to do with it.

My view is that one of the important things for trade union representatives is to get information on schemes out into the trade union movement in general and use the information actively to campaign around YTS.

As with many Quangos you have pressure on you to keep confidentiality.

However, we're not there to get information that is interesting to us personally but to get it out to the movement.

How do you think the TUC sees its role in controlling what goes on in YTS?

The TUC has a two-fold strategy. Firstly, to control YIS through AMBs, and I think I've shown the limitations of that.

Secondly, they believe that they will control it in organised workplaces. Of course that's important, but many unions in organised workplaces have recognised YTS as an attack on the level of youth wages and rejected schemes. The vast majority of schemes are not in unionised workplaces.

This means we need an additional strategy that will draw trainees into the organised labour movement.

All trades councils, regional TUCs and County Associations of Irades Councils, should develop an immediate campaign to recruit youth, not just trainees, to unions. They should be given the resources and facilities to do this and perhaps some of the time that is devoted to publicity exercises about YTS could be devoted to recruitment exercises.

What saw the end of YOPs was the attitude of youth, not the attitudes of people on governing bodies for YOPs.

In January the government published a White Paper called "Training for Jobs". How do you think this will affect the development of YTS?

The first thing to say is that the White Paper is not about training for jobs, it's about training for employers.

The effect on YTS could be that the right to benefit could be removed entirely from those who don't go on it, and the government is going to look again at fYTS whether the scheme should be voluntary. You can add to that the current review of benefits, where we can see that the government could stop the present rights of people to study 15 or 21 hours at colleges and still claim benefit.

Similarly, you can see that the Young Workers Scheme is likely to become year 2 of YTS. You could get people leaving school at 16 going onto YTS for the first year; YWS for the second year; then, if they're extremely lucky, a Community Programme for their third year and another Community Programme for their fourth year.

When Lincoln Steffens went to the Soviet Union he said, "I've seen the future, and it works" Having read the "Training for Jobs" White Paper you can say, "I've seen the future and it's work experience".

What other developments are likely to come out of the White Paper?

It proposes to take 25% of the money for "work-related courses" from colleges and local authorities who currently decide how it's spent, and to hand that decision to the MSC. This is yet another attack on local democracy, and the whole idea of "work-related" education cuts right across the idea of comprehensive, post-school education anyway.

It has many other features in it that socialists would oppose such as loans for adults inyolved in adult retraining which could be extended to replace grants for students at colleges. It also contains proposals to change the system of adult retraining so that twice as many go through on courses half the present length and a lot of the programme will be for people already in work instead of unemployed people.

You can see in the "Training for Jobs" proposals that once the MSC gets hold of the money from the local authority for "work related" courses they might then spend this money in private training agencies instead of colleges of further education.

I think the youth know the truth about YTS, and some of our trade union and political leaders should go down any street in any town in the country and ask the youth what they think of it.

We should try and link up with and organise the young people to campaign vigorously for an alternative to YTS.

DONT ASK QUESTIONS!

TO BE HERE' million of MSC finance. Cartoon by Francis Boyle from ACCORDING to the manpower Services Commission, YTS was supposed to be an all-new, high-quality scheme which would eliminate all the abuses that had discredited the old Youth Opportunities Programme - job substitution, trainees being used as cheap labour, lack of health and safety monitoring, and so on.

In fact, YTS has generally proved to be no improvement on YOPs. In particular, the rise of the Private Training , Agencies (PTAs) has ensured that all the worst features of YOPs have been carried over into the YTS.

PTAs are commercial outfits who take on trainees for year-long training "packages" • They provide off-the-job training only and sub-contract to outside employers who provide the ninemonths "work experience" part of the package.

The rise of the PTAs is a result of the recession. Employers have been in no mood to take on large numbers of trainees, and there has been a massive short fall of genuine "employer-led" Mode A schemes.

The PTAs have jumped in to fill the gap - and to make a profit for themselves into the bargain.

A PTA will receive money • in three ways for each trainee taken on: a fee of £100 for acting as the managing agent, £550 for supplying the off-the-job training and £1,300 towards the trainee's allowance.

NATHE, the college lecturers' union, commissioned a report on the PTAs in the Birmingham/ Solihull area. The NATFHE report proves that "no systematic monitoring or audit of these agencies' accounts or training qualifications is made before they are in receipt of public money.

Of the 30 PTAs in the Birmingham/Solihull area, a substantial number are breaking the law - "a strange example to be set by agencies teaching life and social skills to the young people they are traming , comments NATFHE.

Two of the agencies had serious queries regarding their accounts raised by their auditors. Seven had no filed, up-to-date accounts and were therefore breaking the law.

Of the remainder, one had filed incomplete accounts, three were not registered as companies at all, and seven had been formed within the last two years, and so were not required to have filed accounts.

ADM Limited for instance, had clearly been using the money it received from the MSC in order to stave off bankruptcy. Five days before being approved is a YTS agency, ADM had registered their annuål return with Companies House: this showed an adverse relationship between assets and liabilities. But still they were approved.

To make a profit out of a funding formula that was never intended to cover even the full cost to employers, the PTAs can only spend about half the amount per trainee that it costs a college. This means paying their staff less, takıng on unqualted traners, and cutting corners on training and work experience.

The oniy way they can make a profit is by cramming more and more trainees into each class and taking on unqualified teaching staff who don't expect very high wages. These agencies are, in a sense, _privatised further education. They are taking work and money away from state-run colleges of further education, and the government and MSC are encouraging them.

So while the likes of John Pardoe, the ex-Liberal MP. is making money as a director of one of the biggest PTAs, Sight and Sound, the tech college down the road, which is equally capablo of teaching oftice skills, is falling apart through lack of funds.

Pitman's Training Centre did not even supply their trainees with enough desks, pens, pads or typewriters. Pitman's trainees were being , sent out on "work experience" only to find themselves being used as temps, and sent back to the agency after i couple of weeks.

But when the Pitman's trainees got together and submitted a petition complaining about their treatment, the management responded swiftly, and met nine of the 12 demands put forward by the trainees. They even thanked the young women for their "suggestions"

The explanation for this was fear of losing the approval of the Area Manpower Board, combined with the prospect of financial losses resulting from losing any trainees.

As the NATFHE report notes: "It is a strange and unexpected consequence of the rise of private training agencies that trainees find themselves in a stronger bargaining position than expected. For many of the agencies are already in trouble due to the low takeup of YTS. The loss of any of their existing trainees would be a loss of their main or only source of income."

The message for Class Fighter supporters is clear: seek out the PTAs, and make contact with the trainees. They're almost certain to have grievances. We should also be asking the union representatives on the Area Manpower Boards - what do you think you're doing giving approval to these cowboys?

CANNOS E Fances the Labour Research pamphlet on YTS.

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Organiser April 74 Page

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