LABOUR has pledged a ‘jobs guarantee’ scheme for young unemployed people, that will last for the whole of next parliament, if it wins the 2015 general election.
Under the scheme 18 to 24-year-olds who have been out of work for a year will be offered a job lasting six months – paying the minimum wage, with those who refuse losing their benefits.
The Compulsory Jobs Guarantee will be in Labour’s general election manifesto next year, says Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls.
Under the scheme, the chosen 18-25s will be offered 25 hours work a week on the minimum wage and the employer would have to guarantee compulsory training.
Balls said yesterday: ‘It will mean paid starter jobs for over 50,000 young people who have been left on the dole for over a year by this government.’
The scheme is nothing more than a provision of six months sticking plaster for the youth unemployed. It is not in any way a solution to the problem of mass unemployment being created by capitalism, it is a cosmetic arrangement, the least that Labour can do to try to get the votes of the unemployed – that they can have six months work during Labour’s five year term!
This measure does not even put a dent in capitalism.
Even the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) which thinks the second quarter, starting in April, will see GDP rise by 2.8%, just exceeding the level seen at the start of 2008, is warning that youth unemployment will remain at an ‘unacceptably high’ level.
The group also predicts that the first increase in UK interest rates will come at the end of 2015, rising from their historic low of 0.5% to 0.75%. It expects the rate to rise to 1.5% by the second half of 2016.
There have already been warnings that rising interest rates will burst the housing bubble that has been created by the ‘Help to Buy’ cheap mortgages government policy, to the extent that we will see the return of the housing and banking crash that began in 2008. None of this enters into Balls’ thinking. There is to be no escape from the capitalist crisis!
Even the BCC is urging Chancellor Osborne to take some minimum measures – ‘to use this month’s Budget wisely by incentivising businesses to hire young people so that the next generation of workers are not left behind.’
The BCC is warning that special measures will have to be taken if the next generation – millions of workers – are not to be left to rot.
The BCC takes no account of other huge threats to the capitalist economy that are emerging directly out of the capitalist crisis, such as, that the intervention of the EU-US into the Ukraine will lead to massive food and energy price rises, and undermine millions more UK jobs. The BCC is not alone in its narowness of thought. Balls takes no account of these issues either.
In fact, the current youth unemployment statistics for crisis ridden Europe make horrific reading. ‘It is not a good time to be a young person looking for a job,’ the ILO”s Theodore Sparreboom says bluntly.
The Eurozone jobless data for October 2013 showed Spain’s youth unemployment rate has now increased to 57.4%, only marginally below Greece’s August high of 58%. This remains the highest rate of youth unemployment for any country in the eurozone. Italy’s youth unemployment rate rose to 41.2%, from 40.5% the previous month. In Portugal, it rose to 36.5% from 36.2%.
The figures from southern Europe contrast with rates in the north, where Germany has a 7.8% youth unemployment rate and the Netherlands an 11.6% rate. However the UK has 20% youth unemployment! Capitalism in Europe is in a huge jobs crisis!
What is necessary to solve the jobs crisis is not a tiny bit of sticking plaster, but the implementation of a socialist programme.
To provide millions of new jobs there must be a national plan drawn up to nationalise the banks and the major industries under workers management to build the millions of homes that are needed and a new road, rail, environmental and coastal infrastructure that will provide jobs at trade union rates with skilled training and put all of the unemployed back to work.
Capitalism is incapable of organising such a programme. It can only be done under socialism!
