FOUR IN TEN RETAILERS PLAN TO LAY OFF YOUNG STAFF
Graduates who have taken shop jobs as a temporary solution because they can’t find graduate roles have been warned that even those jobs aren’t safe.
The CBI has said that 40% of retailers plan too axe shop jobs, while only 17% plan to hire additional staff. In a sector where around a third of staff are under 25, the cull is expected to hit young workers disproportionately hard.
While some companies may genuinely need to trim staff in order to make their businesses work financially, there are growing fears that many others are taking advantage of the surplus of young people desperate for jobs – and using it as an easy way to cut costs and boost profits.
As the Guardian revealed last month, young people are now being told by job centres that they must take unpaid work placements at supermarkets or risk losing their benefits.
Graduate Fog welcomes the news of the government’s £1bn initiative to tackle youth unemployment, revealed in last week’s Autumn Statement by the Chancellor, George Osborne. It is about time our politicians took serious action on this issue.
Our concern is that they make sure that it is young people who benefit the most from this new scheme – not employers. It is crucial that it is not ‘sold’ to businesses as an easy way for them to cut their staff costs by replacing proper, paid jobs with desperate young workers doing unpaid or low-paid internships, low-quality ‘apprenticeships’ and compulsory unpaid work experience placements as part of the Work Programme.
We are concerned to hear that L’Oreal is now offering apprenticeships – and we spotted an “Apprentices wanted” sign in the Westfield White City branch of Next. While we can picture what an plumbing or electrician apprenticeship would be, we are struggling to imagine what a L’Oreal or Next apprenticeship would look like. Apprenticeships pay just £2.60 an hour.
We are already seeing the widespread cheapening of young people’s labour – including through government backed initiatives – and it is of grave concern that it is unsustainable and unfair.
We must also be careful not make young people feel like they are a burden on businesses. Young people lack experience, but their work still has great value and they deserve a proper wage for their labour. We know that times are tough for businesses, but we believe they must remember their responsibility towards their young workers – and not demand something for nothing.
*ARE SOME BUSINESSES TAKING ADVANTAGE OF YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT?
Are you worried about your shop job being axed? Do you worry that apprenticeship schemes and the Work Programme being ‘sold’ to businesses as a way to cut costs and boost profits?
I have the same concerns as you, it’s legal slavery and none of these schemes ever work (thinks back to YTS days). It’s absolutely shocking that corporates are permitted to take advantage in this way.
http://blog.wewant2work.co.uk/2011/10/legal-slavery-in-the-21st-century/
@We Want 2 Work
If employers were saying “We want to young hire people, but they don’t have enough experience” – then MAYBE there would be SOME merit to this idea of getting you to work for nothing for a short period. But that’s NOT what employers are saying. They are saying that they dont have enough money to take on young staff, or they do but they’d rather spend that money elsewhere in the business, not on their young staff’s salaries.
Getting young people to work for free helps only the employers, as it allows them to keep their staff costs down. Oh, and it helps politicians, as it disguises how bad this crisis really is. When you’re working for free, you’re not ‘in work’ you see… But for everybody else, it makes the problem worse. ‘Why on earth would a business hire a graduate in a paid role, when they can get someone else to do if for nothing / a very low wage, AND get to look like a hero to everyone else…?
If you’re struggling to see what a retail apprenticeship looks like, do a bit of research and find out. It’s not hard, and if being a graduate means anything it means you should be prepared to research things and find them out without leaping to conclusions. Thousands of kids have very successfully done Retail apprenticeships for years and have made good careers for themselves as a result. I was training retail apprentices in the 1990s so I should know.
Youth unemployment is fundamentally bad because youths aren’t very productive in economic terms, whereas older workers are – and it’s tough for them too. It’s always been hard for young people to get employed for the first time and currently it’s just harder than ever. That’s life. Stop blaming the government for it, it would be the same whichever party was in power.
These days once you’ve done your apprenticeship, there’s no work for you and they get the next lot in.