By Peter Kattourah and Paddy Meehan
IN THE past year, unemployment has officially jumped by a massive 62%! Thousands of jobs are being lost every month. In January alone 8,000 people lost their jobs in Northern Ireland. For young people, the situation is worse. Youth unemployment is now well over 20%. The Youth Fight for Jobs campaign will be taking to the streets of Belfast on Saturday 2 May together with trade unions on the May Day march.
This article outlines why you should join the march for jobs, reports on the Youth Fight for Jobs March at the G20 in London and gives a local update on the campaign.
Here are just 5 reasons why you should join the march for jobs:
1. March against mass unemployment
Thousands of young people will leave school and college in July, but there are no jobs for them. Youth unemployment is set to sky rocket in the coming months and years. This will lead to our generation not knowing what it is like to ever have a wage or the chance of getting anywhere in life.
2. March for free education and training
Youth Fight for Jobs stands for opening access to education and training for all. Increasingly university is becoming an option only for the rich. Tuition fees and lack of a living grant are pushing more and more working class people out of university. The collapse of the construction industry has also destroyed the chance of getting an apprenticeship. Youth Fight for Jobs stands for free quality education and training for those who want it. Young people should receive a living income while studying.
3. March to bail out working class people, not the bankers
Bankers like Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin of RBS, has been rewarded with a £16million a year pension, while 12,000 RBS workers are to be sacked. It has been the rich bankers, speculators and bosses who are to blame for the economic crisis – not ordinary people. If billions can be spent to bail out the rich – then billions can be found to create jobs.
4. March for your future
No jobs means no future and no hope for this generation. This will force many young people to emigrate in search of jobs – but unemployment is rising internationally! Others, seeing no other alternative, could be pushed towards sectarianism, crime or anti-social behaviour. We demand a future with decent jobs, not a life on the dole.
5. March to force change
The Youth Fight for Jobs campaign wants to build a mass movement to demand that the Assembly immediately takes emergency measures to create jobs. This can be done if a massive public programme of works was announced, such a programme could create jobs for socially useful purposes such as extra nursing staff to cope with the huge burden on hospitals, a massive social housing programme to cater for housing needs and upgrading existing housing, amongst other initiatives. The politicians in the Assembly though are putting the interests of big business first. Join the march to support our call for action to be taken to create jobs.
Text 07876146473 for more info
