Labour Pledge 'Job Guarantee' For Under-25s

[Die Neue Zeit]

This is still far from being a Public Employer of Last Resort program in consumer services (http://www.revleft.com/vb/public-employer-last-t124658/index.html):

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/labour-pledge-job-guarantee-under-25s-102637569.html


Young people out of work for a long time should be guaranteed a job but stripped of their benefits if they reject the chance, Ed Miliband has said.
The Labour leader said he would introduce the idea if he became Prime Minister.

He pledged that all under-25s who are jobless for more than a year will be given paid work for six months, with the plan funded by a tax on bank bonuses.

Under his policy, the Government would pay businesses enough money to cover 25 hours of work a week at minimum wage - approximately £4,000 per person. In return, the employers must offer 10 hours training a week.

If the unemployed individual turned down the work or was sacked from the job, sanctions would include a temporary withdrawal of benefits.

In a speech, Mr Miliband described his promise as a "real jobs guarantee" and added: "Saying 'no' is not an option."

He criticised the coalition for not doing enough to stem rising unemployment.
"What is their solution? A Work Programme which does not guarantee work. A jobs programme scheme from this Government which does not offer jobs," he said.

"Work experience of course has a role to play in helping people into work. But work experience is not the same as a real job. It cannot be the summit of our ambitions.

"There is only one solution to a jobs crisis - jobs."

Conservative co-chairman Baroness Warsi accused Labour of "squandering" millions last time they offered guaranteed jobs.

"Now they want to repeat this failed experiment, but they've already spent the money they say they'd use to pay for it 10 times over," she said.

"This government is committed to getting our country back on track.

"Labour must stop these irresponsible calls for more spending, more borrowing and more debt in the middle of a debt crisis," she added.

A Yahoo poster commented:

What about the over 25s like me? Anyone the wrong side of 40 is forgotten about, no matter who is in power. Does make me wonder why I bother voting at all because none of them have a clue about what's going on in the real world.

[Left Leanings]

I picked up a copy of the Manchester Metro News on the bus today, and read that Chris Grayling, the Employment Minister, said the following in relation to getting claimants off Incapacity Benefit, and back into work: "To have such a high percentage who are fit for work just emphasises what a complete waste of human lives the current system has been".

How fucking ironic. The wanker has summed up the capitalist system perfectly, without meaning to. I studied at uni for years, could not find a job, and became ill as a result. I have not worked since 1992, so I know all about Grayling's waste of human lives.

Now the tossers want to force many like me into a job, or rather get us off sickness benefits, and onto Jobseeker's Allowance (the latter being paid at a lower rate).

Grayling and the rich he serves can fuck the hell off.

[piet11111]

Forced to work for minimum wage and the boss can fire you after that period because you have no labour rights.

Every job filled this way means that a real better paying contract job has been destroyed and that someone has been forced out of welfare.

[svenne]

This is really bad. Just right-wing wankery, where there's not even a trace of social democratic reformism, or even social liberalism. Something like this is already in place in Sweden, and pretty much everyone who's been in it (it's called FAS 3, and it involves people being unemployed for a longer time. No age limits though) seems to hate it. Funny thing, our right-wing goverment lost a vote on it in our parlaiment, but hasn't shut it down. Not even a facade of democracy...

[ed miliband]

"There is only one solution to a jobs crisis - jobs."

http://www.yalibnan.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/steve-jobs1.jpg

[Die Neue Zeit]

Forced to work for minimum wage and the boss can fire you after that period because you have no labour rights.

Every job filled this way means that a real better paying contract job has been destroyed and that someone has been forced out of welfare.

Define "minimum wage," though. Principled job guarantee advocates would support higher minimum wage levels (i.e., living wage), and perhaps multiple wages in the program depending on the job, and of course other labour rights.

That's the basis of my lead-in remarks before posting the article.


This is really bad. Just right-wing wankery, where there's not even a trace of social democratic reformism, or even social liberalism. Something like this is already in place in Sweden, and pretty much everyone who's been in it (it's called FAS 3, and it involves people being unemployed for a longer time. No age limits though) seems to hate it. Funny thing, our right-wing goverment lost a vote on it in our parlaiment, but hasn't shut it down. Not even a facade of democracy...

Indeed.

[robbo203]

Why doesnt the friggin Labour Party merge with the Tories and be done with it, FFS? Here we have a blatantly capitalist political party, poncing around and pretending to be some kind of meaningful alternative to the Tories when we all know these charlatans, once they get their grubby claws on the levers of power, act no differently. In the end, it the system that runs the politicans. not the other way round.

I really cannot take seriously any of the supposedly enlightened and allegedly pro worker pronouncements emanating from this bunch of dodgy second hand car salespersons and assorted spivboys that is the British Labour partty. Fuck em I say

[Ocean Seal]

So pretty much they want to get the potential rioters off the streets. I guess I can't really say much more than cool story bro.

[Small Geezer]

I think Labour's nudging in the direction of a left semblance of a full employment strategy. It is far too timid though.

They should get the unions involved and start a ministry of works as the employer of last resort with safe, well paid work with decent conditions.

[ed miliband]

I think Labour's nudging in the direction of a left semblance of a full employment strategy. It is far too timid though.

They should get the unions involved and start a ministry of works as the employer of last resort with safe, well paid work with decent conditions.

are you delusional?

[piet11111]

Define "minimum wage," though.

The lowest legal amount the bosses can pay their workers without getting into legal trouble ?
This limit being set by the government at an unrealistically low level to begin with and never keeping up with inflation so year after year the minimum wage in real terms ends up sliding lower in purchase value.

[rednordman]

What everyone else has said + when any political party in uk says 'creating jobs for u-25', what they really mean is taking the jobs off the 25yrs, and giving them to the u-25 at not even half the pay and having less labour rights. Lose in both cases.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I think Labour's nudging in the direction of a left semblance of a full employment strategy. It is far too timid though.

They should get the unions involved and start a ministry of works as the employer of last resort with safe, well paid work with decent conditions.

It's good to know more posters here are aware of the Employer of Last Resort policy and its history. :thumbup1:


The lowest legal amount the bosses can pay their workers without getting into legal trouble ?
This limit being set by the government at an unrealistically low level to begin with and never keeping up with inflation so year after year the minimum wage in real terms ends up sliding lower in purchase value.

That was a rhetorical question. Minsky argued that there really is no economic minimum wage unless there's an ELR program. Then there are the Ricardians and even Marx on subsistence minimums.

[piet11111]

That was a rhetorical question. Minsky argued that there really is no economic minimum wage unless there's an ELR program. Then there are the Ricardians and even Marx on subsistence minimums.

Obviously the capitalists will be defining the minimum wage by the level the state sets for them.
That makes it the only relevant answer to your question that i could give you.

[Small Geezer]

are you delusional? It's a platform demand. Not an expectation.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's a platform demand. Not an expectation.

So it's just political bullshit, then?

Why don't you start demanding something that we can actually work on, like workers out on the streets? Why don't you get on your bloody platform and 'demand' that unions do something for once? Show the unions and the labour party as the tools of the bosses that they really are.

Nobody's gonna help the working class towards emancipation but themselves. Not the labour party, not the unions, not the greens and not the incestuous sects on the British left.

[Small Geezer]

Well by saying the LP 'should' this or 'should' that you are putting your ideas in the mainstream political debate. And opening up the space for Socialist ideas instead of alienating yourself by writing off the whole process completely.

I don't know enough about the LP machinations, I know the membership have a say in voting for the leadership which is better than the situation with the New Zealand LP.

I wouldn't be surprised if the LP is sterile as a vehicle for working class consciousness and action. Judging by their direction since Kinnock I wouldn't be surprised.


Why don't you start demanding something that we can actually work on, like workers out on the streets?Of course we want workers out in the streets! But for what? I think it's a very powerful mobilising tool to demand something that none of the corrupted, established political parties will do. This makes them seem unreasonable and provides the tipping point which sparks off worker and popular mobilisation. Revolutions and mass movements are sparked by ordinary issues not utopian exortations.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

But reformist such suggestions are already in the political debate, but are useless if they are not presented by genuine revolutionaries as interim 'demands'. What you are saying is that you have some reformist suggestions and you hope that somebody, anybody, puts them in the public sphere. Essentially, your point, by extension, implies that your 'transitional demands' are actually 'maximum demands'.

Hoping that the LP appears so far gone that there will be space for a new left-wing mass party to which the British working class flock seriously mis-understands the political dynamic. Capitalism - and to an extent a degeneration of neo-liberalism - are still the political ideological modus operandi, and the political debate is still framed within their narrow confines (i.e. raising tax by 5% vs lowering tax by 5%, privatising the entire NHS or simply outsourcing elements of it). If we want to shift the debate, we have to be ambitious and big. The london riots changes the shape of the debate for a while, the student fees protests changes the nature of the debate for a while and occupy changes the shape of the debate for a while. Whilst all three were ultimately unsuccessful, they at least show that reformist demands via reformist means (i.e. 'I think the LP should...) do not have any effect in shifting the debate away from the normal capitalist realm of debate.

[grendalsbane]

Labours so called idea is almost identical to the New Deal program from a few years ago, where you are forced to work for a pittance or else lose your benefits.

I should know, I was placed on New Deal.

It would be just a way for Labour to fiddle the unemployment figures to make it appear that less people are out of work.

[Small Geezer]

If you continue to suggest things the Labour Party won't do that are reasonable either you'll break off left activists from the party or you'll build public support for constructive socialist policies that will embolden leftists to capture the party armed with those policies.

The likelihood of either relating to the situation in the UK, I don't know. In New Zealand it is exactly one of the things we should be doing.

But we are in a situation in NZ where the position of the working class is so bad that we need to try all sorts of things on all sorts of fronts in order to strengthen the class. That is step one in my contention. Even to get the working class confident enough to act together believing they can win something would be a huge improvement. That's common in many western countries.

I don't think far left groups in smallish parties talking in 'Marxist theory language' or proposing something that seems far out is going to cut it. It hasn't worked in the last 40 or so years in the west.

Building the working class in a constructive way, being constructive, strengthening the class will create a vibrant and formidable working class movement. One that, when the time comes to overturn capitalism and start building socialism will be very up to the task and able to resist degeneration in the form of bureaucratism and other stalinist shite.


Labours so called idea is almost identical to the New Deal program from a few years ago, where you are forced to work for a pittance or else lose your benefits.

I should know, I was placed on New Deal.

It would be just a way for Labour to fiddle the unemployment figures to make it appear that less people are out of work. It's bloody slavery. The demand should be; 'either full-time collective contract work for a living wage or a living benefit'. That's the sort of thing the trade union conscious working class used think was non negotiable. Now we're grateful to fire off 40 CV's a month, march around all day, have dozens of interviews and get some crappy casual job with a 90 day trial period so we can work like Hercules to keep our job. It's fucked.

[Left Leanings]

Labour really has gone down hill.

When I was young in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I can remember Labour politicians at least calling for a full-employment policy, exemplified by the likes of Eric Heffer, Tony Benn, Alice Mahon, Dave Nellist et al. They may have been voices crying in the wilderness in Labour Party circles, but at least they had a voice.

I am honestly not aware of any Labour politicians, calling for this at the moment. But then I don't pay much attention to them anymore. Labour is simply a welfare capitalist set-up, managing an iniquitous and declining system. As the saying goes, Labour, Tory, same old story....

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/pdf/ww906.pdf



Resort retort

This past weekend Mr. Miliband proposed an under-25 employment program that would pay businesses the equivalent of the minimum wage to hire people under the age of 25 instead of perpetual unemployment insurance, a program to be funded by taxes on bank bonuses. Despite the back and forth between Arthur Bough and Mike Macnair that ignored the role of economic interventionism in favour of labour, only state policy can end structural and cyclical unemployment, only state policy can increase labour's bargaining power, and only state policy can increase real wages.

This Labourite scheme is nowhere close to an employer of last resort (ELR) policy, though, which would: include those 25 and over, establish pay rates to living wage levels and more, not involve payouts of any sort to businesses (the ELR program is a direct employment program), and be funded by more substantively progressive taxation (not just income).

Jacob Richter

[Threetune]

Labour really has gone down hill.

When I was young in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I can remember Labour politicians at least calling for a full-employment policy, exemplified by the likes of Eric Heffer, Tony Benn, Alice Mahon, Dave Nellist et al. They may have been voices crying in the wilderness in Labour Party circles, but at least they had a voice.

I am honestly not aware of any Labour politicians, calling for this at the moment. But then I don't pay much attention to them anymore. Labour is simply a welfare capitalist set-up, managing an iniquitous and declining system. As the saying goes, Labour, Tory, same old story....

It’s not “gone down hill” as you say. Nothing about that retched party and all its ‘left’ reformist anti-communist leaders has changed since Fred Engels described it in 1891 as, “the bourgeois labour party”.

[Left Leanings]

It’s not “gone down hill” as you say. Nothing about that retched party and all its ‘left’ reformist anti-communist leaders has changed since Fred Engels described it in 1891 as, “the bourgeois labour party”.

I take your point.

What I was meaning, is that even a leftist voice seems to be absent from Labour ranks these days.

[bricolage]

It’s not “gone down hill” as you say. Nothing about that retched party and all its ‘left’ reformist anti-communist leaders has changed since Fred Engels described it in 1891 as, “the bourgeois labour party”.
technically the labour party didn't exist in 1891.
[/historical pedantry]