‘Guilty’ young exiled to bootcamp

What does the word bootcamp conjure up for you? Military recruit training? A type of correctional facility or penal system?

Imagine being a young person, fresh out of school, trying your hardest to find safe, secure work with guaranteed hours each week and career opportunities.

Imagine being told that on top of this you will now be forced to attend a bootcamp for jobless young people, while still looking for work or risk losing your benefits.

Fear and intimidation is what most people would feel. This is the Tories new plan to reduce youth unemployment figures – by forcing our youth to take poor quality, low paid, possibly unsafe and insecure work or lose their benefits.

Yesterday (Monday August 17) Matt Hancock, the head of Cameron’s Earn or learn taskforce announced his plan to send unemployed young people to a jobless bootcamp.

Minister Matt Hancock set out his plans for jobseekers aged between 18 and 21 to be placed on an intensive activity programme within the first three weeks of submitting a claim.

The senior Tory MP has already had to defend the scheme claiming, “We are penalising nobody because nobody who does the right thing and plays by the rules will lose their benefits.”

New requirements are set to be in place by April 2017 as part of Cameron’s wider policy where jobless 18 to 21 year olds will be required to do work experience as well as looking for jobs or face losing their benefits.

Failed our youth

“It’s this government that has failed our youth, not young people that have ‘failed’,” said Anthony Curley, Unite young members’ coordinator.

“Further education places have been cut, university fees have been put up, youth unemployment has gone up and now young people are being stigmatised as workshy,” he added.

Children’s charity Barnardo’s criticised the plans, saying that young people needed to feel supported, not punished.

Ministers have already announced that from April 2017 significant reforms to youth benefits will come in to force axing housing benefit for under 21s.

“Unite does not support ‘welfare reform’ or policies flagged as ‘job guarantees’ that seek to stigmatise social security and drive people to take unsuitable jobs and low paid work,” said Anthony.

Intimidation

“Forcing young people to attend bootcamps on top of looking for work on pain of losing benefits is simply hounding and intimidation,” added Anthony.

The number of people aged 18 to 24 who are out of work has fallen form 19 per cent to 14 per cent in the last two years, according to the office for national statistics (ONS).

But the number of young people in poor, insecure work or on zero hours contracts masks just how bad things really are for them.

Sally Hunt, university college union’s (UCU) general secretary branded the plan as a “short-term gimmick.”

Research from ComRes also shows that young people from a more privileged background are more likely to go into higher education.

Seventy eight per cent of young people studying in private school say they want to go on to higher education straight from school compared with 62 per cent of state school students.

Social background can have an effect securing work too. More often jobs are only advertised online, making it essential that disadvantaged young people have public points of access to the internet.

“Government plans to force young people into work fundamentally fail to deal with the reasons that so many of them are unable to find work or are not in education or training,” said Sally.

A third of young people not in work or education fear they will never get a job, despite wanting to work or train, according to ComRes.

“What young people need are politicians who have a plan to help them, not subject them to scapegoating.

“Rather than short-term gimmicks, our young people need a long-term commitment to proper guidance, meaningful educational opportunities and stable, properly rewarded jobs,” added Sally.