APPRENTICESHIPS FOR ALL ?????........

A major outcome of Thatcher’ introduction of neo-liberalism into the British economy in the early 1980’s was the sharp rise in unemployment especially among young people.  In areas that saw the collapse of old industries such as mining, textiles, steel, car manufacture and ship building, the young people of the time saw their futures consigned to the dole. They represented a whole generation of young people that were never to work and who make up the core of today’s long term unemployed. In Black communities where gaining employment had always been a problem the unemployment rates for young people spiralled to over 50% and arguably laid the foundations for the uprisings across every major city in 1981.

The Government response at the time was to come up with training programmes to prepare young people to work.  The most famous of these was the Youth opportunities programme (YOPS) which was run by the Manpower Service Commission Schemes. It was designed to offer 12 months training and aimed at school leavers, but was notorious as a cheap labour scheme where participants got little useful training and no chance of a permanent job at the end unless they were part of a trade union negotiated scheme.

Thirty years on the 2008-09 recessions saw unemployment rise to 2.5million, with far higher numbers finding themselves out of work.  This exacerbated the situation in black communities where high levels of worklessness already existed and where for young people, gaining access to work was already a problem.  A report published by the institute of Public Policy Research in January 2010 showed that almost half (48%) of Black people aged between16–24 were unemployed – compared to the rate of unemployment among white young people which stood at 20%.

In February 2011 the Coalition Government Minister John Hayes announced that the Government would “increase the budget for Apprenticeships to over £1,400 million in 2011-12, helping to create a new generation of skilled workers to drive economic growth”. This increase is an extension to current Government apprenticeship schemes that are coordinated by the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) and the money is aimed at creating 100,000 extra apprenticeships by 2014.

However, the TUC have had a long standing concern about the difficulties young black workers face gaining access to both employment and decent quality government training schemes.  As far back as 1984 in its report ‘Moving On’, the TUC highlighted concerns that the welfare to work New Deal Programme had poorer outcomes for young black workers. In 2005, through its “Workplace Training - a Race for Opportunity” the TUC called on the Government to use public procurement as a lever to improve the employment of black workers and to boost training, apprenticeships and skills levels.

The previous government acknowledged the lack of involvement of young black workers in apprenticeships and put in place plans to commission a number of diversity pilots that would run over a period of four years designed to improve participation in apprenticeships. The current Government has put in place the diversity pilots but has only funded the programme for a year so far with the possibility of a further 12 months funding.

The TUC, in highlighting the need for urgent action to ensure that black workers do not disproportionately continue to miss out on the benefits that apprenticeships can offer, are working to highlight three main issues which are:

• The need for comprehensive monitoring systems to enable the National Apprenticeship Service and the Government to assess how their strategy on increasing diversity in apprenticeships is working;
• The need to ensure that black workers gain access to good quality apprenticeships and that mechanisms are put in place to ensure that discrimination by employers is tackled so that they are able to obtain workplace placements;
• The need to ensure that young black women are able to access the full range of apprenticeships and do not suffer labour market segmentation in relation to access to training on the basis of their gender; and
• The need to focus on outcomes as well as apprenticeship starts to ensure that black apprentices graduate to full time jobs or higher learning.

In order to highlight these issues the TUC is holding a joint half day conference at Congress House on 6 September called ‘Apprenticeships for All’,  which is being be organised as a joint event between the TUC, Versa, Unionlearn and SERTUC.  It is aimed at union activists and negotiators, learning reps, equality reps, black activists and employers.

Without strong union intervention at workplace and public policy level it is likely that young black workers will not only miss out on the expansion in apprenticeships, but that where they do, find themselves just as many in their parents generation, engaged with the schemes that are at short term, low quality, and that do not lead to training progression or to a decent job.