[ad_1]
Unions have an important role to play in protecting workers’ rights and ensuring fair treatment in the workplace, as not only are they a tool to unite the working class in their fight for better wages and terms and conditions, but more importantly, they are not only vital to improving our working conditions vital and essential to fundamentally changing the wider society in which we live and challenging the exploitative and unjust systems of capitalism.
This is especially important for today’s young workers who face a variety of unique challenges. These include job insecurity, stagnant wages and few opportunities for job advancement. In addition, few young workers are unionized, with only one in 20 union members aged 16-24.
The cost of living crisis and deteriorating job market have led to increasingly deteriorating material conditions, with young workers bearing the worst consequences. The ruling class takes advantage of young people because they are not sufficiently organized to fight against their own exploitation.
While union membership among young people has been declining as material conditions have worsened, this trend may seem paradoxical, but it is not. The material conditions of young workers are deteriorating precisely because they are not unionized and therefore not organized to defend their material interests against the ruling class.
Recruiting young people into unions must therefore be a priority for the labor movement in helping young workers escape poverty and precarity. It is vital for us to be active in trade unions, not only to build a militant trade union movement but also to ensure the sustainability of union operations. Therefore, we must focus on recruiting, training and educating young workers to join this movement.
There are all kinds of barriers for young workers to join a union, but one barrier I often encounter in the hospitality industry is that young people, especially teenagers, don’t even know what a union is. This highlights the disaster of our education system; a disaster that deliberately masks class politics. The education system weeds out young workers who don’t know what collective bargaining is so that exploitation goes unchallenged.
After all, the ruling class will not facilitate training in skills that cut into profits.
The rise of the gig economy and zero-hours contracts has also made organizing young workers more difficult than usual. The ruling class’s pursuit of super-profits means that many people do not earn enough to meet the necessities of life, and the sporadic or infrequent nature of casual work or shifts means that getting colleagues to sit down and discuss unionization can also be difficult.
Providing young union members with the skills and resources to tackle these issues will give them the confidence to recruit more members and build union awareness among Britain’s youth.
In addition, the labor movement needs to develop a strategy that reaches young workers to ensure that the next generation of union members are trained and experienced to deal with issues of exploitation and discrimination.
One thought on this issue might be to address a problem faced by thousands of young people in the UK today – the genocide in Gaza. Young people attend Palestinian demonstrations, public meetings and fundraisers in droves, as well as many other events organized and participated by trade unions. This is an important opportunity to reach young workers who would otherwise have little or no exposure to the labor movement.
Additionally, developing union campaigns that are relevant to young workers will make these recruitment conversations easier because members can point out that the union cares about the interests of young workers.
An issue of particular relevance to younger workers is enshrining age discrimination in law. Currently, 16-year-olds can legally earn the equivalent of £5.18 an hour to older workers. By April this figure will only rise to £6.40. Employers use this perfectly legal age discrimination to squeeze every drop of profit out of young workers and drive down costs. By building a campaign around this alarming issue, the labor movement can show young workers why they should join a union.
Against the backdrop of an enduring cost-of-living crisis, unions are what young people need to fight poverty and discrimination. Recruiting young workers may seem like a daunting task, but it will benefit all workers. Better wages and terms and conditions for young workers can stop the decline in wages for other workers, while union membership unites us all in the fight for better material conditions. To do this, the labor movement must prioritize its younger members to ensure that the next generation of workers continues to struggle.
Georgina Andrews is the General Secretary of the Communist Youth League.
[ad_2]
Source link