With youth unemployment at sky-high levels, MPs and unions must ask themselves what they can do to help young people find jobs, says Wolverhampton South East MP Pat McFadden
I HAD TRIED EVERYTHING …
Pat McFadden in his Wolverhampton constituency
An MP and Community help 45 young people to find jobs OF COURSE, real answers to this lie in national and indeed international policy to get growth moving and give employers confidence to start hiring again. But even without that there are things we can do. My Wolverhampton South East constituency has about 4,500 people out of work – around 12% of the working age population. 1,500 of them are under 25. My great fear about this recession is that we see a repeat of the situation when I was growing up in the 1980s, when people left school, didn’t find work and found themselves unemployed for years, sometimes permanently. We have to do everything we can to avoid another lost generation of young unemployed. In Wolverhampton I asked local employers to offer work experience places lasting six to eight weeks to young unemployed people. The idea was to give young people enough time with a potential employer to get to know the firm or organisation and to get used to the discipline of work. Participation was voluntary on the young person’s part. Although jobs were not guaranteed, I asked all employers taking part to at least give the young person an assessment and a reference at the end. Forty employers in both public and private sectors offered around 200 places in total. These varied from places in the local hospital to engineering factories and local music venues. With the aid of Community all of the placements were put together in a brochure and sent to every household in my constituency which had young residents. The booklet also contained details of how to apply and where to go for further information. Six months on, the results of the scheme are in. 157 young people took up places and of these, 45 got jobs – a success rate of 29%. This success rate is well above other work experience schemes in the area because of the active signing up of local employers and because the booklet sponsored by Community
got the information to the young people in a user-friendly way. Rachel Jones of Angel Springs, one of the employers who took part, said: “Angel Springs have employed a number of staff through the local work placement scheme initiated by Pat McFadden. “Over the last year I have found this to be a very useful and rewarding way of recruiting. Staff that I have employed through the scheme would generally be candidates that I would not have normally considered taking on in the past just from looking at their CV. “I have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of young people who are really just looking for an opportunity and are willing to work hard to get there. They just need to be given a chance.” So the lesson of this scheme is clear. Not only did it help young people find work but it also helped some young people who might not normally have come through the usual recruitment procedures. This scheme shows what a local MP and an active trade union can do together to increase opportunity for local young people. I want to thank Community for helping 45 unemployed young people in Wolverhampton a job through sponsorship of this scheme.
I had been applying for almost anything and everything to gain interviews, being involved in programmes, work experiences and voluntary work. After a stressful nine months, I attended a jobs fair in Wolverhampton where I met and spoke to a lot of people about what options and opportunities there were to help people into the future of finding work and developing a career. I spoke to Angel Springs who advised about the work placement programme they were involved in with local MP Pat McFadden. They offered me an eight-week place involving training in all areas of the business. During the eight weeks I gained experience in sales, customer services, administration and accounts. I also went out with
a driver for the day and had training in the cooler refurbishment and distribution areas. I enjoyed and felt I did well at the route calling section and after the eight weeks I was offered a permanent position within the team as an order management executive. I am so glad that I tried the work placement scheme, as I would probably not have even got an interview before due to the lack of experience on my CV. I really feel that I now have the opportunity of not just a job but a career with Angel and would recommend that other people looking for a job go down the same path as me as there are lots of opportunities out there. Amy Wells
The Midlands TUC and Dudley College Students Union organised a youth unemployment summit at the new Evolve Theatre in Dudley in November. Participants included Labour MPs John Spellar, Ian Austin and Pat McFadden. Gavin Miller of Community was one of several trade union speakers. Wolverhampton and the Black Country have some of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the country and unemployment in manufacturing for youth workers in the region is continuing to rise.
Community New Year 2013
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