The People's Record

“Hi I was wondering if it would be possible for you guys to help spread the word about something. A riverside area of London known has ‘the Southbank’ is home to a disused space or ‘undercroft’ which is well used & loved as skateboarding space.

There is never a time where it isn’t full of people hanging out and making use of it. The Southbank Centre is a group of ‘arts’ centers that want to destroy this community-loved-space in order for refurbishments e.g. probably more high rent retail units or restaurants even though  there are already plenty in this space.

They want to destroy a genuine piece of culture & heritage within the local community for the sake of commercializing the area even more. There has already been a petition against this but right now one of the biggest steps we can take is to object the official planning permission request by the Southbank center.”

Submitted by http://flowersdotcom.tumblr.com

Additional resource:

• Here is the petition.
• Here is the ‘save our skatepark’ Facebook page for this issue.
• Here is an article in the Guardian elaborating on the issue.

Community space free of rampant exploitation that doesn’t revolve around some commercial, corporate, capitalist exchange, and gives increasingly poor young people a place to spend their time, is important.

Eurozone unemployment hits new high with a quarter of under-25s jobless; overall unemployment now at staggering 12.2%
June 2, 2013

Protesters who picketed the European Central Bank on Friday are planning a second day of action across European cities as anger grows over austerity measures that many blame for taking Eurozone unemployment to an all-time high.

In rain and strong winds, members of the Blockupy movement cut off access to the ECB’s Frankfurt headquarters and vowed to keep up the disruption on Saturday in a financial hub they describe as a seat of “dictated austerity”. Their action came as official figures showed eurozone unemployment hit a new high last month with young people again the hardest hit – almost one in four are now out of work.

Unemployment in the crisis-stricken currency bloc rose to 12.2% for April, according to Eurostat, the statistics office of the EU. At 24.4%, youth unemployment was double the wider jobless rate and up from 24.3% in March. The problem was most extreme in Greece where almost two-thirds of those under-25 are unemployed. The rate was 62.5% in February, the most recently available data.

The numbers come days after eurozone leaders unveiled plans to get more young people into work as they faced warnings about the risks of civil unrest, long-term economic costs and fears that a generation could lose faith in the European project.

In Frankfurt Blockupy protesters blamed the troika of institutions it says is pushing austerity measures on southern Europe: the ECB, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and perhaps most importantly, capitalism. Blockupy’s Roland Süss said: “With the blockade of the ECB we are making the European resistance against the devastating poverty policy visible. It’s an expression of our solidarity with the people in southern Europe whose existence is threatened by the austerity programs.”

Blockupy, a European version of the Occupy Wall Street movement, put the number of activists blocking the ECB at 3,000. There was a more conservative estimate of between 1,000 and 1,500 from police, who used pepper spray to prevent the protesters breaking into the central bank’s high-rise building. Protesters also targeted Deutsche Bank’s headquarters and Frankfurt’s airport. The movement and other anti-austerity groups are threatening rallies throughout European cities on Saturday, including London.

While France and Germany responded to growing anger at youth unemployment this week with a new jobs plan, labor market experts warn that any measures will take time to turn the tide after 24 consecutive monthly rises in the jobless level. Economists say things will get worse before they get better for the 19.4 million people in the eurozone out of work.

In the wider EU area unemployment stood at 11%, as the rate rose in all but nine countries compared with a year earlier. The biggest rises in overall joblessness on a year ago were in Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Portugal. Youth unemployment in Spain is 56.4%, in Portugal 42.5%. Italy recorded its highest overall unemployment rate since records began in 1977, at 12%, with youth joblessness at 40.5%. Economists said that the rise in unemployment was fairly broad-based with rises in so-called core countries as well, including Belgium and the Netherlands. The rate in France was 11%.

Ireland recorded one of the biggest falls in unemployment, down to 13.5% from 14.9% a year ago. That compares with a rate of 7.7% for the UK, where youth unemployment is 20.2%.

Source

Update: Today, the clashes sparked by this outrageous reality continued in Frankfurt, Germany with thousands on the streets. See video here.

#Occupy Capitalism

Greek workers walk out to protest ban on teachers’ strike
May 14, 2013

Greek public sector workers walked off the job on Tuesday to protest against a government decision to ban a strike by high-school teachers, shutting down several schools and reducing staff at hospitals to a minimum. Invoking emergency legislation, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has threatened teachers with arrest and dismissal if they go ahead with a planned walkout on Friday that would disrupt university entrance exams, as he tries to show Greece’s foreign lenders that Athens is sticking to unpopular reforms.

The action on Tuesday was the latest in a string of anti-austerity strikes since 2010, when Greece adopted severe budget and wage cut measures as part of its international bailout. The turnout was not near someone of the movement’s larger demonstrations; turnout in demonstrations last year topped 100,000 at times. But activists insist that they are committed to fighting for humanity.

“Our message, that we fully condemn these policies, was sent, despite the low turnout,” ADEDY’s general secretary Ilias Iliopoulos told Reuters. “The government must make up its mind and show that it does care about students and teachers.

The conservative-led coalition wants teachers to put in two more hours of work each week to reach the average levels of high school teachers’ working hours in Europe, and transfer 4,000 of them to remote parts of Greece to plug staffing gaps.

These measures would allow the government to dismiss about 10,000 part-time teachers when their temporary contracts expire, causing outraged unions & citizens alike to call for the 24-hour strike on Friday and rolling strikes next week.

The government responded by invoking a law that allows it to mobilize workers in the case of civil disorder or natural disasters.

ADEDY had disagreed with the high school teachers’ decision to hold a strike on the first day of exams because it would inconvenience students. However, it opposed the government using emergency laws to pre-emptively ban the action, saying this was undemocratic and violated workers’ constitutional rights. ADEDY and GSEE, Greece’s largest private sector union, are also planning a four-hour work stoppage on Thursday.

More than 1,000 high-school teachers marched to parliament late on Monday, holding banners reading: “No to the civil mobilization and this terror!” and “It won’t pass”.

GSEE and ADEDY represent more than half of Greece’s workforce, which has been shrinking rapidly during the crippling recession after years of austerity. As unemployment grows, unions may not yield as strong of turn outs as they have when they had higher membership, but the increasingly impoverished people of Greece will not tolerate limitless government oppression.

Source

Prospects for social unrest high; dim prospects for the class of 2013
April 27, 2013

The Great Recession that began in December 2007 was so long and severe, and the government response so inadequate, that the crater it left in the labor market continues to be devastating for workers of all ages. The U.S. labor market still has a deficit of nearly 9 million jobs, and the unemployment rate has been at 7.6 percent or higher for more than four years. (In comparison, the highestunemployment rate in the two recessions prior to the Great Recession was 7.8 percent, for one month in the early 1990s downturn.) The weak labor market has been, and continues to be, very tough on young workers: At 16.2 percent, the March 2013 unemployment rate of workers under age 25 was slightly over twice as high as the national average. Though the labor market is now headed in the right direction, it is improving very slowly, and the prospects for young high school and college graduates remain dim.

This paper’s title, The Class of 2013, is admittedly something of a misnomer, as we do not yet know the labor market outcomes of these soon-to-be graduates. However, the outcomes of recent high school and college graduates provide a good sense of the labor market conditions the young men and women graduating in the Class of 2013 this spring will face. This briefing paper examines the labor market that confronts young graduates who are not enrolled in further schooling—specifically, high school graduates age 17–20 and college graduates age 21–24—and details the following findings:

• Unemployment among young graduates is extremely high today not because of something unique about the Great Recession that has affected young people in particular, but because young workers always experience disproportionate increases in unemployment during downturns. The Great Recession and its aftermath has been the longest, most severe period of economic weakness this country has experienced in more than seven decades.
• The large increase since 2007 in the unemployment and underemployment rate of young college graduates, and in the share of employed young college graduates working in jobs that do not require a college degree, underscores that today’s unemployment crisis among young workers did not arise because these young adults lack the right education or skills. Rather, it stems from weak demand for goods and services, which makes it unnecessary for employers to significantly ramp up hiring.
• Unemployment and underemployment rates of most young graduates have only modestly improved since last year, and rates among all graduates are substantially higher than before the recession began.
• For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate is 29.9 percent (compared with 17.5 percent in 2007) and the underemployment rate is 51.5 percent (compared with 29.4 percent in 2007).
• For young college graduates, the unemployment rate is 8.8 percent (compared with 5.7 percent in 2007) and the underemployment rate is 18.3 percent (compared with 9.9 percent in 2007).
• There is no evidence that young adults have been able to “shelter in school” from the labor market effects of the Great Recession; college and university enrollment rates of both men and women have not meaningfully departed from their long-term trend since the start of the Great Recession.
• The long-run wage trends for young graduates are bleak, with wages substantially lower today than in 2000. Between 2000 and 2012, the real (inflation-adjusted) wages of young high school graduates declined 12.7 percent, and the real wages of young college graduates declined 8.5 percent.
• The erosion of job quality for young graduates is also evident in their declining likelihood of receiving employer-provided health insurance or pensions.
• Between 1989 and 2011, the share of employed young high school graduates who receive health insurance from their own employer dropped from 23.5 percent to 7.1 percent. Over the same period, the share of employed young college graduates who receive health insurance from their own employer dropped from 60.1 percent to 31.1 percent.
• Between 2000 and 2011, the share of employed young high school graduates who receive pension coverage from their employer dropped from 9.7 percent to 5.9 percent. Over the same period, the share of employed young college graduates who receive pension coverage from their employer dropped from 41.5 percent to 27.2 percent.
• Young graduates with jobs lack opportunities for advancement, a trend underscored by the fact that there are now more than 20 percent fewer total voluntary quits each month than there were each month in 2007.
• Graduating in a bad economy has long-lasting economic consequences. For the next 10 to 15 years, those in the Class of 2013 will likely earn less than if they had graduated when job opportunities were plentiful.
• The safety net of federal and state assistance programs often does not cover young workers due to eligibility requirements such as significant prior work experience.
• The cost of higher education has grown far more rapidly than median family income, leaving students with little choice but to take out loans which, upon graduating into a labor market with limited job opportunities, they may not have the funds to repay.
• The scarcity of job opportunities for the Class of 2013 is a symptom of weak demandfor workers more broadly. What will bring down young workers’ unemployment rates most quickly and effectively are policies that will generate strong job growth overall, such as fiscal relief to states, substantial additional investment in infrastructure, expanded safety net measures, and direct job creation programs in communities particularly hard-hit by unemployment.

Unemployment rate twice as high for young workers

In economic recessions as well as expansions, the unemployment rate of young workers (those under age 25) is typically around twice as high as the overall unemployment rate (see Figure Afor national data and Appendix Table A1 for state-level data). This trend persists over time because young workers are relatively new to the labor market—often looking for their first or second job—and they may be passed over in hiring decisions due to lack of experience. As for young workers who are already employed, their lack of seniority makes them likely candidates for being laid off when their firm falls on hard times or is restructuring. Young workers also tend to be more mobile than older workers, moving between jobs, employers, careers, or even cities, and thus spend a larger share of their time as job seekers.

Source (with more interactive graphs & much more text)

Police ‘cleaning up’ Detroit by kidnapping the homeless, stranding them in other cities
April 22, 2013

Imagine that you are homeless in Detroit. You have an area where you know you are safe, where you can find food and shelter if you ask. Now imagine that a cop grabs you from the street, throws you into a van, drives you to the edge of the city or even a suburb and then kicks you out. That’s what the ACLU is accusing the Detroit PD of doing.: they filed a complaint with the Justice Department against the DPB this week.

The complaint comes at the end of a year-long investigation into claims that the department routinely drove homeless people to areas unfamiliar to them, leaving them to get back on their own. They will approach homeless people, especially in tourist areas like Greektown, force them into vans and drive them miles away, the complaint alleges. Sometimes the officers would even take what little money they had, leaving them with no recourse but to walk back to the city. Sometimes the homeless victims would even be left in neighboring towns and suburbs like Dearborn and River Rouge.

Speaking for the ACLU of Michigan, staff attorney Sarah Mehta told the local CBS affiliate:

“DPD’s practice of essentially kidnapping homeless people and abandoning them miles away from the neighborhoods they know – with no means for a safe return — is inhumane, callous and illegal. The city’s desire to hide painful reminders of our economic struggles cannot justify discriminating against the poor, banishing them from their city, and endangering their lives. A person who has lost his home has not lost his right to be treated with dignity.” (source)

The ACLU was contacted by the St. Peter and Paul Jesuit Church Warming Center, a homeless shelter. They told the organization about several homeless people who were “taken for a ride” by DPB officers. One such story came from Andrew Sheehan, a 36-year-old who used to be homeless but is now working at a grocery store:

“I had my back turned to him and I did not see him approaching, and the first thing he did was he kicked me. He didn’t identify himself as an officer and he kicked me and told me to get up. I asked him if I was free to go. He told me no.” (source)

The organization has published the stories of five homeless people who were kidnapped and harassed by Detroit police. According to the ACLU’s complaint, some of the homeless who were taken had to walk many miles to get back to downtown shelters. This puts them in danger from a variety of sources, especially in the middle of winter.

The ACLU has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the allegations. They have also asked the city to issue a directive to police officers to desist this practice immediately.

This is unconscionable, but it’s not new. Removing the vagrants and undersirables from where the “regular” people might be upset by them is an old practice, according to Samuel Walker, a police accountability expert:

“This is a familiar story with a long history in policing. You do wonder what did this Police Department learn from the consent decree experience?” (source)

Detroit’s Chief of Police, Chester Logan, declined to comment, saying that he had not yet seen the complaint. The AP was also unable to get comments from Mayor Dave Bing or the city’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr. Not surprising.

This bad economy has seen an uptick in the homeless situation. Yes, it makes some of us uncomfortable to see them, perhaps because we see more of ourselves in them than we would care to admit. But ignoring the problem won’t solve it and taking these people to the edge of town and exposing them to danger is not the way to handle it. Detroit’s police need to look inside and find their better nature before they get someone killed.

Source

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I originally came across the article that posted these graphs from something we reblogged from anarcho-queer (you should follow anarcho-queer for daily news & information along the same lines as what we post. They post just-as, if-not more regularly than we do).

On this day in history: On March 7, 1930 ‘red’ assemblies in the U.S. protested against unemployment. Masses of people in New York and Washington, led by communists, demonstrated against high unemployment, and broke into riots.

New York, Thursday.

Despite extraordinary precautions taken by the police throughout the United States, a number of minor disorders and rioting took place in various parts of the country today. In Washington the police were obliged to use tear gas to disperse a gathering on “Unemployment Day” demonstrators in front of the White House, and several communists were injured in a struggle with the police when the leader of the demonstrators climbed the iron railing of the Presidential grounds and attempted to speak.

President Hoover had previously sent out word to the police not to interfere with the meeting provided there was no disorder and the demonstrators confined themselves to the public thoroughfares. The police considered that the leader of the demonstrators had violated the President’s instructions and forced him to get down on the ground.

A boy of eighteen, wearing a flaming red sweater, grasped one of the policemen from behind, and a general mêlée started. Youth and police fell to the pavement together, whereupon another policeman drew his revolver and fired a charge of tear gas at the demonstrators, who fled in all directions. About twenty persons, including several girls, were immediately arrested. Throughout the demonstration President Hoover was working in the office only a hundred yards away.

In New York, a mammoth demonstration was staged in Union Square – the Trafalgar Square of New York. A crowd estimated at more than 75,000 was present. The square was jammed to overflowing, and traffic had to be diverted. The roof tops and windows were lined with curious onlookers. More than one hundred detectives moved among the crowd.

Considerable resentment was caused in newspaper quarters when it was discovered that [Police Commissioner] Mr Whalen had disguised a number of his detectives as reporters, even equipping them with special press badges. Two bags full of tear-gas were held in readiness. Scores of speakers addressed the crowd from various rostra and the audience joined lustily in singing the “Internationale.”

Later, however, when the demonstrators wanted to form a procession to march to the City Hall they found the way barred by Mr Whalen and his men and the trouble began. The Police Commissioner first attempted to parley, and offered to take the leaders in his car to City Hall to see the Mayor, Mr “Jimmie” Walker, but the offer was refused and the Reds attempted to rush Mr Whalen and his bodyguard. A “riot call” was at once sent out, and militia, fire brigades and riot squads appeared as if by magic.

The police rallied and charged the demonstrators, eventually succeeding in dispersing the meeting. Several policemen as well as a number of Communists were injured. The ringleaders were arrested on a charge of inciting to riot.

Source

U.S. – spending slightly up; income drastically down with austerity on its way means tragic economy for working-class Americans
March 2, 2013

U.S. consumer spending rose in January as Americans spent more on utilities, with savings providing a cushion after income recorded its biggest drop in 20 years.

The Commerce Department said on Friday consumer spending increased 0.2 percent in January after a revised 0.1 percent rise the prior month. Spending had previously been estimated to have increased 0.2 percent in December.

January’s increase was in line with economists’ expectations. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity and when adjusted for inflation, it gained 0.1 percent after a similar increase in December.

Though spending rose in January, it was supported by a rise in services, probably related to utilities consumption after a cold snap during the month.

Spending on goods fell, suggesting some hit from the expiration at the end of 2012 of a 2 percent payroll tax cut. Tax rates for wealthy Americans also increased.

The impact is expected to be larger in February’s spending data and possibly extend through the first half of the year as households adjust to smaller paychecks, which are also being strained by rising gasoline prices.

“We expect a significant decrease in real consumer spending in the first half of the year,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, U.S. economist at BNP Paribas, New York.

“We are looking for a very subdued Q1 reading, and that’s the effect from the fiscal tightening. That will weigh significantly on first-quarter GDP, which we expect at 1.2 percent.

GDP advanced at a 0.1 percent rate in the last three months of 2012, with consumer spending rising at a healthy 2.1 percent annual pace.

Income tumbled 3.6 percent, the largest drop since January 1993. Part of the decline was payback for a 2.6 percent surge in December as businesses, anxious about higher taxes, rushed to pay dividends and bonuses before the new year.

Taking into account the higher taxes that went into effect at the start of the year, the squeeze on households was even greater. The income at the disposal of households after inflation and taxes plunged a 4.0 percent in January after advancing 2.7 percent in December.

Excluding the unwinding of the dividend and bonus boost, disposable income increased 0.3 percent in January.

With income dropping sharply and spending rising, the saving rate - the percentage of disposable income households are socking away - fell to 2.4 percent, the lowest level since November 2007. The rate had jumped to 6.4 percent in December.

Savings were the smallest since December 2007.

Inflation was largely contained, even though gasoline prices pushed higher. A price index for consumer spending was flat for a second straight month.

That left its increase over the past 12 months at 1.2 percent, the smallest since October 2009. It increased 1.4 percent in December.

So-called core prices, which strip out food and energy costs, edged up 0.1 percent after being flat the prior month. The year-on-year gain was 1.3 percent, the smallest since April 2011 and well below the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.

The U.S. central bank last year embarked on an open-ended bond buying program and said it would keep it up until it saw a substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market. It hopes the purchases will drive down borrowing costs.

Weak growth and benign inflation could compel the Fed to maintain it’s very easy monetary policy stance.

Source

Man trampled as hundreds of desperate Greeks scuffle for food
February 7, 2013

A fruit and vegetable handout in Greece led to one man being trampled on Wednesday, calling attention to the desperate conditions in the crisis-hit country. Some 55 tons of produce was given away by farmers who were protesting high production costs.

The person was injured when he was pushed by a crowd trying to grab the goods and fell and hit his head.

The chaos was sparked when food stalls ran out of fruits and vegetables, prompting dozens of people to rush to a nearby truck.

It was an “every man for himself” situation as the Greeks shoved their way to the front of the truck, competing for the food that was left. The 55 tons of food was completely gone in under two hours.

A Reuters employee at the scene was hit on the head with cauliflower heads as he attempted to photograph the situation.

“These images make me angry. Angry for a proud people who have no food to eat, who can’t afford to keep warm, who can’t make ends meet,”

Kostas Barkas, a lawmaker from the leftist Syriza party, told Reuters.

Other Greek lawmakers said the situation showed images “of people on the brink of despair” and the sense of“sadness for a proud people who have ended up like this.”

It’s a reality that many Greek citizens find hard to comprehend.

“It’s difficult. I never imagined that I would end up here,” 65-year-old Panagiota Petropoulos said.

“I can’t afford anything, not even at the fruit market. Everything is expensive, prices of everything are going up while our income is going down and there are no jobs,” she continued.

Greece, which is currently in its sixth year of recession, is experiencing record high unemployment rates. Citizens have been forced to endure wage and pension cuts to satisfy European Union and International Monetary Fund demands.

The handout was an attempt by farmers to persuade the government to give them a 50 per cent price reduction on diesel-powered farm equipment, abolish the obligatory declaration for cultivation and cut Value Added Tax from 23 per cent to 6 per cent on their products and agricultural machinery and equipment.

Strikes continue to take place in various sectors, as workers protest the government’s austerity plan.

On Wednesday, Greece’s ruling coalition forced striking seamen to return to work after a six-day action that suspended ferry services to dozens of Greek Islands. The strike led to food and medical shortages.

But when one strike ends, others continue.

Farmers throughout the country are in their ninth day of demonstrations, staging roadblocks with their tractors on highways across Greece on Wednesday.

Journalists working for state broadcasters went into a third day of strikes on Wednesday, protesting against the government’s policies regulating the sector. The strike is scheduled to continue until Thursday.

Various Greek Unions have held a wave of strikes over the past three years to protest the harsh austerity measures taken to secure international rescue loans.

Source

Unemployment for workers under 25 is now at 57.6 percent, & more than one fifth of the population lives in poverty in Greece. Austerity measures have also cut wages by 60 percent. The IMF & the EU are planning more cuts to the minimum wage & public sector wages.

Worldwide unemployment soars, young workers most vulnerable – UN report
January 22, 2013 

Global unemployment is at a record high in the wake of the financial crisis, says a UN report. A rise in joblessness of 5.1 million is expected in 2013, impacting the world’s youth hardest in a climate of stifling austerity and economic instability.

UN agency, the International Labor Organization (ILO) released its annual report on worldwide employment on Tuesday, marking a significant worsening in unemployment trends.

The report states that approximately 197 million people were out of work in 2012, a rise of 4.2 million. Guy Ryder, director-general of the ILO, stated at the press conference accompanying the release of the report that “inadequacy of policy to counter” unemployment was largely to blame for the slump in investment and hiring.

“This has prolonged the labor market slump in many countries, lowering job creation and increasing unemployment duration even in some countries that previously had low unemployment and dynamic labor markets,” he added.

Ryder stressed the numbers did not convey the full extent of the crisis because “labor force participation has fallen dramatically…masking the true extent of the jobs crisis.”

Over 39 million people dropped out of the global job market last year because of the increasingly bleak outlook. The economic climate in the eurozone has been earmarked as one of the worst areas for the job market, indicative of a “piecemeal approach” to the crisis.

“The global nature of the crisis means countries cannot resolve its impact individually and with domestic measures only,” he declared.

‘Global youth missing out on vital skills’

The document reported that young people are worst-hit by soaring unemployment and are losing valuable experience as a result of difficulties in getting onto the employment ladder in the first place.

“The crisis has dramatically diminished the labor market prospects for young people, as many experience long-term unemployment right from the start of their labor market entry,” the UN agency said, stressing that such a phenomenon had not been witnessed during previous downturns.

At present there are around 73.8 million people aged between 15 and 24 out of work worldwide and “the slowdown in economic activity is likely to push another half million into unemployment by 2014.”

The ILO signaled that, perhaps most worrying of all, in advanced economies around 35 per cent of unemployed young people had been jobless for more than six months. This extended period of time out of work has a detrimental impact on their future career prospects, depriving them of the necessary skills needed to compete in the job market.

“Many of the new jobs require skills that jobseekers do not have,” Mr. Ryder informed.

The ILO signaled that employment prospects varied from region to region, emphasizing that Eastern Europe, East and South-East Asia and the Middle East would see youth joblessness on the rise in the coming years.

Growth of the global jobs market trailed off in 2011, writes the report, adding that many countries were also experiencing “a worsening in job quality.”

Source

‘An economic time bomb’: The world’s unemployed youth
December 19, 2012

Akmal Dildorbek is a 23-year-old university graduate in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. The former computer-science major remains unemployed, as do most of those who graduated with him two years ago. As he tells it, soon the only prospect he’ll have is to leave home to join the flow of unemployed Central Asians seeking underpaid jobs in Russia.

“I’m jobless and living at home [with my parents],” Dildorbek tells RFE/RL. “I’m a computer programmer by [education] and I’ve applied for a job every place that needs a computer programmer. I’ve applied for jobs at banks, companies, and private firms. I’ll continue to search for a job. If I can’t find anything, I’ll have to go Moscow to become a migrant laborer.”

Dildorbek is one of an increasing number of young adults who are losing hope in a heavily globalized economy that has yet to shake off the effects of the financial crisis.

Suffering Disproportionately

There are warnings of a “lost generation” of young workers facing a potentially explosive mix of growing inactivity and precarious work in the industrialized world, along with high working poverty in developing countries.

According to the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO), more than 75 million people around the world between the ages of 15 and 24 are now without work — an increase of nearly 4 million since the global financial crisis began in 2007. More than 6 million of them have given up on finding a job.

The difficulties that young people are facing reflect the weak state of labor markets. But Matthieu Cognac, a youth employment specialist with the ILO in Bangkok, tells RFE/RL that young people in particular are being left behind, since they’re three times more likely to be unemployed than their elders.

“Young people are the ones who suffer more than others from discrimination,” Cognac says. “In times of economic growth, they are usually the last in or the last hired. However, in times of crisis, they are also the first ones to be fired or they are the first out.”

‘Working Poverty’

In the European Union, one in five people under 25 willing to work cannot find a job. Many more young people are being pushed into part-time work contracts or into the informal economy. Unemployment is particularly acute in Spain and Greece, where half of high school and college graduates ready to work are coming up empty-handed.

Prospects for work also remain dim in swaths of the Asia-Pacific region, home to the world’s largest youth population. One-in-6 young people is unemployed in Taiwan and the Philippines, while the ratio is 1-in-5 in Indonesia. The worst-off region is the Middle East and North Africa, where approximately 1-in-4 young people is without a job.

However, Cognac says that working poverty continues to be the main challenge facing the developing world.

“The key focus in Europe is job creation,” Cognac says. “There are not enough jobs out there. The key focus in developing Asia is also creating jobs, but it is really a focus on the quality of those jobs because of the lack of social protection and the lack of social safety nets. Young people simply do not have any other option than to work in conditions of working poverty.”

More Trouble Ahead

With some 40 million young people entering the workforce every year, labor-market experts and company bosses say the world is sitting on an economic and social time bomb.

Untapped youth potential is especially crucial in countries where the population is aging. In such places, a trend of fewer working young people translates into lower tax revenues to meet ballooning social costs. Those unemployed for a long time are less employable and earn less throughout their working lives.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says long-term unemployment is associated with “elevated risks of poverty, ill health, and school failure for the children of the affected workers.”

Growing resentment and mistrust among young people can also foster social unrest. That was the case in the wave of Arab Spring protests that swept across North Africa and the Middle East in early 2011. More recently, severe austerity measures coupled with slow economic growth have fomented unrest in Southern Europe.

Source

The People’s Record Daily News Update - Whose news? Our news!

November 30, 2012 

Here are some stories you may not otherwise read about today:

• In a stand of solidarity, dozens of footballers have signed a petition protesting the decision to stage the European under-21 championship in Israel next year, after the recent military atrocities and war crimes committed by Israel against the people of Palestine.
   
• Unemployment in the eurozone has hit a record high, with more than 170,000 new jobs lost & youth unemployment at almost 24%, as the economy slumped back into recession.
   
• According to the UN secretary-general, Syria has now reached “new and appalling heights of brutality and violence”, while the envoy to Syria has said the country is in danger of becoming “a failed state”.
   
• Just hours before lawmakers in the US Senate overwhelming voted in favor of an amendment that will challenge controversial provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the Obama administration announced that they plan on vetoing the amendment, making sure they maintain their expansive executive powers to detain American citizens indefinitely, without any reason or legal justification.
  
  
• Amid a slew of annual right-wing hysteria about the “war on Christmas,” one official in Virginia has stirred up controversy for denouncing holiday-friendly atheists as ‘fanatical terrorirsts’.
  
  
• GMO giant Dupont (second only to Monsanto in its size and moral depravity) has hired police officers to patrol farm areas, looking for farmers to ruin the lives of, by taking them to court for ‘invalidating contracts’ by illegally using seeds for repeat harvests.
  

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‘Educate, Employ, Empower’: London students protest youth debt and joblessness
November 21, 2012

Around 10,000 students gathered in London to protest a hike in tuition, soaring youth unemployment and a host of other financial burdens. A splinter activist group threatened to break away from this “tame” rally and march on parliament.

Some of the protesting students attempted to occupy Westminster Bridge during the demonstration. The protesters refused to move past parliament and over the bridge as previously agreed by police.

Around 40 masked students tried unsuccessfully to break through a police line to get into Parliament Square, chanting “we won’t go south of the river.”

But as the majority of protesters were forced to take the preplanned route south of the river, by the time they got to Kennington, some of the students began to lose interest and broke off into pubs.

The event, organized by the National Union of Students (NUT), is the first since a wave of demonstrations in 2010 when the coalition government decided to raise tuition fees. But the march is designed to broaden campaigns from student funding to the wider issues of joblessness and debt among young people in Britain.

Since the UK’s coalition government came to power in 2010, tuition fees have tripled to a maximum of £9,000. Students are left with tens of thousands of pounds of debt before they graduate, and know that there is little chance of finding a job when they finally do finish their studies.

Ministers have also decided to end the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) grant allowing the poorest teenagers to stay in school and college before going to university.

“There’s a sense of desperation that people have. They are slowly seeing opportunities taken away and are powerless to do anything about it,” Liam Burns, President of the NUT told UK newspaper the Guardian.

A survey by the NUT of almost 500 parents found that three out of five would not vote for an MP who broke a campaign pledge to vote against tuition fee hikes.

Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister whose Liberal Democrat Party promised not to increase tuition fees as part of their election campaign, was forced to issue an embarrassing public apology at the party’s autumn conference in Brighton. Burns vowed that while some MPs kept their promise, the ones that did not can expect to be voted out in the next election and are living “on borrowed time.”

“We were the first to highlight just what the Liberal Democrats were prepared to sacrifice for their Tory masters,” Kathy Taylor the president of the University and College Union (UCU) is expected to say during the rally.

The protesters – who are marching under the banner ‘Educate, Employ, Empower’ – will mass near the Embankment, march past parliament square, avoiding the Houses of Parliament, and head to Kennington Park south of the river Thames for a rally.

But a breakaway group, organized by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), has dismissed these plans and called for a “feeder march to pass the centers of power which are attacking students and ordinary people,” Michael Chessum, the organizer of NCAFC said in a statement.

“It is essential that we remain strong in the face of this attempt to stifle the freedom to demonstrate,” he said.

Source

Europe rises up: Day of anti-austerity rage grips the continent
November 14, 2012

Flights and trains were canceled across Europe on Wednesday as thousands of workers took to the streets to protest austerity measures aimed at reducing massive government deficits and boosting shaky economies.

“We all know that reforms, layoffs and cuts will continue but maybe we manage to get them cut (more slowly),” said Francisco Vallejo, 41, an administrative assistant in Madrid. “The only strike that is useless is the one we don’t follow.”

Unions had called for strikes across Europe to protest the trimming of government-funded salaries and pension benefits, which had risen dramatically over the years and led to significant debt problems in some countries.

The call to strike was heeded by many in Italy and Spain; but union workers in Britain, Germany and Denmark held rallies instead of walking off the job. Transport hubs were at standstill across southern Europe and in Brussels as airports and train stations shut down.

In Portugal, all trains and subways shut down and about 200 flights to and from the country were canceled. Hospitals operated on a skeleton staff while thousands of government workers including most in the justice system and trash collectors failed to go to work.

In Spain, some television channels went off the air and assembly lines at the big union-dominated factories shut down. Spanish unions claimed that 9 million Spaniards stayed at home, or 77% of the workforce.

Much of Spain’s school system was closed and more than half of its hospital employees went on strike.

In Barcelona, high-end stores such as Gucci and Chanel on the Paseo de Gracia closed for the day. In the neighborhoods, only a few bakeries and grocery shores dared to open, intermittently closing when they saw trouble.

In Greece, the strike shut down the subway system for part of the day. About 5,000 Greeks protested in Athens. Port workers blocked the entrance to the Ministry of Defense demanding back wages, they said.

In Italy, about 60,000 turned out in Rome. The president of Rome province, Nicola Zingaretti, condemned “groups of rioters” among peaceful protesters. Zingaretti said a climate of “aggressiveness and intolerance” risked sullying Rome’s image abroad following reports of protesters yelling anti-Semitic slogans outside a Rome synagogue.

The so-called austerity measures comprise spending cuts, tax hikes and changes to labor laws to allow businesses to better adjust to shaky economies. But several governments and many workers worry that the measures may worsen economies by driving down individual incomes.

The protests Wednesday brought out people who blame the economic system as a whole.

“They’ve only just started cuts but they are pretty draconian already,” said Andrew Burgin, European officer for the Coalition of Resistance in London, which organized a rally outside the European Commission offices there. “I think this is the beginning of a new movement. It will be a day remembers in history as the beginning of a pan-European movement, possibly an international movement, against capitalism.”

But European leaders, such as Angela Merkel of Germany, says the problem is the massive debts piled up by individual nations, many of which like Greece and Portugal spent beyond revenues on public projects, expanding welfare and government jobs, and generous public benefits.

Greece and Spain, which have been hit hardest by an economic slowdown and debt crisis that has swept up several nations across the continent, are experiencing unemployment rates of more than 25%. Both countries passed measures recently to change labor laws that protected employees from layoffs and that businesses say prevented them from hiring or innovating.

The austerity measures are supposed to improve the economy over time but in the short-term people in Greece and Spain especially are experiencing curtailment of government health care, reductions in their pensions and salaries and higher taxes.

Source
Photo 1: Madrid, Spain
Photo 2: Google map locations of all general strikes in Europe today
Photo 3: London, UK
Photo 4: Paris, France

About 3,000 protesters flooded Naples yesterday to protest high youth unemployment rates that have plagued Italy in recent months. As demonstrators hurled bottles & rocks at riot police, forces fired back with tear gas & injured 23. 

Unemployment for 15-24-year olds climbed to 35.1 percent in September, up 4.7 percent from last year. 

(Source: rt.com)