DWP make flashy announcement with little substance

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced that employers will receive £3,000 for every 18-24-year-old they employ. They will also give small and medium businesses £2,000 for every apprentice they take on.

But, as usual, the approach they’re taking is totally wrong.

DWP pushing kids into shit jobs

Pat McFadden, the Secretary of State for the DWP, has announced the Youth Jobs Grant. This will work alongside the Youth Guarantee. As the Canary has reported, this will push young people into low paid and low skilled work, regardless of whether they’re well enough to work.

McFadden said:

These measures will give life-changing opportunities to young people and significantly reverse the increase we inherited in those not in education, employment or training.

We are focusing funding where it’s needed most and giving employers the flexibility and support they’ve asked for.

The press release, bizarrely, includes a staggering thirty-two quotes ranging everyone from the prime minister to the CEO of B&M.

This gives us a flavour of the sort of employers who will be involved in the scheme. It includes Lloyds Banking Group, Severn Trent, B&M and Amazon. As the Canary previously reported, McFadden’s first Youth Guarantee jobs fair was packed to the teeth with military and weapons companies.

The grant is being touted as incredible reforms, but nobody is looking at the big picture. Yes, it’s great that more jobs are being created for young people, but why do big conglomerates like Amazon need a financial incentive to employ someone? While no doubt some of them will be good jobs, it’s looking more like it will just trap working-class kids in crap jobs with no way out.

Apprenticeships instead of fully paid work

The DWP has also announced £2.5 billion in funding for training and apprenticeships. But then you have to look at what the apprenticeships are. As part of the scheme, the DWP will introduce short apprentice units in:

• AI Leadership – developing AI strategy
• Electric vehicle charging point installation and maintenance
• Electrical fitting and assembly
• Mechanical fitting and assembly
• Permanent modular building assembly
• Solar PV installation and maintenance welding

While some of these are useful and practical, a lot seem like babysitting the robots, don’t they?

The department is also ‘streamlining’ many ‘apprenticeship standards’. But again, looking at the list, these are low-skilled jobs for which people will be paid even less than usual. The jobs involve ‘cleaning hygiene operative’, which lets be honest, is a cleaning job. And “custody and detention professional’, which is a prison officer.

What support for work?

While this grand announcement was made, there were, of course, no specifics published. So we don’t know who will be able to apply for the grants and how many they will be able to claim. It goes without saying that this will be wide open to abuse from greedy companies. It’s ironic that the DWP are going to seemingly allow this after accusing employers of abusing the Access to Work scheme just last week.

With each announcement, it becomes clearer just how little the DWP actually cares about supporting young people into work. It’s time the DWP stopped pretending and instead owned up to the fact that they only care about how much money they can exploit from people.

Featured image via the Canary