Politicians can put any spin they like on any set of figures that they carefully choose to "prove" their propaganda, but there is one awful statistic which still refuses to go away these past five years of recession and that is of the unemployment level of young people and for that you simply have to point at the current political culture of the relaxation of employment laws to make a mythical "flexible workforce".
We were talking about this in the pub last night and as I started to explain how young kids like my brother were employed in the 1970s even I started to doubt what I was saying as some sort of dream-like sequence of unreal events, but with him serving a carpenters apprenticeship and me being employed in the electrical industry I have lots of experience of how "proper" apprenticeships worked, and had worked for at least a hundred years before that.
Being indentured to a tradesman at 16 years of age you had a cast iron guarantee of five years of employment, your employer could not sack you or decide that he was bored with having an apprentice, if he did then he would never be able to employ one again, if your employer went into liquidation then a combination of the trade union and the training board would place you with another employer. You received four days a week training "on the job" with tradesmen and one day a week at college and at the end of five years you had your qualification that was recognised anywhere in the country (and often abroad too, my brother had no problems finding employment as a time served joiner on travels in Australia and NZ)
Compare to now - there are college-run "modern apprenticeships" that offer no guarantee of work placement and the biggest crime against tradesmen is the type of course that an ex-employee of the company I work for is currently doing - he left last November in his late thirties "to become an electrician", when I laughed and told him he was a bit old to start a five year apprenticeship he told me that all you needed was some money and some time to set aside to enrol in a home study course for nine months, then you became an electrician, I now know what the word gobsmacked means as the thought that someone could turn up on a building site with a certificate stating that they are an electrician having never set foot on a building site before is just laughable.
But that is "flexible employment" in practice, no commitment from employers, income for a private college, and a useless certificate at the end of it.
