YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

Are young people
untrained for work?

Last in a Series

By KERRY McCUAIG

The educational ‘‘revolution’’ of the
past decade has taken the brunt of the
criticisms from liberal sociologists and
analyists trying to decifer the phenome-
non of youth unemployment.

The schools have been accused of
producing a generation of people ready
to join the labor force in age only. The
emphasis on academic curriculum and
pursuing a post-secondary education at
the expense of technical and vocational
training has left today’s job hunters ill
equipped to fit into ajob market, whichis
supposedly crying out for skilled, blue
collar workers.

With half the estimated two million
unemployed in this country under 24,
youth unemployment does deserve
considerable attention. While govern-
ment is ready to label young people as
“secondary earners’, lazy, picky and
transient (all of which these researchers
hasten to point out is not true) is it then
accurate for the researchers to place the
burden of the blame on the education
system?

Education is vitally important in secur-
ing a job. Someone with grade eight is
five times as likely to be without work as
a post-secondary graduate.

Although there is room for improve-
ment, Toronto student counsellor Susan
Mitchell maintains that it is the lack of
jobs that is the problem not the school

Estimates of skilled worker shortages
are also challenged in a report released
earlier this year by the Social Planning
Council of Metro Toronto. The Minister
of Employment and Immigration pre-
dicts a potential shortfall of 9,000 skilled

workers a year for the next five years.

The council points out that even if skilled
training programs were operating effec-
tively, 45,000 jobs are only going to
Satisfy a very small portion of the two
million unemployed.

The technological revamping of the
economy is-eliminating many of the un-
skilled jobs that were reserved for the
undereducated. With plant shutdowns
have gone assembly, shipping, receiving
and related work. The downturn in the
construction industry has also ruled out
the manual jobs, which once were many
young men’s introduction to the labor
force. In total 545,000 jobs have been lost
to the Canadian economy in the past year
alone.

According to Harriet Wolman, who
prepared a special report on youth
unemployment for the Metropolitan To-
ronto Council this year, an estimated
60,000 young people in the city have
dropped out of school and can’t find
work.

Wolman’s report is very critical of the

The
Jobless
who
don’t
count

school system. It encourages career
counselling to begin in the earlier grades,
since most dropouts leave in the first two
years of high school.

In the face of the barage, the villains in
the scenario, the teachers are on the
verge of throwing up their hands.

‘“‘Motivation, that is what we can’t
provide’’, says Mitchell. ‘“‘The kids
know the unemployment rates as well as
I do. It’s hard to convince a 14-year-old
to put his nose to the grindstone for the
next four or five years, when beyond that
the future looks vacant.”’

Getting a physics equation across isn’t
the only responsibility of today’s educa-
tors. Gregory O’Keefe, head of the
Ontario. Teachers’ Federation warned
his members at their annual conference
in August to be on the lookout for in-
creased cases of child abuse, alcoholism
in their students’ families and students
moving in mid-term. The social conse-
quences of government policies place
considerable strain on young people try-
ing to complete an education.

O’ Keefe also attacked provincial cut-
backs in funding to schools. While the

schools are expected to adapt to chang

ing labor force trends, he said, mone)!

shortages have prevented the purchas
of necessary equipment and hiring ext?
instructors to teach the new skills. Sp*
cialized courses for immigrant childré
have been cancelled, making it eve
more difficult for these children to inteF
rate into the labor force. "

Even at the post-secondary level, edt’
cation geared to market demand is
ning into difficulty. The University
Waterloo has offered work-relal
courses for 15 years. Six months is §
on campus and six-months getting pra”
tical job experience. The university *
looking at closing some of its cours®)
because they can’t find job placemei®
for their students.

One thing is certain, unemploymel!
won't disappear when the last of tl
baby boom generation reaches 25. !
trend then finance minister MacEachtl
indicated in his last federal budget. 4°
long as governments continue to fight
flation at the expense of job creation, th
unemployed youth is going to becom
the unemployed adult.

WHATS To Celesime

20 ~]

TURNING ae

al

ra
p 6B)

_ system. ;

‘For years we’ ve produced classes of

_ young women trained as clerical workers
and secretaries. Automation is phasing
those jobs out. We're training now in
word processing, but those jobs are _
isappearing. The schools can adapt to
the job market, but let’s fact it there just
isn’t much of a job market.”’

ITS i
ae L/

OuT OF WORK ang WITH THE JoBLES
TH

uv nPPr ine 0

ax

00%;

wAs ITS

Stop giveaways
— create jobs

A statement issued by the Central Executive Committee,
| Communist Party of Canada, Sept. 29, 1982.

When it comes to bailing out corporations and banks or spend-
ing huge sums of money on arms the government seems to have
no difficulty in finding the money. -

A case in point is Dome. Before that it was Massey-Ferguson,
Chrysler, Maislin to mention just a few. =

Lalonde says the government has undertaken this giveaway
program because it will create jobs. This is so much gobblegook.
What jobs were created or guaranteed in Massey-Ferguson,
Chrysler, or Maislin?

To add insult to injury the Canadian people are to pay for the
bailing out of Dome by the continuation of increases in the price
— and oil, increased prices the government had promised to

ish.

This giveaway program has been undertaken by a government

which says there is no money for job creating programs.

_ Under pressure it did say it is prepared to transfer funds from

-— existing programs and departments.
___ Where is it looking for such transfers? According to the press
the government is looking into family allowances, pensions and
unemployment insurance. The same corporations and bankers
who want the government to cut government spending but say
nothing about giveaways to them, have been pressing for a means
test to replace universality. The government seems to be moving
in that direction.

Only the family of corporations, the bureaucrats and the weal-

- thy are to have the right to “‘family allowances” and pensions.
This right which the Canadian people fought for is now being
threatened.

How long are the Canadian people going to tolerate giveaways
to the corporations and takeaways from themselves?

If the government is really looking for funds to protect and
create jobs it should start with the arms program. Cut it down and
use the funds for jobs instead of destruction. Use the resources of
ourcountry to put it on its feet and the unemployed back to work.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 8, 1982—Page 6

Something very strange and
terrifying has been happening
lately in Washington. American
strategic nuclear thinking has
gone from MAD to worse.

The doctrine of mutual assured
destruction (MAD) has main-
tained a delicate balance of terror
between the nuclear powers for
nearly 30 years. The basic tenet of
MAD has been that nuclear war-
fare is unthinkable, since any pos-
sible aggressor would be certain
to perish himself in the ensuing
holocaust.

It seems, however, that Ameri-
can nuclear policy-makers now
believe that MAD is “‘obsolete’’.
A 125-page Pentagon document
recently leaked to the New York
Times, and acknowledged by the
Reagan administration, reveals
that the U.S. is presently pre-
paring to fight and win a ‘‘pro-
tracted”’ nuclear conflict with the
USSR.

This radical new direction in
U.S. strategic policy represents a
triumph for a school of thought
which has long been-considered
to be the lunatic fringe of the
American military establishment.
Since they believe that nuclear
weapons can be used to good ef-
fect as a tool of U-S. foreign poli-
cy, these thinkers have been cal-
led ‘‘nuclear-use theorists’’ or,
appropriately, the NUTs.

Fred Weir

NUTs have been around for
quite awhile. One of the earliest

and most persistent spokesmen.

for an active nuclear weapons pol-
icy was Paul Nitze, a fixture of
every U.S. administration since
Truman, who wrote in 1956 that
“it is quite possible that in a gen-
eral nuclear war one side or the
other could win decisively.’’

With the coming of the Reagan
administration, the NUTs went
from opposition to establishment.
Among the top NUTs who have
joined up:

e The perennial Paul Nitze
heads the U.S. delegation at the
Medium-Range Nuclear Forces
negotiations going on in Geneva.
Critics have pointed out that put-
ting Nitze in charge of working
out an arms control agreement
with the Soviets is like ‘‘putting
the Pope in charge of abortion
rights.”

e The same could be said of the
current leader of the U.S. team at
the START talks, Eugene Ros-
tow, who is, ironically, the chief
of the official U.S. Arms Control
and Disarmament-Agency. He re-
cently shocked reporters when he
told them that “‘we are living in a

world’’.

’ @ Richard Pipes, a former pro”

fessor of 19th century Russia!
history, is today the Whilé
House’s top ‘‘Soviet expert '

Just before his appointment to the
National Security Council, Pip?

made headlines saying that “‘thé
Soviet leaders will have to choo*
between peacefully changifl
their Communist system, or goite
to war’’. i

e Samuel Huntington, anothe!
close Reagan adviser, fh”
suggested the ultimate NUT4Y
argument: “‘It is totally wr q
just erroneous, to think that a”
races inevitably lead to wats:
They don’t ... I maintain that a
nuclear arms race that the U-
and the Soviet Union have be@
engulfed in for the past 30 yeast
has acted as a substitute for wal *

These are a few of the peo
who have taken U.S. nuclear P?,
icy from MAD to NUTs. Wil?
them has come a new ami
build-up, a proliferation of new
and ingenious means of deliver¥?
nuclear weapons to their targe!
and the deadly belief that a “wi”
ner’’ might emerge from the ashes
of a nuclear holocaust. ,

pre-war and not a post-wil|