Today's blog post is an interview with We're Not Leaving, which is an Irish non-profit organization devoted to advocating for the needs of young people. In the wake of the global financial crisis and the collapse of the economy the Irish government implemented a structural adjustment program at the behest of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank. Young people were particularly hard hit by this austerity agenda and what occurred was nothing less than the strategic abandonment of an entire generation. This strategic abandonment of young people by the Irish government was characterized by cuts to education funding, cuts to welfare, and what amounts to forced emigration. The entirety of the situation amounts to an utter lack of any intergenerational equity and one of the most poignant examples of how neoliberalism is a failed political ideology.
There's a certain complicity from our Conservative government in the brutal treatment of Ireland's youths. In the wake of the global financial crisis the Canadian government liberalized immigration policy and has actively encouraged tens of thousands of Irish youths to emigrate to Canada. Jason Kenney, the former Minister of Immigration, even went to a job fair in Dublin and infamously appeared on the Late Late Show to promote Canada. This was a curious decision given that during this period the youth unemployment rate was very high and has the effect of further destabilizing Canada's youth labour market due to increased competition, wages being driven down, and employers preferring migrant workers. This move fit quite nicely in Stephen Harper's growing reliance to migrant labour to meet Canada's labour force needs. Irish youths made ideal workers as they were eager for jobs and wouldn't kick up a fuss about fair wages or workplace rights given that they had no real alternative at home. The Irish government wanted to jettison any responsibility to its young citizens and Harper was more than happy to oblige.
The interview below covers a range of issues, but generally focuses on the youth unemployment, precarious work, forced emigration, labour market policy, and intergenerational equity. The story of what happened in Ireland is compelling and should serve as a stark warning about the worst excesses of neoliberalism. I'm incredibly grateful for We're Not Leaving for taking the time to prepare in-depth responses to my questions.
Q: Can you explain what We're Not Leaving is and why the group was formed?
A: The (south of) Ireland's net emigration rate is the highest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) area. Higher than Greece, Spain, the Baltic states. Once again, Ireland is verging on being a dying country, a failed state. Why is this happening? Why is something so massive being let happen? We're Not Leaving is a youth campaign or project that seeks to provide a counter-narrative to the government line that this is just a random, rational choice on behalf of nearly one hundred thousand people per year. Clearly that is not an answer. Worse still, the only explanation is that emigration is the government strategy to reduce the social welfare bill in order to pay for the bank bailouts instead. In fact, they are creating push factors so strong, we see it as 'forced emigration' - such as €100.00 per week dole or welfare for people under twenty-six when rent alone in Dublin is typically €120.00 per week.
Q: Youth unemployment is hovering around twenty-four percent in Ireland. Can you briefly provide an overview of the current state of the Irish economy and what job prospects youths have?
A: Youth unemployment is catastrophic in Ireland. The figure has oscillated between thirty and forty percent for about five or six years now depending on the season. Underemployment is higher still. And this is *after* the forced emigration of nearly a quarter of a million young people. For scale - total unemployment at any given point is not far off half a million. The population of Ireland's third city, Galway, is roughly eighty-thousand people. For the latter half of 2012 there were twenty-six job vacancies for every one vacancy. In the latter half of 2013 that figure was twenty-eight and one-half for every one vacancy. The equivalent figure for Germany is 2.4 per job vacancy. Young people, the unemployed quite simply are not "lazy" as the government would say - the fact is there simply are no jobs. The economic collapse here has been of a jaw-dropping scale.
We are now at the point where big numbers are being pushed into increasingly mandatory workfare schemes - which help to juke the unemployment figures. It is estimated that close to ninety-thousand people are in these "labour activation" schemes at present, which are being massively expanded. They were unheard of before 2008.
Since 2009 there has been an embargo on hiring new public sector workers - thereby contributing to the massive downsizing of the state sector(already comparatively small). Naturally this hits young people hardest, people who graduate as teachers and so on find it very difficult to find work.Trainee nurses are expected to work their incredibly difficult job for a full year, for free as part of their training. Qualified teachers struggle to pick up more than a couple of hours per week if at all - it is approaching a situation where a substantial block of all working teachers are part-time or temporary. And yet, the work still needs to be done. So the state has hired thousands of Jobbridge workers itself to do this! Even to government ministries! Why pay someone €30,000.00 a year, when you can pay them €150.00 a week for the same work and sack them on a whim?
Q: Ireland was one of the hardest hit countries by the global financial crisis. In its wake a program of austerity was implemented. What has been been the impact of austerity agenda on youths?
A: I dealt a bit with the above. Aside from emigration, unemployment the imposition of austerity has led to a generally awful situation which does not get reported internationally. Which is incredibly frustrating and surprising! The rate of suicide in Ireland is now the fourth highest in Europe. It is the single biggest killer of young people, ahead of road accidents. The state budget dealing with youth homelessness has been cut by more than sixty-six percent since 2008 - despite the fact that the rate of youth homelessness doubled year-on-year in 2012. It appears to have increased by fifty percent again year-on-year into 2013 in Dublin at least. Homelessness used to be confined to the big city centres, now it is everywhere. A lot are these new young homeless people were still in their school uniforms when Lehman Brothers went under. One in ten people - with regional variations - suffer food poverty. One in ten children live in consistent poverty while now one in four people live in enforced economic deprivation. Ireland is one of the most unequal societies in the West, with massive levels of hidden poverty.
Q: Even if youths land a job these positions are increasingly part-time, low-paid, and insecure. Has precarious work become the new normal for youths in Ireland?
A: If young people have work it is typically low-paid, insecure or short-term. There has been a massive rolling back on what few labour rights Ireland has. Zero-hour contracts, weekly contracts are the norm. Knowing whether you have a job or not from week to week can often come down to a text message from the boss. There is no right to be represented by a trade union for collective bargaining in Ireland, one of the only countries in the OECD where this is the case. As a result Ireland has always been a low-pay, low-conditions economy - ow it is chronic. We never had a welfare state - if anything we have had a predatory state if you consider its alliance with the employers organisations and the Catholic Church. It has been said that Ireland was neoliberal decades before anyone came up with it!
Q: Are unpaid internships and other forms of un(der)paid labour (i.e. Jobbridge) a problem for Irish youths? Can you explain some of the labour market problems facing young workers?
A: Unpaid internships, Jobbridge and a whole spectrum of similar official exploitation schemes are a massive problem. Young people, even highly qualified ones - are told they need to work in extremely poor conditions quite often with no pay to gain experience, like a right of passage. People are reduced to competing for no-paying jobs - often work that pre-2008 was a secure full-time job. It's quite an experience then competing with others for non-paying work. But then, people cannot afford to work for free for long, rent has to be paid. Only people from wealthy backgrounds can afford to do this indefinitely - essentially making certain areas of work the preserve of the upper echelons.
Jobbridge is a workfare scheme. If you have been unemployed for a certain period, a few months, you can apply to work positions that used to be full-time jobs. If you do this you earn your welfare plus €50.00 - but the welfare was slashed by €50.00 in the last budget so there are some people have no opportunity but to take these positions. And these positions can be highly skilled, requiring PhDs and years of experience. They can also be "sandwich artists" for Subway.
The companies who use Jobbridge don't have to pay a cent for these workers, it is all incurred by the government. Therefore it directly destroys paid work. With the European Youth Guarantee this is being massively expanded and generalised - and the process itself is even being privatised. (The talk of a "job guarantee" in the USA is sounding alarm bells in our ears for that reason). Soon the likes of G4S will be paid a profit to find unemployed people and put them into Jobbridge positions, like a bounty hunter. If you refuse these positions, the Minister responsible (belonging to the *Labour* Party!) has stated you will be cut off from welfare. The result is a demolition of basic wage rates and working conditions across the entire economy. Jobbridge workers - who might be filling the work of what used to be union jobs - can't join trade unions. It is incredibly pernicious and dangerous.
Q: Jason Kenney, a senior Cabinet Minister, has travelled to Ireland to promote Canada as a destination for youths looking for jobs. What's the impact of countries like Canada, the United States, or Australia raiding Ireland's best and brightest?
A: We don't blame anyone who feels they have to go. We all have close family members who have already left. The push factors are so strong, it is effectively forced emigration. We are not against the idea of people moving across borders to or from Ireland if that is what people want. And for a section of those who leave, it is a choice and things work out alright for them. However, many who leave soon find themselves in financial trouble. We're starting to hear the old stories resurface of people falling into isolation, depression, debt, alcoholism. Maybe overstaying a visa because they can't afford the flight home and getting trapped in the black economy. There are still thousands of undocumented Irish around the world from the last wave of emigration in the 1980s! Rarer are reports of racism, negative stereotypes against Irish people - we know the pattern. These aspects of emigration are not talked about but they will increasingly come to dominate over the coming years. The government likes to portray it as a glamourous holiday, an opportunity to see the world. The mass and forced nature of it, the dominant aspects of it, is nothing short of a social catastrophe and a crime. In 2008, 2009 there wasn't much emigration because everywhere was in crisis. What happens when the Australian, Canadian bubbles burst and the government loses its "safety valve"?
Q: Since the global financial crisis began in 2008 over four hundred thousand people have left Ireland, which is staggeringly high number given that your total population is about four and a half million. Some commentators have recently suggested that the government is actively trying to get youths to emigrate rather than actually address the needs of the younger generations. Is this an accurate assessment of what's occurring?
A: That is exactly the situation. As stated above, this youth crisis and resulting forced emigration is government strategy. It feels a bit unreal to say, but can you imagine the equivalent proportion fleeing the US, Canada, the UK? It would nearly equate to Texas, almost Alberta or Scotland! Young people in Ireland are not organised in trade unions, they are not in political parties, very few engage with any aspect of the political process as, increasingly we are not welcome and it does not represent us. The government then makes a calculation that we are a soft target and they can unload a lot of cost of the banking crisis directly on us with minimal short-term repercussions to their organisations and the establishment.
It is the same strategy every government since the foundation of the state has pursued. We can say with confidence that if it ever stops, it will happen again before long unless there is radical change in Ireland. To quote Alexis Fitzgerald in the 1950s to the 'Commission on Emigration and Other Population Problems' - himself a prominent member of the present senior government party:
"I cannot accept…the view that a high rate of emigration is necessarily a sign of national decline or that policy should be over anxiously framed to reduce it…I believe there should be a more realistic appreciation of the advantages of emigration. High emigration, granted a population excess, releases social tensions which would otherwise explode and makes possible a stability of manners and customs which would otherwise be subject of radical change."
Plus ca change.
Q: Has the Irish government maintained any sort of intergenerational equity in their decision making or policies? If not, can you give a couple examples of unfair policies that disproportionately impact youths?
A: As mentioned above, the government made a youth-specific cut to welfare for the under 26s - reducing it in one go to a level that is simply impossible to live on by a long way. It doesn't get any clearer than that. University fees which were made free in the 1990s are now second only to the United Kingdom in Europe - approaching €3,000.00 per year. Apprenticeship fees are being introduced this year which also primarily affects young people. To be honest, after nine massive, loaded austerity budgets - it's hard to remember each and every cut. But life is unrecognisably different to what it was pre-2008 and it's getting worse, it's getting much harder. To be clear, every group - women, migrants, senior citizens, the working class at large are all under massive attack and we support all of these related struggles.
Q: What solutions, policies, or proposals are We're Not Leaving (or any other groups) putting forward to address the plight of Irish youths?
A: Over the final months of 2013, We're Not Leaving facilitated regional participative youth forums across the state which culminated in a national Young People's Assembly in November. At this Assembly, hundreds broke into groups and devised a youth charter across different topics which offered twenty demands. It can be found here. It is a starting point, produced collectively by young people themselves and evidence that young people are starting to get organised in Ireland.
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