June 08, 2018

Stuck at the start: breaking the avocado toast myth

located:	United Kingdom
editor:	Shira Jeczmien

Exactly one year ago Australian real estate millionaire Tim Gurner made international headlines when he told 60 Minutes in Australia that young people should solve their financial woes by cutting down on excessively expensive avocado on toast and coffee. Gurner’s comment not only undermined an increasingly real challenge for young people to realise secure jobs, but it also tickled hypotheses that this generation was living a carelessly precarious life; out of their means and in a hand-to-mouth fashion. Not only did the mogul prompt criticism with his theory, but the U.K’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) revealed that the generational pay gap has in fact increased by over 50 percent in the last two decades.

The report released by the TUC, titled ‘Stuck at start: young people’s experiences of pay and progression’ is both a call to action on the lack of opportunities for young people to develop their skills at work while securing higher paid positions as well as an announcement of WorkSmart, a new app that will help young people outside of unions grapple with their employee rights and choices. General secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady said in a statement that “unions need to reach out to the young workers in workplaces where there isn’t a union. WorkSmart is a new way to get the benefits of trade unions to the young workers who need us most.”

As the TUC celebrates 150 years since its founding, the report comes to remind the country of the growing inequality it poses its generations of young workers. The report outlines that the growth that has occurred for young workers has been heavily concentrated in five major sectors – education, health and social care, hotels and hospitality, real estate, renting and business activities and wholesale and retail. “Many of these are low paid, and four out of five have seen the lowest real terms increase of median hourly pay over the past two decades. These sectors employ over three-fifths of 21 to 30 year olds in work." Such sectors also utilise increasingly common low paid roles, agency contracts and temporary work and the highly criticised zero-hours contracts.

What makes the pilot launch of WorkSmart noteworthy is its aim to learn directly from the workforce of young people of today and understand what a new era of employment needs in order to push past the generational pay gap – within the unions and outside of them. The app was developed from a YouGov poll of 1,500 young people between the ages of 21 to 30, which found that only three in 10 felt their current job related to their qualifications and experience, with a mere four out of 10 reporting that they had been given training over the course of the past 12 months.

Since launching the pilot app, over 1,000 young workers have signed up to its services, and it is currently expected to roll out in 2019. In order to nurture young people entering the workforce and to create a thriving economy, equal opportunities for work across generations must be a priority. The mounting numbers of young people in unchallenging, low-paid and precarious jobs is a testimony to a failed social structure that has let its young leaders down. This is not about careless spending nor avocado toast, this is about seizing the opportunity to create more jobs, to fight against zero-hour contracts, to modernise unions for the workforce of the future and to make sure more young people are given a chance to live a prosperous life in the work sectors.