Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall
Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall
Survey by DWP finds almost half of people on benefits say they cannot work
I am really fucking tired of soundbite politics, of people saying a thing to rally their voters without any nuance at all. I know why it happens and I know that it's always happened, but I wish it wouldn't.
Of course young people find a day's work stressful. Entry level jobs are almost always shit. You go from the easy(ish) life of full time education, into a world where adults belittle you while giving you tasks that they don't want to do. For this you're paid a minimum wage that's impossible to live on if you're under 21, and damn near impossible if you're over 21. You suddenly have to pay bills, and have to choose between having a social life and being functional.
While all of this is happening, you escape into social media where you see people your age apparently making bank just by fucking about online. So you spend your time daydreaming and resentful that you have to go to a place you don't want to be at an hour you're not used to.
And despite your efforts, condescending shitheads like Liz fucking Kendall are there to tell you that your feelings on the matter aren't valid.
So yeah, I'd say it's stressful.
Most age groups find a days work stressful.
Young people are just the first generation to be unashamed to admit it.
In part because we grew up with to many rancid arse holes like Liz Kendal expressing her toxic crap.
Millenials complained about it a lot, to the point where millennial is short hand for "lazy" for a lot of older generations.
Gen X made films mocking company culture and shitty work environments.
The youth today aren't the first to complain, they aren't the first to be called lazy, and they won't be the last. Fuck the older folks who call any of them lazy.
Many young people find toiling senselessly in a dystopian hellscape without hope nor future 'stressful', says I.
I think the harder question about the NEET crisis in the UK is that the world of entry level jobs or those available to people with little experience is that they are borderline unbearable. They pay badly and in some cases are humiliating/degrading to do (especially if you interact with the general public). I'm never going to forget wiping cum off the walls of a TK Maxx changing room with blue roll during my student summer job there.
When you wake up early, start a long commute, work in a shit job (often with unpredictable hours), have an unpaid lunch break, work some more in your understaffed company, then start the long commute back home to your parents house because you can't afford a place of your own, then yeah, I can imagine that's stressful.
And it gets more so when you open social media or news and it's always the privileged or the elderly (often they're even one and the same) constantly shaming youth for being horrible lazy pieces of shit who won't lift themselves up by their bootstraps.
The increase in minimum wage is a great thing. As is the incoming increase in workers rights. I won't sit and pretend Labour are doing nothing. But more needs to be done if you want a mentally healthy workforce.
Just saying "too many find XYZ stressful" without detailing how you plan to change that isn't helping.
I want workers to earn more, but can you really regulate the economy into being better like this?
The cost of living is insane, but the relative pay per hour of a worker competed to anywhere in Europe is already pretty high. Our current minimum wage is 25% higher than Germany, 28% higher than France, 81% for Spain, and 318% compared to somewhere lile the Czech Republic. Our economy is already stalled out, It's already prohibitively expensive to run a company in the UK, and I don't think making employees cost more will stimulate the economy.
Also if minimum wage rises aggressively then I think all that will happen is we'll get a wage spiral upwards and companies will hire fewer and fewer peoeple. We saw a bit of this as we were coming out of covid as a reaction to inflation at the time. The concern is if wages do inflate quicjly, then that drivea prices higher, which results in people demanding higher wages, ect.
Tackling the actual living costs, housing, utility, food, I think that's the only way to go about this. Anything like a minimum wage increase just rolls the snowball down the road, and it will 100% be bigger when you reach it again.
You're putting decent wages, companies health, economy growth and inflation as only one of them can win. Boohoo, the choice should be easy, it's human well being first.
These things are not even opposed to each other. It's been proved time and over time again that wages rising stimulate the economy because when poor people have more income it doesn't go to savings, they buy more stuff.
Our minimum wage is indeed fairly high, and the taxes that low earners pay is very low, but we do have problems. Wage compression in this country isn't particularly good. Most people are either minimum wage or close to it.
Even a lot of highly skilled jobs aren't highly paid, it's a problem for the economy, for tax revenue, and for encouraging workers to go for better jobs/strive for progression. I don't know what the government can do about it, but the answer certainly isn't to pin it on young people and imply they're lazy.
But one thing the government can definitely impact is what you mention at the end of your comment: government policy can certainly help bring down the big costs like property costs (both for people and businesses), energy, water, council tax.
I don’t know the career of this particular woman but a politician ragging on the work ethic of anyone is hilarious.
What statistic is she basing this on, any or just her feelings? Just go work at a grocery store? Maybe she should ask these “managers” who’s she’s basing this opinion on what their turn around on employees is, what their wages and guaranteed hours are. The opinion of managers on the work ethic of anyone means less than shit to me having met at least one manager in my life and having worked retail/hospo before.
Pretty easy to advocate for “young” people to go work shitkicker jobs in retail and hospo when you sit at a desk in air con all day for a living. I know if I lost my current career I sure as fuck won’t go back.
Now come on you can't you say that she's clearly gone through the same working experience as the young people she's talking about . Like our recent tory candidate she prob had to do her work experience in Westminster, intern at Westminster, junior at Westminster,
Exactly, I know the type because I’m related to similar. Looks down on such work, would never do such work but everyone else is lazy because they won’t do it. Classic.
I'm not young and yeah, working 8 hours (or more) straight is not fun. Boring tasks, incompetent (and arrogant) people to deal with, never ending stuff piled on you.
Gen z is more than right to not put up with the stuff that a lot of people has gone through
I'm over 30 and I still find work stressful every day
I’m 38 and it wasn’t always like this.
There’s a woman in our office who has been promoted and seems desperate to make people who are under hers life hell. Fortunately I’m nothing to do with her but I still get a fair few snide comments.
“Ban work before it kills you!”
What’s with the agism? Old geezers like me find a day’s work incredibly stressful!
The problem with 'cracking down' on benefits is identical with the problem of 'cracking down' on immigration. These things are just not real problems and the people who think they are problems are flat wrong. You can't do anything about unreal problems, because the people who believe in the fake problems just don't believe in reality.
So Liz Kendall thinks its odd that in a country where there are no jobs for life anymore, no real job security at all, zero-hour contracts and the bullshit of the 'gig economy' are rife, minimum wage is far below what the ever increasing cost of living can afford to pay for, where contracts (where they exist at all) can be redrawn at a moments notice to suit the whim of the employer and where the right to take strike action is pretty much gone has led to a stressed out, exhausted work-force? Or a reluctance to join it?
And then, couple that with the wait times now measured in years to access NHS mental health support and which largely constitutes being offered 4 hours of generic counseling and/or being told to download a fucking app she wonders whats going on and why so many people are so mentally unwell?
Meanwhile MP's get subsidised food, booze, accommodation costs and vote themselves a pay rise every time its raised in parliament.
You're taking the fucking piss Liz.
"no one wants to work anymore"
Equals:
The pay is not up to scratch.
"they had to understand that that was the world of work, that was just the nature of life and that isn’t stress or pressure”
Should we try to improve society? No! Life is pain! Get back in the bucket with the rest of the crabs where you belong!
Gen Z are lazy and don't want to work.
Millennials are lazy and don't want to work.
Gen X are lazy and don't want to work.
Boomers are lazy and don't want to work.
Only one of these groups were hippies and were work shy, as a generation. 🤷
Just off the headline;
Ya think?!