International Youth Day 2021: Get Ready for the Future
Millions of people lost their jobs and found themselves facing the risk of long-term unemployment due to the exceptional crisis created by the pandemic. It is a well-known fact that this crisis had a severe impact on young people's employment (conditions and opportunities) as they could not go to schools to benefit from vocational education and training schemes. They also lost their apprenticeships and were the first ones to be fired from work. Meanwhile, many young people who managed to stay employed during the pandemic are working under inhumane conditions and have been reduced to exploited cheap labour.
Along with the initiatives and policies around establishing a greener economy to fight against climate change and the increased digitalisation in the world of work, we are witnessing an era of redesigning the occupations. Therefore, the world of work and image of various jobs are changing, and the capital expects generations of workers to upgrade themselves by acquiring new age soft and digital skills to meet the emerging demands.
On the other hand, amidst the pandemic, governments and employers began decreasing the funds on skills training programmes and cutting out the apprenticeship positions without considering the fact that they have to invest in skills training to allow workforce to skill themselves to meet the demands.
Under these circumstances, BWI's young members put forward an action call to demand policies developing, promoting and improving/redesigning vocational education and training programmes and quality apprenticeship systems to build back better while creating opportunities for young people to complete transition from school to work; and for all ages of workers to reskill themselves in order to enrol and/or re-enrol to labour market; and/or to upskill themselves to meet the demands of emerging jobs and sectors along with the design of greener and more digital labour market.
Thus, the BWI - Youth would like to mark the 2021 International Youth Day by calling on--
1. Governments to invest in developing, promoting and modernisation of vocational education and training and apprenticeship programmes and for consulting and collaborating with unions and employers for putting in place the quality and just schemes,
2. Unions to negotiate with employers and governments to ensure an inclusive and effective vocational education and training programmes shaped in line with the core needs of workers, decent work for apprentices and representation of apprentices at workplaces,
3. Employers to cooperate with unions and governments and investing in vocational education and training and apprenticeship programmes to enhance opportunities of on-job trainings to support the funding to create the high skilled workforce they need
Join us and "shout out" our slogan “Get Ready for the Future: Invest Now in Skills Training” to demand modernised, effective, and quality skills training and apprenticeships including internships, traineeships, and lifelong learning opportunities to create generations by equipping young and workers of all ages with the skills to adapt the fast-changing demands of labour market and to overcome future crises.
To show your support, BWI calls on its affiliates, partners, and young members to do the following:
Record a video message by "shouting out" your demands around the action theme.
If your union will organise an event to celebrate the day, take a group photo with our poster or a video where you can sing, dance and shout out your demands. Share them with us or post it on your social media with the hashtags #getreadyforthefuture #futureisnow #bwiyouthfortraining.
Take over our Instagram for one day from 9 to 12 August. Let our followers witness young workers’ ideas and demands around the action theme, and promote your actions and events on International Youth Day.
Share photographs of young workers at worksites and stories of students and workers at the vocational education and training and apprenticeships even after the youth day to enable BWI to share these on our website and social media platforms and create an archive for the future.
Please click here to download the action poster, Facebook cover poster and profile picture.