Work Shy Graduates? Graduate bashing is the new fashion trend it seems....
Posted: Tuesday, March 15, 2011
by Robin Whitlock
http://robinwhitlock.blogspot.com/
According to the website graduatefog Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef, recently described young people as 'work shy' and 'embarrassingly wet' being 'reliant on their mums to make excuses for them'. I had to pinch myself a bit, as this didn't sound like the Jamie Oliver I've seen on the television, but only after, consumed with rage, I pressed the 'follow' button on his Twitter page and then promptly wrote a tweet myself asking him to pull his head out of his arse.
Let's take my own experience. I'm a 44-year old graduate. I have extensive administrative work experience going back years before I entered university (although I do confess to around 5 or 6 years spent on the dole protesting about climate change and other such stuff). I ran my own gardening business in Glastonbury for around 4 years and when that failed, despite working ten hour days, seven days a week at peak season, I went to university and earned myself a BA (Hons) degree in Psychology & English. I am not the kind of person who lazes around, I have a profound love of getting on with stuff, especially when I consider that there is some vital work to be done - which of course there is, lots of it considering the state that the entire planet is in at the moment. Despite that, my degree has done very little for me, so far. Over the past few years since graduation in 2008 I have sent off hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands of applications, most to no avail. In short, I cannot begin to describe how incredibly tough it is out there for graduates. In the end, I decided to become a freelance writer and administrator, which is what I am doing presently. That too is incredibly tough, but at least its better than claiming benefit.
Jamie may have been talking about school leavers, but there are many others up and down the land who appear to consider graduates in the same light. Many of them, from what I can see from graduatefog are the types who have so little moral fibre that they delight in enslaving us as interns in their companies, no or very little pay, hard work, bleak prospects, if any at prospects at all that is. It's no wonder that Tanya at graduatefog is actively working against this growing tendency among employers to viciously exploit the young and the unemployed. Quite simply it is an outrage.
Meanwhile, apparently, a story written by Sascha Olofson published in the ES section of the London Evening Standard and also featured in the graduatefog article capitalises on Jamie's remarks. It has this to say on the subject:
The young unemployed have had a bad press. One in five of Generation Zero, the 18-24-year-old age group, who is not in education or training, is out of work. Even those who are learning skills are often studying worthless qualifications according to a new report – with as many as 400,000 students a year, roughly a third, on dead-end courses which will add little or nothing to their future careers.
And when they do find work, they are “work-shy” according to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who recently accused young people of being “embarrassingly wet” and “reliant on their mums to make excuses for them.”
These words triggered an instant survey via YouGov which found that 62 per cent of the nation agrees with him that “young people in Britain today are not prepared to work hard.”
So what are the options for young people looking for work, if they want to avoid being labelled as lazy?
I'm sorry Sascha but thats about as helpful as a paper bag is to an alcoholic wandering around in a brewery, particularly when you go on to do nothing else but quote the usual garbage about how to improve your CV and keep off the dole.
Tanya goes on to list the various ways in which Olofson attempts to help: volunteering (unpaid), internships (promoted by the recruitment Inspiring Interns who apparently charge £500 for their services in supplying interns who are paid diddly squat), apprenticeships (open to non-graduates only) etc etc ad nauseum.
Its all rot, but it seems that 'graduate bashing' is becoming the latest fashion trend. Witness this piece from Kate Spicer in the Sunday Times
"officially, the noble unpaid workie or intern is a mascot for our sad times: the ambitious, stoical “lost generation” child slave fighting for a foothold in an impoverished jobs market…"
It's not just Tanya who's sore about this, the author of the blog A Literal Girl also fires from the hip on this subject:
"I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't think my generation had been royally but unintentionally fucked by all the preschool teachers and therapists and family friends and graduation speakers who told us, unequivocally, that we could be anything we wanted when we grew up"
Here's the link if you want to read more of this: http://www.aliteralgirl.com/2011/03/sunday-rant-all-the-worlds-an-episode-of-big-brother/comment-page-1/#comment-603
It's all very well bosses slamming graduates who appear to feel a 'sense of entitlement' to good jobs, but if good jobs isn't the main objective when studying for a degree, what on earth did most of us graduates go to university for in the first place?
Graduate bashing is sick, vicious and cruel and it's got to stop. We earned a degree so that we could have the opportunity to work hard and earn a decent salary, not so that we could end up as subjects of a vicious blood sport enslaved in the offices of depraved corporations earning a pittance and being laughed at by wealthy, non-graduate colleagues.
Graduates from 2008 onwards have been veritably kicked up the backside, but one day very shortly, we're going to start kicking back.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)If you want to get away with mistreating someone, demonise them and invite the onlookers to join in the kicking. Doesn't really matter who your victim is ... and naturally you'll never pick on a victim that's strong enough to fight back.
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