"I'm a freelance runner in Soho. I'm on 3.20 an hour minus my travel expenses. I really enjoy it, but the stuff they make me do - I empty the bin and make tea constantly. It's slave labour. I'm 17 and they know that, that's why they employ me because if I was older I'd have more power." Momtaz Begum Hossain, 17, and her peers know they can become vulnerable when they enter the workplace, yet since the late 1980s, the proportion of young people in unions has halved.
According to Delwar Hussain, 18, you don't have to look far to find out why. He says, "The image of trade unions is that they're full of crusty old men, socialists in brown coats and moustaches smoking pipes. I think they're losing a lot of peoples' interest because they're not targeting young people. They're not making it sound cool enough to join."
Clency Lebrasse, 18, also detects the need for a touch of re-imaging: "My interpretation of a trade union has been that it is some kind of militant group that is ready to strike, ready to bring the country into anarchy at the drop of a hat. I think that's why they've had a lot of their power reduced since the 70s."
But the barriers to young people's involvement are not simply cosmetic. They vary from serious doubts about the unions' effectiveness in the current economic, political and cultural environment, to a lack of knowledge and suspicion.
"People don't want to come together in unions and complain about their conditions because it might mean they might get laid off," says Sharon O'Dea, 18. "In the past people had better job security so they felt they could stand up for their rights. Now you're grateful for a job as long as you've got semi-decent working conditions."
This has certainly been Delwar's experience. He says, "A large percentage of people where I work are students. There are so many things we don't like. If we had the opportunity to join a union we could do something about them, but we can't. We just have to moan to each other. We can't even moan to the managers because we'd get fired."
Even if young people's fears were allayed, Sharon suggests they would feel uncomfortable with the collective action most commonly associated with unionism. "In the 60s, people were really into that kind of stuff, they were all into it. They didn't care about getting in trouble, they were just so into being together and supporting each other," she says. "These days people are much more assertive and they can't be bothered."
When Momtaz tried to organise her fellow students in support of their teachers' strike, she found this out the hard way. "I tried so hard with that strike," she says. "I tried everything but people just don't give you support. They say they care, but they don't actually want to do anything about it. I went round the college and they were just standing there. They weren't in lessons, they had no work - they just couldn't be bothered. I think it's all to do with the culture of what Britain is like."
While a minority of young people do, as Momtaz puts it, "want to be part of a community feeling", they won't necessarily turn to the established unions as their vehicle of choice. Sinead Kirwan, 13, wants to believe in the unions but is already disillusioned with them: "In the 60s and 70s, people lost their jobs and the union would go on strike for them. But recently, with the Liverpool dockers' dispute, all these people were going hungry and they couldn't buy their children Christmas presents. Over 500 people were sacked, but the union wouldn't support them so in the end they had to give up."
She admits, "The unions aren't that good because they have stopped sticking up for people." Delwar's is a similar assessment: "I'm a socialist so I agree with what trade unions do. They do protect workers, but recently I don't know if they've been doing that." Another commented, "A lot of it is such propaganda. They don't do half the things they say they're going to do."
Part of the problem may be that most young people lack a detailed picture of the support they can offer. Ruth Sewell, 13, admits, "I knowabsolutely nothing about trade unions except for something I saw on TV.
When young people do have access to information, it can seem muddled and off-putting. Momtaz says, "When I went to the TUC festival there was a trade union tent. There were like a million trade unions and they were all coming up to you and saying, 'join me, join me, join me!'. It was too confusing. I think there are far too many and I don't understand why you're supposed to join. You've got to pay and I don't get that bit."
Clearly unions have much modernising to do if they aren't to age and whither and it might be tempting to think they could never overcome so many hurdles. However, despite the ambivalence felt towards their own relationship with the unions, young people do support unionism and respect its aims - and don't appreciate attacks from other quarters. "You need to stop the government. They slag off unions so much, like they're some kind of evil. The government prefers to stick up for employers' rights because they give them more money," says Sinead.
"I blame the media," says Sharon. "If you pick up some newspapers, you see the bad strikes that happen. You never ever see any of the positive strike actions reported. They're not going to report the peaceful bit where people are sticking up for what they believe in."
Instead, they would like to see practical improvements, for example Clency recommends a more consumer-friendly approach. He says, "You have to have younger people going round to talk to us, people who are like the workers so they're more in tune with them. It would also be a funky kind of idea if you were to join a union like taking out car insurance. If you don't make a lot of trouble for them during the year, you get a no-claims bonus."
About the team
This discussion was led by editor Clency Lebrasse,18, with editors Delwar Hussian, 18, Momtaz Begum Hossain, 17, and Sharon O'Dea, 18, with reporters Ruth Sewell, 13, and Sinead Kirwan, 13. It was published in the New Statesman.
