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According to focus groups conducted by trade unions, young people are most likely to seek advice on employment issues from their parents, friends and colleagues, line managers, and HR advisors. The young people in the focus group said they were more likely to "google it" if they had a problem than to ask a trade union.The news gets even more depressing for trade unions when the young focus group participants were asked what would encourage them to join up: "You get a discount at Pizza Hut and Top Man. That's the only reason any of my friends have done it," said a student from Sheffield in a report by Unions 21.So if young people do not identify themselves as "workers" locked into a class war, what can trade unions—or whatever campaigning vehicle—do to make work suck less?For those young people who generally hate their job—and that includes many of the disproportionate numbers of young people stuck in low paid service sector jobs such as hospitality, catering, cleaning, and retail—the answer is not to call for "full employment" and "jobs for life," but rather to call for less work for the same pay. If unions want to appeal to young people and help them adapt work to an increasingly automated future, they need to start calling for "fully automated luxury communism." Or perhaps, if we are feeling a little less utopian, just a reduction in working hours.Read on Motherboard: Amazon's 24/7 Hell Is the Future of Work
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