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Young people only work because they need some cash for a new iPod. So forget about raising the minimum wage. It’s not like 20-somethings are raising a family. And forget about health care reform, too. People who want health coverage have it. Young workers don’t have health coverage because they don’t want it. You know, they think they’re invincible.

If you’re a young worker, you’ve probably heard those lines more than once. And especially if you’re a young worker, you know how false they are.

We had a few young workers here at the AFL-CIO this week to talk about what it’s really like to be age 35 and younger and trying to get by. They joined us for the release of our new report: "Young Workers: A Lost Decade."

Like one-third of the workers surveyed, Nate Scherer, 31, lives at home with his parents because he and his wife can’t afford to be on their own. His brother and his brother’s partner live there, too. He spoke at a press conference here.

After getting married my wife and I decided to move in with my parents to pay off our bills. We could afford to live on our own but we’d never be able to get out of debt. We have school loans to pay off, too. We’d like to have children, but we just can’t manage the expense of it right now…so we’re putting it off till we’re in a better place. My [work] position is on the edge, and I feel like if my company were to cut back, my position would be one of the first to go.

This bears repeating: One-third of workers younger than age 35 live at home with their parents.

Peter D. Hart Research Associates conducted the polling for this report in July 2009 for the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America. We did a similar report 10 years ago, which enables us to see how bad the deterioration has been in the economic situation of this group. Here are some of the findings:

  • 31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don’t have coverage because they can’t afford it or their employer does not offer it.
  • Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent cannot even pay their monthly bills.
  • A third cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
  • 37 percent have put off education or professional development because they can’t afford it.
  • When asked who is most responsible for the country’s economic woes, close to 50 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall Street and banks or corporate CEOs. And young workers say greed by corporations and CEOs is the factor most to blame for the current financial downturn.
  • By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the president.
  • Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there’s not an election going on.
  • The majority of young workers and nearly 70 percent of first-time voters are confident that Obama will take the country in the right direction.

Over at Jobs with Justice, Maria Escobar writes that young people and the labor movement need each other. Escobar is a recent graduate of Florida State University and current National Coordinator for the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), which every year holds a student week of action on behalf of workers. This spring, hundreds of students in 28 states and the District of Columbia took part in rallies, community service days, petition drives, educational forums and other public events to promote workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain and to mobilize for a fair economy. The students are members of SLAP, United Students Against Sweatshops and the United States Student Association.

The work that unions have done with SLAP has only had a positive impact on union campaigns. Over the last 10 years that Jobs with Justice has been tracking their work with students, JwJ has found that union organizing and bargaining campaigns which involve students are 10 percent more likely to end in victories than campaigns which do not.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who is running for AFL-CIO president without announced opposition at our Convention this month, is making union outreach to young people a top priority. He said one of the report’s conclusions is especially striking:

Young people want to be involved but they’re rarely asked. Their priorities are even more progressive than the priorities of the older generation of working people, yet they aren’t engaged by co-workers or friends to get involved in the economic debate.

Currently, 18-to-35-year-olds make up a quarter of union membership. And at the AFL-CIO Convention, we will ask Convention delegates to approve plans for broad recruitment of young workers, as well as plans for training and leadership of young workers who are currently union members. And that’s just the beginning of a broad push towards talking and mobilizing young workers in the coming months and years.

According to the report, more than half of young workers say employees are more successful getting problems resolved as a group rather than as individuals, and employees who have a union are better off than employees in similar jobs who do not.

Here’s hope for the future.

Our full report is here.

Related posts:

  1. Without Jobs, the Nation’s Future Circles the Drain
  2. Who are Union Members? New Study Shows “The Changing Face of Labor”
  3. Findlay, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce Kills Parade Because Unions Backed It
  4. Jobs Don’t Live Here Anymore
  5. AFL-CIO President Trumka: Union-Blue Dog Relationship Changing, Filibustering Health Care Un-American