Why do I feel I have been here before?

I am listening to a father telling me about his 22-year-old son. The father is unemployed, a professional man with accountancy skills, who has himself become a statistical casualty in the economic hard times of the Palestinians today. But he wants to tell me about his eldest son.

It isn’t that he hasn’t any skills. He did well in the educational system and came out with qualifications in the computer field. But a degree or a certificate by no means guarantees a job in a town where unemployment is over 60%, according to various sources. He makes call after call to try to find a job. And then a prospective employer explains that in his office equipment business he could use someone who has acquired the necessary skills. If he came to work as a volunteer then, after a time of “training,” a job could be there. He gives it his best shot. Of course there is no wage, but neither is there any help with travelling expenses or for food during the working day. He asks his father for shekels out of the family’s very limited budget. The months pass – eight months to be precise – and there is no sign of a job, so, feeling exploited, he leaves. He tries again, and surprise, surprise, it is a repeat story.

After a spell at home, he finds a “trainee job” with a firm installing satellite TV – this time with a payment of 300 shekels a month (about £40). Some of the time he is working on the satellite TVs, but alongside this he is the general dogsbody who washes the boss’s car and suchlike. At the end of four months there is no suggestion that he will ever move out of the “training” role.

In desperation he tries a change of direction and goes for a manual job in the construction industry. He is told the pay is 70 shekels a day. When it comes to the first pay packet it is just 50 shekels a day. Then he has a job with a central heating firm, at a starting rate of 600 shekels a month. When the pay packet appears there are some mysterious deductions, and the result is 500 shekels.

His father says that this is slavery. The young man feels powerless, helpless, useless, trapped – and depressed. And why do I feel that I have been here before? I remember when I was in Gateshead in the recession of the 80s. There were so many “training” jobs in hairdressing that the whole population would have been able to have had three hair appointments a day had they wanted them. And I think of the way that it suggested to the young YTS girl that if she came in to the salon voluntarily on a Saturday there could well be job for her. She worked Saturday after Saturday till eight o’clock at night and, needless to say, there was no job at the finish.

Slavery was abolished by the British Parliament in 1834. Maybe it is harder to abolish exploitation – which, after all, can be another form of slavery. Bad politics often open the way for greedy and unscrupulous people to take advantage of those who are vulnerable.

Just a reminder – one of my tasks here is to record the abuse of human rights.