Olympics - will 2012 fail our young people?

Written by Dee Doocey and published in SocietyGuardian.co.uk on Fri 23rd Mar 2007

Canning Town Job Centre has been open an hour, and is already doing a brisk trade. A steady trickle of punters drifts in under the watchful eye of the security guards at the door to sign on or check out the jobs on offer, while determinedly upbeat staff hawk advice and training courses to anyone who'll listen. At the touch of a button, purple computers print details of the latest vacancies on strips of shiny paper.

Tucked away in an unprepossessing corner of Newham, the centre is one of the places where the promised Olympics job boom should be making itself felt. Canary Wharf is just two miles away, but Canning Town is a world away from the ostentatious wealth and two comma bonuses of its neighbour. Here, in a hugely diverse community where 100 languages are spoken, one in ten people have never worked, up to a quarter claim income support, and average household income is the lowest in Newham.

Given these circumstances, it is worrying that our investigation shows there is a real risk that the 12,000 jobs created in the Olympic Park area on the back of the Games will pass Canning Town jobseekers by. The reasons? Largely it is down to a lack of focus and clarity, duplication of resources and poor communication by the London Development Agency, who have made big commitments to the people of five host boroughs about the benefits the Olympics will bring.

London's bid promised to transform the life chances of people living in deprived communities around the Olympic Park. Unless that promise is delivered, the Games will have cheated the people it has the greatest responsibility to benefit.

It is true that despite the soaring rhetoric of London 2012 and its employment legacy, the jobs in Canning Town Job Centre are irredeemably those of last resort: cleaning operatives, pest control technicians, weekends required, will require marketing calling, must be experienced in pressing jackets and coats.

And if one comes along that sounds too good to be true, it invariably is. How many people got excited at the prospect of raking in 45,000 a year in Canary Wharf before realising they would be sitting at home cold-selling a product that is too dull or dodgy to mention in the ad?

People in Canning Town seem unconvinced that the Games will change the reality of employment in the area very much.

Abdi Omer, 35, is a qualified youth worker who has been unemployed for four

months. He says nine out of ten job adverts at Canning Town are placed by

agencies who receive government funding to fill up their books with CVs, even though the job might be non-existent. They take your details, say they'll contact you and never do, he says. It's a trick.

Jobs will be created by the Olympics, says Mr Omer, but few in Newham will be qualified to apply for them. Not enough is being done to skill up local people. Most of the jobs will go out of the area, to other parts of London or outside, he says.

That fear is shared by out of work carpenter Paul Bartle, 45, who says lessons must be learned from the development of Canary Wharf and the surrounding Docklands. This time round only companies that agree to employ a certain percentage of local labour should be awarded the lucrative construction contracts, says Mr Bartle. At the time of the Docklands, a lot of the work went to people outside London, or up north. It didn't clear out the dole offices round here.

Basic training, linked to the Olympics volunteering programme, is the key to getting local people into jobs. People in deprived communities around the Games must be given the training that will secure them a place on the heavily oversubscribed Pre-Volunteer programme run by the London Development Agency. This is the first step towards gaining a vital toe-hold in the job market.

At the moment, nine out of ten volunteers at the Games could be well-educated people from middle class communities around the UK and beyond. Instead, these volunteer places should be used to get someone who may never have worked to sign up for a training course, and from there, get themselves into a job.

Training must also address the language problems faced by many job hunters in the host boroughs. According to government figures, 15 percent of people from ethnic minorities cite language as a barrier to work. Our report suggests a language academy based in East London would not only equip people with the skills they need in the workplace, but remain as a resource for the host boroughs after the Games have left town.

After the athletes and tourists have gone home, and the debris of one of the greatest sporting spectaculars the capital has ever hosted is cleared away, it will not be the medal count that matters. It will be the jobs and opportunities the Games brought to the people of east London that will continue to sustain them for generations to come.

London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games: The employment and skills legacy is available at http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly

Dee Doocey AM is Chair of the London Assembly Economic Development, Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee, which today published its report into the employment and skills legacy of the London 2012 Games.