Monday 28 September 2009

Crewe Works Apprentices Visit Labour Party Conference

“We’re very proud of our apprentices”, said David Williams Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Crewe and Nantwich, “I want to see more local businesses investing in apprenticeship training.”

Speaking at Labour Party Annual Conference in Brighton David Williams continued, “An apprenticeship is one of the best ways to start your working life. I was a Rolls Royce apprentice in Crewe and I want to see many more young people have the same opportunities that I did.”

Chris Steele and Rob King both made the trip down to Brighton at the invitation of David Williams. They had a brief meeting with the Prime Minister and then met Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper, before going on the conference stage for a debate on jobs and training. Rob and Chris are both electrical engineering apprentices, in their second year, at Bombardier in Crewe.

David Williams concluded, “We cannot afford to lose another generation to unemployment or jobs without training. Many of my school friends left school in the 1980s recession and went straight on the dole. The only provision for them was YTS, a dead-end scheme with no training, prospects or hope.

“That is totally wrong and we must make sure the current generation of school leavers are looked after. So I was really pleased that the Government introduced the September Guarantee, ensuring that all this year’s school leavers had a place in an apprenticeship, sixth-form or further education college. It’s a historic commitment that no previous government has ever made.”

Pictured (left-right): Chris Steele, David Williams, Yvette Cooper, Rob King.

1 comment:

Anthony Lloyd said...

As a person made redundant after 37 years at Crewe site of Bombardier I fail to see the government stance in protecting jobs at Bombardier Crewe, where the workforce has halved in 12 months this will surely have an impact on future apprentice recruitment, I fear that engineering skills will be lost forever in this part of the UK in the very near future unless new orders do not come the way of Bombardier what ever happended to the ethos of keeping jobs in this country which was strongly promoted by the late great MP Gwynneyh Dunwoody