Original article, by Hamish McLaren, via Socialist Appeal (UK):
2008 makes for a sad story, and in 2009, the working class will begin really paying for it. Some of the worst to be affected will be young unskilled workers; cleaners, shop-workers and caterers, like myself. Minimum wage workers at the best of times, we have, during the period of boom (which apparently was the last 10 years, although no one told us) eked out an existence, hovering from one place to the next for as long as moral holds out. Most I have worked with were young, often migrants, demoralised but unorganised and so usually without contracts of employment and subject to very poor working conditions.