Apprentice troubles

[Andymacp]

I was offering £30 a day for a 6hr day.

Up here you can rent a room with bills included for £60 a week.

[agg221]

I was offering £30 a day for a 6hr day.

Up here you can rent a room with bills included for £60 a week.

 

How many days per week were you paying - was it a 5 or 6 day week and were there any days at college, if so did you pay them for these?

 

This makes a big difference - our apprentices are on 5 day working weeks but spend two days a week at college. If we paid £30/day but only for the days on our site they would be earning £90/wk so working from your figures they would have £30/wk to live on after rent. Food would be £35 so they are already in debt before they start, let alone travel or clothing. At the other end of the scale, fully paid at 6 days per week would be £180 which you could cover all costs with comfortably.

 

What do you reckon their travel costs would be - could you rent in a location where you could walk to your yard and to college, or would you expect them to get themselves to the job site - if so what range (could they cycle it or would a car be essential?) Where we are there is a site bus to and from the nearest large town, which is also where the college is. It costs a pound each way (3days/wk) so travel is around £300/yr. If you had to get the public bus the same distance it would be £3.50 each way so travel would be around £1000/yr. The difference between these obviously makes a huge difference when you are talking about living near the margins.

 

FWIW, we put our successful apprentices onto proper employment contract rates if they pass their second year. They can then reasonably expect promotion after around another 3yrs if they do a good job, which will give them a wage of around £100/day. They know this up front, which is a good incentive to stay. By this stage, they earn this for us anyway and employing someone equivalent would cost the same so it's reasonable. We look on it more that they have been trained to fit what we want than that they owe us. We have quite a good retention rate overall.

 

Alec

[Andymacp]

They get 5 days a week, picked up and dropped off at home. So no travel expense.

They go to college for 4 weeks each of the three years. For the course and assessments. All paid for including travel and accom.

After the first year the wage goes to £50 a day. After cs 39 is achieved its £70 a day.

 

Considering I worked for free for a year when I first started. I think it's not to bad.