Do you want to discuss boring politics? (108 Viewers)
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skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
Imagine if Diane Abbot...
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
The apprenticeships scheme is an absolute scam IMO. Subsidises firms to employ staff on less than minimum wage on the promise of non-existent jobs when the apprenticeship ends. My company now has about 50% of its client facing staff from this scheme, they've replaced full time, salaried positions. There's no training plan for them, they just have to google stuff and try and work it out for themselves. While they are nice enough people they have zero clue how to do the job so their work flows up the chain to my team.
The cost of their education is paid to the FE college by the tax payer, a middleman company is paid by the taxpayer to run the apprenticeship schemes and their wages are also subsidised by the taxpayer. Who is benefitting from this?
At least in the industry I work in, and I suspect others are the same, it has reduced the number of people employed in actual jobs and has helped to suppress wages.
BBC said:
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Yeah we’re about to hire one instead of a real employee because they’re cheap basically.
SBAndy
Well-Known Member
Interesting you say that, and I’ve heard similar criticisms over the last few years. Just thinking logically, could it be reformed so that companies have to pay up the wages and then get a grant once the employee is signed up to a full-time contract? Could it be that apprenticeship contracts could carry more employment weight than standard contracts to ensure employees are not immediately got rid of? I don’t know enough about employment law but surely there’s ways around this type of thing if there’s the will to.
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
Don't see any reason you couldn't do what you suggest. There's already different terms for apprentices so thats not the issue.
Whats minimum wage now, £8 something, apprentices are on £4.15 plus you get a grant (£1,000?) per apprentice. From what I've seen the system is designed to get people off the jobless figures and funnel taxpayer money into companies who manage apprenticeships.
Of course if you had to guarantee a job at the end the number of companies taking on apprentices would crash.
SBAndy
Well-Known Member
Absolutely get that take-up would drop significantly, but is the point of the apprenticeship scheme not that you may get benefit of a skilled employee part-funded by the UKG? If they decide to move on then so be it, but you’ve paid next to fuck all for them in the first instance.
There may be something obvious I’m disregarding and if so, apologies. I know the bare minimum about this stuff.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
The minimum wage is £4.20 an hour
Also how on earth can you ensure there is a job in 2 years?
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
Think the youngest apprentice we've had was 18, the two who started last week (to replace two full time salaried employees who have left) are both in their 30s so paying £4.30 an hour, before any subsidy, is a lot cheaper than employing someone on at least £8.91 an hour although if you told a recruiter the salary for those jobs was £18K you'd be told you have zero chance of recruiting anyone.
You can't that's the point. People are recruited into the scheme on the promise of a job at the end that doesn't exist.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
If the apprentice lasts into the second year you then have to pay the minimum wage do you not relating to that persons age?
You don’t have to make any commitment about a job in the future - many drop out of their own volition
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
Not sure what you're trying to argue here to be honest. My original point was full time salaried staff being replaced by apprentices who aren't up to the job to save the company money. A one year apprentice at under £9K a year is far less than employing someone in a salaried position of £25K plus. Even if you employed someone on minimum wage, which as I said you wouldn't be able to recruit at that rate, it would still be over £17K so any way you look at it the apprenticeship is the cheap option.
That's exactly the point. These types of apprenticeships are pushed as having a job at the end of them, that job doesn't exist and as you say there is nothing to say the employer has to make any commitment to employ even a single person that passes through the scheme.
The result is half the client facing workforce are apprentices, the company saves a decent chunk of change and those of us who do know what we're doing get more and more work piled on resulting in ever increasing hours in roles that don't get TOIL or overtime. Less trickle down, more flow up.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Well it wasn’t your original point. You said they are paid under £5 an hour well below minimum wage.
Not true if they are 16 - 18 and not true by year 2 of the apprenticeship
You do have some due diligence with the supplying college and they’d raise flags if as you suggest a company is rotating its main workforce every other year by first ditching the prior intake and shipping in new. Given they have to attend college days if the company is downgrading jobs to a minimum wage why would they bother and instead just take minimum wage contractors or employees on a sub 2 year deal And have them there 5 days a week?
What level 3 course are they actually studying and where?
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
Ahhh. The return of cash for honours.
www.businessinsider.com
Boris well on his way to being the Tories Tony Blair. By the time he leaves office he’ll be as despised as Blair. You heard it here first.
A disgraced Lord gave the Conservatives £500,000 days after his peerage was forced through by Boris Johnson
A businessman involved in a cash-for-access scandal has donated more than £500,000 to the Conservative party after being made a peer by Boris Johnson.
www.businessinsider.com
Philosoraptor
Well-Known Member
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Deleted member 4439
Guest
Things did get better though. The best government we've had in my sixty years. Admittedly the bar's been low, on both Tory and Labour sides. But for me, it was the best government.
Wow, it turns out some Tories do have a conscience and a heart !
amp.theguardian.com
Boris Johnson risks shock defeat over ‘devastating’ foreign aid cuts | Politics | The Guardian
Commons revolt led by former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell includes senior Tories and ex-ministers
...though Priti Patel certainly doesn't
Napier Barracks: Housing migrants at barracks unlawful, court rules
Six asylum seekers said Napier Barracks was "unsafe" and dormitory use caused a Covid-19 outbreak.
www.bbc.co.uk
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Wow, it turns out some Tories do have a conscience and a heart !
Boris Johnson risks shock defeat over ‘devastating’ foreign aid cuts | Politics | The Guardian
Commons revolt led by former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell includes senior Tories and ex-ministers
They’ll be up against the wall in the next Johnson purge.
Evo1883
Well-Known Member
...though Priti Patel certainly doesn't
Napier Barracks: Housing migrants at barracks unlawful, court rules
Six asylum seekers said Napier Barracks was "unsafe" and dormitory use caused a Covid-19 outbreak.www.bbc.co.uk
I've stayed in barracks like these a few times whilst training in the forces
. worst thing about them is the separate showers away from the dorms .
I would never call living in them as a temporary solution as inhumane though , the judge however doesn't agree with me on that .
I don't have any idea if the Barracks has everything in working order either and I have no idea wether they are following the rules of maximum beds per dorm .
It is a difficult situation for any sitting government though, where do they go ?
We have them occupying the Coventry Hill as an example, which by the way needs a massive lick of paint .
We have housing waiting lists of years and years .
It is a difficult situation in all fairness
I'll put a price in for that after the fumigation has been done and don't mean that detrimentally to the inhabitants , it's just required more and more these days with the transient nature of tenants moving in out and on,next.
Philosoraptor
Well-Known Member
I thought showing the song with the video snippets of the Iraq war instead was in a bit of bad taste, even for this place.
I will say we need a desperate change in how this country is run. The setup with the current parties just isn't working.
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
It's in no sense an apprenticeship then, is it? It's a temp trainee.
The govt and previous ones have tied themselves in knots making commitments to arbitrary numbers of apprentices, employers don't really want them.
Back when I worked for the LSC / SFA there were spiv training providers claiming for non employed apprentices. It's a racket.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
But if people wanted that why not employ under the kick start scheme? Appreciates have study time assigned and even for level 2 it’s likely to me two days a week so you are employing someone to work 3 days and funding the rest
D
Deleted member 4439
Guest
I think part of the reason for the Employers Levy was to try combat both of those concerns, i.e. encouraging employers to engage whilst curbing the shocking misuse of public funds that occurred during the likes of Train to Gain.
But an even bigger problem is that the customer interest isn't there - going to uni is a far more attractive option.
Going back a few years ago, the mood music coming from Whitehall was that the Govt wanted to see a very significant reduction in those going to university vs. training, not least due to the cost of funding the university sector, yet I don't really see evidence of real change.
The problem possibly rests on having to put more money in now to make apprenticeships more attractive to both employers and apprentices, before transitioning the budget away from university funding. Change has to happen - by far the biggest channel for funding the sector is the effective subsiding of uni places through unpaid loans. That's currently running at over £9bn pa, and by 2025 is expected to be £22m, or four times higher than the cost when the Tories last came into office. The other problem is that having a right to a university seduction is very popular across the classes, and it's almost become a given like the NHS.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Why we don’t just steal the German model for vocational and call it a day I’ll never understand. There’s this weird thing in this country about making vocational education “rigorous” which means making it as academic as humanly possible. So you end up with a bunch of shit box ticking and not much actual useful on the job training.
The Marconi apprenticeship I did at 16 is worlds away from the L3 Data apprenticeship I just finished writing a skills map for.
D
Deleted member 4439
Guest
I should note that I'm quite sure most won't want a right to education seduction, though they might want a right to a decent spell checker.
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
Why does the simple concept of supply and demand not relate to jobs? Makes me annoyed when I see articles on skills shortages like the one today on the BBC site.
If there's such a shortage of people how come salaries have barely moved since 2010? Even if my salary had just risen in line with inflation since then I'd be £9K a year better off. Been hearing for years there's an IT shortage but the same crap wages are still offered with ever decreasing benefits.
On the rare occasion that we try to replace someone who has left with someone that knows what they're doing we end up with a vacant position for months and a string of candidates who aren't up to the job. And you have management complaining they can't find anyone who is suitable.
If there's such a shortage of people how come salaries have barely moved since 2010? Even if my salary had just risen in line with inflation since then I'd be £9K a year better off. Been hearing for years there's an IT shortage but the same crap wages are still offered with ever decreasing benefits.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Id have quite liked a right to university seduction, I was terribly discriminated against in that area
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
I started my first job in IT straight out of uni in 2003 on £3k/yr more than the lad who just joined my department did (I have no say in salary). Somethings seriously wrong there.
And as we’re talking about apprenticeships, I was paid significantly more in 1997 to do mine than we’re paying the apprentice we’re looking to hire as well.
Yes absolutely.
I was supposed to be in Spain for a wedding next week. Booked a hotel with free cancellation and the flights were only £70. I can move the flights to other dates so either I'll just go later in the year (not to the wedding though obviously) or I'll just lose the £70 which is annoying but not the end of the world.
Anyone booking stuff and then moaning that they are losing out is just stupid
skybluetony176
Well-Known Member
Tory voters not paying attention to the details. Who could have seen that coming?