DS wants to turn down job

[MrsCD67]

DS(18) has managed to secure an apprenticeship with an insurance company which will pay him around £4.50 an hour.
He will have to work at least 40 hours a week up to around 44 in some weeks.
My son thinks that this is absurd and he no longer wants this job as the pay is low and the hours are long.
I've told him he should still go for it as the hours are fairly standard and it'd be good experience.
Does anyone else think that 40+ hours a week is quite a lot for an unqualified apprentice?

What training will they provide and what qualifications will he gain (in addition to the experience)? Is it a large company with an apprenticeship scheme or just a one off for them to get cheap help?It does seem long hours, and does the min. wage not cover apprenticeships?

It depends on him. My DD is looking at apprenticeships and the working hours are similar, when you add in time spent in College.

If he doesn't want to do it, there's no point in forcing him, he will end up leaving. Working in Insurance is soul destroying.

Has he got alternatives?

"and does the min. wage not cover apprenticeships", no it doesn't.

Will they put him through college/uni etc too?

The hours seem pretty standard to me, but yes the salary is dire. That said it may be better to take it and have a spring board while he looks for something else. Then again it’s insurance and that would destroy the hardest of people so maybe give him a pass...

Working full time if you haven't before feels like a lot (and full time IME is usually 35-37.5 hours pw).

The minimum apprentice rate in the UK is £3.70 www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates

For an apprenticeship the pay isn't bad. But the lower pay is meant to be balanced by the training, mentorship and opportunities he will receive. Some companies have used apprenticeships for cheap labour, basically, but sometimes they can be fantastic opportunities. Where would the company expect him to be in 3 years' time?

He will be getting a qualification out of it through a college although all his time will be spent in the office as he won't actually go to the college in person. They will send him work to complete and 20% of his time in the office will be allocated to completing this work. With the pay and hours he'll have to do, he's worried he'll just be there for cheap labour

When I did my apprenticeship I got £45 per week for 40 hours- that was 20 years ago mind. Low pay is pretty standard for Apprenticeships, the experience you gain is much more valuable.

Does your ds have a long term plan that this job would / wouldn't help him achieve?

And what would he consider acceptable pay/hours? Are his expectations realistic?

How marketable is the qualification? To what extent does the working time contribute to the qualification? What skills will he develop from the work?

Some companies are making older (more expensive) employees redundant and hiring loads of apprentices instead. Babcock is a prime example!

It really depends on whether it's actually a valuable qualification that can help him progress- or an apprenticeship in name only that's really just cheap labour with a worthless 'qualification' bolted on. If it's the latter, I'd be advising him not to take it, especially given you can get paid significantly more for working in Tesco.

As pp said upthread, what are his alternatives?

If he doesn't want to do it because he hates the idea of working in insurance, then that's fair enough. If he finds the idea of working 40 hours per week at anything unacceptable, then he's probably got a bit of a surprise coming.

So really, it's a 32 hour working week for 5.25/hour on the assumption he also spends 8 hours a week studying.

If the qualification at the end will lead to a decent salary bump/career progression, and he knows other people have gone down this route before, it doesn't sound so terrible. However if it's an 'apprenticeship' in name which just lets them get an ever-rotating array of cheap labour in, that's different.

I think key qs are, what's happened to previous people through the scheme? And what are options outside the company once he's qualified?

I think his concern lies more with the hours he'll be expected to work rather than low pay. With it being an apprenticeship, his expectation of wage was set quite low. If he was expected to work 30/35 hours I don't think he'd be so against the job

He's working 40 hours but 8 are to do uni work. If he went to Uni he wouldn't get paid to go so not only are they paying for it, they're paying him to do it.
He can turn it down, go get a minimum pay jon, do Uni on the side with loads of debt and then he can feel like a valued member of MacDonalds or whichever equivalent jin he can hold down whilst he gets through Uni

@MrsCD67 with all kindness, your son needs to get real. Where doe she think he should start in his lifelong working career? We all do the gruntwork at the start, it's how we learn and move on and up.

He needs to realise the value of (a) having full time work/structure/ethic; (b) the qualifications, skill and expertise he'll gain; (c) what working life is like and how to interact with superiors, get promotions, work in teams and alone, complete projects and meet deadlines, have interviews etc. All of that has immense worth in and of itself! It's not all just turn up and collect a few quid for nowt.

he asked at the interview about previous apprentices and they said the first ended up leaving as she got offered a good job in the city for a salary that they couldn't match and the second apprentice was sacked after 3 months!

What is he training to do?

Those hours are very long. I know what it's like to employ young people and have to train them up - you don't always get a lot back. But, I don't see any need for such long hours.

I think if this was an industry which he loved, the low salary wouldn't be a problem (I've worked for free before), but those hours sound like a piss take. I think I would support him in finding something else.

How odd, I'm literally looking today at hiring an apprentice for my company. I thought it'd be a way to get totally fresh eyes in the business, I didn't realise they had such a bad name!

OP those numbers are exactly what I have been told, not massively lower or higher, and as PPs have said, minimum 20% of the time is the education and for the benefit of the individual, not the company. So in reality it's a nearly full-time job with a part time education.

Considering I was down £30k for my education to end up in the exact same situation as someone who could have been up £6k to end up in the exact same place makes me think it's a pretty awesome investment.

That said, insurance to me sounds like the most boring thing on the planet, so maybe it's best he finds something he's really interested in instead :)

I think the hours are acceptable as is the wage for an apprentice IF they WANT the qualification and to work in the field.

Very few 18 year olds are dying to be insurance agents. Plus I think he’d be better off working full time for ‘proper pay’ and getting his qualification in his own time with insurance. It’s not the same as learning a trade.

What would he LIKE to do?

He will get a pay rise once he completes the first year as he will then be 19. An apprentice 19 or over is entitled to NMW in the second year of the apprenticeship. NMW is currently £5.90 for that age group.

A lot of companies use this sort of 'apprenticeship' as a source of cheap labour, so the idea that people should be grateful for any kind of employment is a bullshit one. If he isn't that keen on the qualification at the end of it, or if the qualification is useless, then fair play to him for not wanting to work 'hard' but pointlessly for very little money.