THIS IS JUST CHEAP LABOUR

I NOTE with interest in this week’s Free Press in Jake Berry MP Rossendale column he is again voicing his support of the Apprenticeship scheme. He talks about this being a fantastic way to ‘earn as you learn’.

For this reason I wrote to Mr Berry towards the end of last year raising my concerns regarding this scheme. I informed him that my granddaughter had commenced on the scheme in August last year at a nursing home.

She indeed took advantage of being able to ‘earn whilst she learnt’ being paid £3.50 each hour, her contracted hours being six hours each day for four days and one day at college. All well and good you might say. She is being taught through experience and also able to attend college and getting paid. She was 18 years old when she started at the home.

However, the reason I raised my concerns is that after about four weeks into the scheme she was asked to work extra hours in a particular week as a member of staff was off work unwell. Not wanting to let the home be understaffed and wanting to make sure the residents received the best care, she readily agreed. After all she had a months experience by then in how to care for the sick and vulnerable!!!

This of course was not confined to just one week but became and still is a regular pattern of work for her now along with other apprentices employed at the home.

Of course both her parents and myself expected that as she was replacing a permanent member of the care team she would be paid at least the minimum rate for the job of around £6.50 per hour. Oh no, all she is paid for all the extra hours she works outside the apprenticeship hours is £3.50.

We advised her to ask her tutor at college if this was acceptable, not wanting to make a fuss in the nursing home and was told this was acceptable and legal, that the home could pay this low rate for any extra hours as long as my granddaughter agreed to work them.

She could refuse to work extra but of course never does as she knows she would leave the home short of staff. I have also contacted the Apprenticeship Scheme myself and they gave me the same reply.

I cannot see how this can be acceptable but I am sure this situation must be going on throughout the apprenticeship scheme all over the country.

In my opinion employers are being allowed to use these young people as cheap labour by paying an absolute pittance for a days work.

Eventually Mr Berry replied to my concerns on the December 9 last year and said he had raised my concerns with Nick Boles MP Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise and would contact me when he received a reply.

Despite my contacting Mr Berry twice since then I have received no reply.

Obviously, it appears the politicians who devise these schemes have absolutely no concern for what actually is happening to many of these young people but I do.

I wonder if any of your readers do also? Concerned grandmother Broadway Crescent Haslingden