apprenticeship rip off

ukmartian

My daughter's boyfriend (27) is on a apprenticeship £500 month to learn lorry and forklift driving. he has been there for nearly 3 months and his hours should be 8am till 4:30 pm. To date he has had NO training of any kind ie practical or theory and has been confined to doing menial tasks iE emptying containers sorting rubbish ,cleaning ect ..his hours are not as agreed and he has regualy had to work up to 12 hrs a day , when he queried this hours he was told he would get them in lieu and to date has worked about 100 un-paid hours .but when asked for time off they have deducted it from his holiday .. He is extremely hard working but he is now considering his options....Is this company breaking any rules and if so what can he do about it , it seems they are just using people as cheap labour ...
PS The appenticeship is for 2 years and a colleage who is there with him on the same course has had NO training even after 18 months
Thanks

Alice_Walker

A real apprenticeship has a formal training element. Is he starting a course this month, does he have an external course/ training coordinator?

ukmartian

he has been given no training curriculum he has no external course or college course ..it seems to me they are taking people with the promise of training , paying them £2.50 a hour to be a dogsbody until they get fed up and leave ....

agrinnall

I've got to say that it sounds to me like your suspicion may be correct. There is a process for complaining about an apprenticeship, but note that the business has to be running a formal scheme.

https://www.gov.uk/complainfurthereducationapprenticeship

bugslet

The guy that has been there 18 months would be ringing alarm bells.

There's nothing wrong with doing the grunt work for a few weeks, it's good to learn everything that needs to be done and it sounds as if your D's boyfriend appreciates that.

However, right from the start I would expect a structured programme that said something about a month doing the idiot work, go on a forklift course, maybe a safe loading course from a driving perspective as well, maybe some time in the office. Drivers never understand the office, it's good to have an understanding. Then one day a week with the regular drivers, then after 6 months start your truck driving training. If they run vans as well, I'd be chucking him in that for a while.

So I'd be asking them for the training programme. I hate those kind of rip off apprenticeships. There are decent offers around, it might be time to look at alternatives.

phill99

There are many good employers who genuinely train their apprenticeships and develop them as effective employees. There are however a number of unscrupulous employers who see apprentices as the modern YTS or YOPS (which I'm sure many if you will remember).

ukmartian

his hours where stated 8 till 4:30 ..they are getting him working 6 to 6 12 hours .a say 60 hrs a week .he is scared they will chuck him out if he complains ..if he leaves without a job he will not get benefits ...surely there are guidlines for firms that take on apprentice ...

andygb

Many employers nowadays, are using the so called "apprenticeship" scheme simply to employ cheap workers and then get rid of them, in order to take on the next lot.
At the age of 27, folks should be expected to work for the "living wage" at least.
This country is an absolute disgrace.

bugslet

ukmartian wrote: »

his hours where stated 8 till 4:30 ..they are getting him working 6 to 6 12 hours .a say 60 hrs a week .he is scared they will chuck him out if he complains ..if he leaves without a job he will not get benefits ...surely there are guidlines for firms that take on apprentice ...

Is that in a written contract or was it verbal? If it's the latter then it's their word against his.

paddyrg

He should talk to the job centre - what he has isn't an apprenticeship, and they don't get to call it an apprenticeship without the training component. He'd be better off finding a new job, so being kicked out is no great hardship, especially if he discusses it with job centre first.

Forklift, I got my "licence" privately in 2 days for a few hundred quid, including formal classroom time, a lot of on-equipment training, small group, mini-warehouse with awkward loads and courses to negotiate, some elementary warehousing instruction and background, and registration on the national database, safety training, the lot. 2 days, not 2 years. They weren't even long days (although I had to catch the first bus!). I did mine in Frome, there are centres across the country. He could work flipping burgers for a month, have more of a social life, and still start save up enough money to take private tuition.

bugslet

Mine took less than a day - but that might have been a few years before you took yours. Probably helped that I'd been loading groupage trailers for about 5 years at that point without a license:o