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If he is 21 it is illegal for for you to pay him £2.80/hr no matter what you call his job title.
 
Flat out wrong mate, sorry. The college advised me this rate was legal for year 1 apprentices. HMRC website also lists this rate for year 1 apprentices irrespective of age.
 
Absolutely not wrong and i don't care what some college advised you.
Even burger king take on so called apprentices straight from school on more than that.
If he has any sense he will be off the first chance he gets.
Promises of what may or may not materialise in the future don't feed the kids or pay the bills.
Just shows how far this trade has fallen.
 
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Sorry Tamz, Croft is correct in his first year of apprenticeship. Not in 2nd or following years.

Here is the quote from .gov.uk

[h=2]Pay and right to minimum wage[/h] Apprentices are paid from the first day of their apprenticeship and they’re entitled to the National Minimum Wage.
The current minimum wage rate for an apprentice is £2.68 per hour. This rate applies to apprentices aged 16 to 18 and those aged 19 or over who are in their first year.

My emphasis added.

Might be different in scotland.
 
I think this is the first time I have ever known tamz to be wrong, its a sad day.
 
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HM Revenue & Customs: The national minimum wage

Tamz, whilst we may have our different opinions on the worth of year 1 apprentices, you have overstepped the mark by implying my business is employing someone illegally. If you are going to imply this against someone I would suggest it's prudent to read the relevant regulations first.

Apparently i am mistaken and you are acting within the letter of the law. I apologise if i offended you.

How you run your business is up to you.
 
Difficult one this. Adds to the many reasons why i dont have an apprentice.

A spotty 16 year old then i would have no qualms about paying as little as i could get away with.

A 21 year old with a kid who has served in the armed forces? Hmmmm.

It brings in legal and moral connatations. Its business after all. But!

I will stay on the fence on this one.
 
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I might just slip off the fence here, but......

The world is full of half wits who cant get there nose out of a mobile phone and it seems rare to be able to get hold of a grafter that wants to get on.

Would anybody want to loose that for a few quid an hour?



Damn. I was determined to stay on the fence. Must be the beer.
 
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I would take a different view of this.

Firstly, there are lots of moral and social aspects of being an employer, but the lifechoices of your employees form no part of them. Whether the employee has a kid has no impact on what value he/she brings to the organisation.

Employee: "Hey boss, I need a payrise"

Boss: "Why is that?"

Employee: "Because my missus is expecting"

Boss: "I never touched her..."

In terms of age, we have a simple policy. If someone is doing a man's job, then he deserves a man's wage, and we have had 17yr olds on full adult money. If he's making a fair effort, but we are having to make allowances for youth ("he's only a kid...") then its fair to pay less money. People mature at very different rates.

There is absolutely no doubt that most employees are more trouble and expense than they are worth on day 1. At some point they pass from being a liability to being an asset. Where that point comes depends on the attitude, skills and experience of the employee, the nature of the job, and the training investment made by the employer. In the case of apprentices, that timescale can be months or even years.

If its fair to ask an employer to take a long term view, and make an investment, why is it wrong to ask an employee to do the same thing? No one held a gun to Keiran's employees head.

I think the only obligation on Keiran is to obey the law and honour his promises about the future.

We have made a business decision to set our entry level pay at around £1 per hour more than NMW. But that isn't a moral decision - its a business decision, because we don't want to be recruiting at the bottom of the pool.

The moral decisions come later, after the employee has been with you for a while.
 
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I think it depends on the individual. I took the decision to move from site work to house bashing at the end of the second year of my apprenticeship. I still had two years to go of my apprenticeship but realised site work wasn't for me. I had a few job offers but took the one with a one man band. This was the lowest pay on offer, but I thought in the long term it would benefit me the most. I am happy with the decision I made as I learnt a lot. If the apprentice is happy to take the money and learn from a good guy then everyone is happy.
 
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Apparently i am mistaken and you are acting within the letter of the law. I apologise if i offended you.

How you run your business is up to you.
Honesty and integrity ....brave man to hold up his hands when admitting he may be wrong.Croft must do what he deems to be right and fair as he who pays the piper calls the tune......mucho mutual respecto to you both regards Turnpin
 
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Right what erm says, dont pay them well and they will steal to make their wage up, even taking few fittings a day soon fills a bucket up! Also taking bit of scrap adds up whereas if you pay them decent they will hand it in
 
Don't pay them enough and the steal or take the pizazz

Right what erm says, dont pay them well and they will steal to make their wage up,

Over the years I have caught plenty of theives. There doesn't seem to be any correlation between pay levels and stealing - in fact if anything its our higher paid employees that are more likely to steal (although that may be because they have more opportunity).

A thief is a thief. Give him a £million and he will still be a theif.
 

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