apprentice wage

[robert robertson]

During a 3year apprenticeship do the wages go up annually ?

[Jim Brady]

Robert,As far as I'm aware a proper apprenticeship does have annual increments but a new job title "apprentice" has been brought out by unscrupulous employers and is used for a manner of jobs.Nothing todo with an apprenticeship but a way of ripping young people off with a fixed rate of £97.00pw no matter the age and time served.Just over £2.00 per hour.As I've said before on here my grandson was sent for a job Apprentice Warehouse Man it was a job for a young lad to hump items around .Another one Apprentice Cabinet Maker,now that sounds a good trade,It was assembling kitchen units in a factory,you know ,putting flat packs together, when is that a trade.Both jobs £97.00 per week no matter your age.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[j.sabourn]

At sea in the 50"s an apprentices wage was 75 pounds the first year Ninety pounds the second year 105 pounds the third year and 120 pounds the fourth year. Thirty pounds bonus on satisfactory completion of same. On their part the owners guaranteed to teach you the duties of a seaman. Forget all this crap about teaching you the duties of a deck officer, never happened. At the end of your indentures were tossed out on your ear and told to come back if/when you ever got a 2nd. Mates certificate. Proper apprentices ashore at the same period usually started at the bottom as a can boy if on the buildings, did a 4 year apprenticeship before being accepted as time served, probably the same as the ship yards. Nowadays do a 3 months course at some technical college and come out as a time served bricklayer/carpenter/joiner/plasterer. The engineering side is probably much longer however. Or if you want to sit in a higher college of learning for a few years will get a piece of paper which everybody apparently strives for, the subject of which may not be compatible with your chosen career, but will have the effect of proving you are educated because this piece of parchment says so, and who can argue with a piece of paper. Pleased however that at long last they are bringing apprenticeships back as will give the youngsters something to look forward to. I have my old Indentures hanging on the bulkhead to remind myself that I managed 4 years at sometimes appalling conditions and survived. Apprentices were also used as a source of cheap labour as a first year apprentice was classed as a JOS, a second year as an SOS and a 3rd and 4th year as an AB for the manning scale of the vessel. This gave the shipowner a lot more freedom of movement when desertions occurred in the likes of Australasia, and kept the vessel in line with the mandatory manning scales of the times. Any DBS seafarers the vessel then picked up were free labour so to speak, and whether took or not it was rare to see the vessel have to sail shorthanded on paper that is. Cheers John S

[john sutton]

Robert,As far as I'm aware a proper apprenticeship does have annual increments but a new job title "apprentice" has been brought out by unscrupulous employers and is used for a manner of jobs.Nothing todo with an apprenticeship but a way of ripping young people off with a fixed rate of £97.00pw no matter the age and time served.Just over £2.00 per hour.As I've said before on here my grandson was sent for a job Apprentice Warehouse Man it was a job for a young lad to hump items around .Another one Apprentice Cabinet Maker,now that sounds a good trade,It was assembling kitchen units in a factory,you know ,putting flat packs together, when is that a trade.Both jobs £97.00 per week no matter your age.
Regards.
Jim.B.

jim
we all worked for peanuts at some time in our lives.The thing is to stick at it until a better opportunity arises and then you have something to offer a potential employer.
If you have never had a job how does an employer know whether you have any interest in timekeeping or finishing a job once started.
The apprentice system that exsisted years ago was mainly destroyed by unions calling it cheap labour and nobody interested in taking a long term view.

[Keith Tindell]

All i can relate to Jim, is that i left school at 15, and the world was all new, you could have a go at almost anything. I feel really sorry for these youngsters leaving school now, its pretty sad, very little work of any meaning, and forget talk of marriage, buying houses etc. They must look at us old gits with envy. i hope there is some hope for them in the future, but i fear not KT

[Jim Brady]

Things are getting worse here with the surplus of labour maybe we did work for peanuts in the past it was wrong then and it is just as wrong now not to pay a decent wage to decent people who are prepared to give an honest days work.I was in the betting shop today,one girl on her own,despite the danger to the girl, single time pay for Sunday and she worked Boxing Day a Bank Holiday which always commanded at least double time once again single time an absolute disgrace.If you don't like it there are thousands of people out there to take your place.John S pointed out a person can go to college now for 6 months and come out with a trade,I know some that did just that and are better tradesmen that the 16 to 21 years apprentices.I did 18 months apprentice plumber before going to sea and the biggest thing I did was light the blowlamp,other than that I was a gopher,go for this go for that.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[Frederick Lacey]

When I left school in 1948 aged 15, I started work as an apprentice gardener in a parks dept,
the wage was £2-4-6d a week old money, then a year later I left and joined the MN earning
£3-0-0d a month, a quarter less but at east I had 3 meals a day thrown in.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! F.

[j.sabourn]

That is one of the differences re the uk and oz Jim. The girl might be also on her own but she would be getting paid the proper rates established by the union. That is why I say a union is necessary regardless of what people say to the contrary. The same conditions would appear here if some had their way. When I came out here in 91 an AB offshore was on 57,000 dollars a year regardless of what type of vessel he served on, and was one on and one off. As I had come straight from the UK and seen ABs on 18 pounds a day on some ships, it was a pleasant eye opener. The leave rate alone compared to the un unionised vessels in the uk where it could be as little as a day a week was also a pleasant surprise. Many mock the living conditions and pay rates of some in Australia, they seem to have survived despite the gloom and doom sayers. Despite losing the meat markets lost by the EU disaster Australia and New Zealand can survive quite easily in other markets and is others losses. At present exports from UK to Aust and NZ, HK, and the States is 33 percent, the true figure to Europe is 35 per cent and falling. If the people in the uk cant see the cost alone of staying in a costly and unnecessary so called equal partnership they are either still oblivious to it or just couldn't care less. I don't know what your percentage of people out of work is, think it is about 5 percent here, a lot of this though is self inflicted as people don't want to chase work or uproot and move, as seamen we were always doing this in any case, I have been ashore now 13 years now and still cant understand the shoreside mentality. Cheers John S

[j.sabourn]

#7 You were well paid Fred as an apprentice gardener. In 1952 I worked for a butcher and got 37 shillings a week. Cheers JS

[Frederick Lacey]

Made a bit of a fopar, MN should have read £7 a month not £3.