Apprenticeships do seem like cheap labour to me.
I joined my company at full wages, full contract, no 'agency'. I had some experience, but not a huge amount and because of the nature of the work and regulations no one can do actually testing work (I work in a lab) until trained and signed off as competent anyway.
We have an Apprentice who basically is going through the same procedure as I did, with the added stress of doing NVQs and whatnot as well at the same time. He gets paid less than 2/3 of what I was earning 5 years ago when i started, thats about half my current wage.
It doesn't seem very fair to me and its not hard work, physically or mentally and its not something that requires years of experience.
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