You
announced that in order for your customers to reach an informed
decision about this issue, "you must ensure that you are able to get all the facts"; yet it is
these very facts which are missing from your blog. In this response I am being
careful not to be sidetracked by the various personal insults scattered
throughout your blog and tweets ("some thoughtless individual", "little Twitter
troll", customers being "disturbed" etc.), and to concentrate instead on
these facts, or rather omissions, which are highlighted below. I also ask a
series of questions about your use of apprenticeships, which your blog has conspicuously
failed to answer.
1.
Government funding
The first fact which is missing, and of which your customers might be unaware,
is that businesses participating in the apprenticeship scheme routinely receive
government grants. The question of how much state money you receive was
explicitly asked on Twitter and not replied to. The issue of government funding
was also raised in the leaflet handed out outside your shop, and the assertion has
not been challenged in your blog, so although you have not acknowledged this
fact, it is reasonable to believe that it is correct and that you do receive
government money. It seems that the amount awarded is
typically £1500 per apprentice.
Of
course, mentioning this funding in your blog would significantly weaken your
claim that an apprentice costs three times more to employ than a fully paid
worker, but we’ll come back to that.
In
the meantime, can you confirm that you receive government funding for
apprenticeships? And if so, how much is that funding?
(Incidentally,
your comment that if Bluebird was intent on abusing the scheme "we could very
easily have 100 apprentices now ... but we have only one" is rather
disingenuous, as the rules stipulate that small businesses can only claim government
funding for up to five apprenticeships. And soon you will have at least two.)
2.
‘Study hours’
It is also unfair to
compare an apprenticeship year to other jobs, it is more accurate to compare it
to university or college – where in fact, you have to pay to gain similar
skills and qualifications.
The wage is lower than ‘regular’
national minimum wage as it takes into consideration study hours that are on
paid working time, that go towards an NVQ qualification on completion of the
scheme.
The apprenticeship lists an employer, a 'wage' (£132 per week), working hours (40 per week), and
duties including the following:
- pack tea and fulfil customer orders.
- prepare products to be sent to our store and events.
- Dispatch all orders through various computer systems.
- Accept, check and store deliveries arriving to our warehouse.
- Assist in blending tea.
- Assist in managing stock and ensuring the warehouse can run efficiently.
Despite this, you claim that this apprenticeship isn't a job, and
you compare it instead with a university course. To resolve this confusion,
therefore, let us consider what these ‘study hours’ involve.
We
learn that the apprentice receives "workplace training sessions" from the boss (does
this count as 'studying'?) and "further development support and training" from
an NVQ trainer, again in the workplace. We know from the vacancy that the
resulting qualification is a "level 2 Warehousing and Storage NVQ"; but it is
not clear how this differs from a certificate to say that someone has worked in
a warehouse for a year and picked up certain skills in the process.
You
do not specify in the blog how many of the 40 hours a week of the
apprenticeship are spent 'studying', and you refused to answer a question about
this on Twitter, directing the person instead to your email address.
Another
detail curiously absent from the blog is that while the job and the employer are based in
Brighton, the training provider – Vision West Nottinghamshire College – is
located in Mansfield. One would think this worthy of at least a passing mention in
an article expounding the scholarly virtues of an apprenticeship. What exactly does
this arrangement entail, in the context of a 'packing apprenticeship'?
Is it distance learning? Warehousing seminars? Or is it, in fact, a checklist
of competencies and assessments indistinguishable from in-work training?
We
can also compare this emphasis on the importance of skills and qualifications
for warehouse packing with your current vacancy for a 'Packing Area Manager'. This
offers a "competitive salary" and states: "Don’t be put off - No previous
warehouse or logistics experience is necessary as full training is provided."
So much for a 'packing apprenticeship' being equivalent to a year’s
undergraduate study. At management level it turns out that none of these skills
or qualifications are prerequisites, as they can be taught on the job.
3.
Characterisation and eligibility of potential applicants
to give people, who
are otherwise struggling, a chance to learn key workplace skills and
experience.
Upon starting the
placement, an apprentices skill and experience levels can be very low or they
may have personal or medical issues that make it difficult to find employment
through the usual, unsupported route.
We are more relaxed to
start with with things like timekeeping, presentation and communication as we
understand they are all new skills to be learnt.
the candidates may have little or no
workplace experience at all which can be a huge drain on a businesses
resources.
The
portrayal of young people entering the labour market as uncommunicative, poorly
presented, incapable of punctuality and "a huge drain on a business’s
resources" is now a well established justification for paying these people
below the minimum wage or nothing at all. Of course, this argument goes,
school-leavers, even those who have been through a rigorous application and
interview process, can't be expected to just turn up at work on time and
perform the tasks assigned to them. Therefore they can't expect to be paid a
proper wage until a further period of 'training' or 'work experience' has been completed.
This
stigmatising narrative has been cooked up by government and
business in order to re-brand low-paid work as a form of education, and to
present it as a gift offered by the employer rather than an economic exchange, born
not out of commercial necessity but social beneficence. Because so many people
are chasing so few jobs, employers can get away with saying this with a
straight face. Applicants can't go elsewhere and have no option but to accept
it.
No
amount of PR waffle can disguise the fact that this is exploitation. People of
any age or level of experience travelling to a warehouse to pack and dispatch
goods from 9am to 5pm deserve to be fully paid for their work from day one.
If
there are applicants with genuine "personal or medical issues", since when did
employers have the right to accommodate them not by meeting their equal
opportunities obligations but by lowering wages?
Another
thing your blog fails to mention (although it is stated in the vacancy for the
position on a jobs website)
is that apprenticeships are not open to applicants who hold a degree qualification.
This means that graduates are excluded from this vacancy and therefore from the
chance of a fully paid job. Is this not also a form of discrimination?
With
its emphasis on people who are supposedly "struggling" and not work-ready, the
apprenticeship also excludes those who have the relevant experience, but just
need a job. Are these experienced workers also excluded from the prospect of a warehouse
job at Bluebird, or are they expected to simply exclude themselves by not
applying for the apprenticeship?
Regarding
this, you will remember that on Twitter you stated that if a person doesn’t
want to work for half the minimum wage for a year towards a certificate in
something they’ve already done, then "you don’t have to apply [smiley face]".
4.
Cost to the business
Again,
in terms of the supposed costs of training and the value of the skills
developed on this apprenticeship scheme, it must be emphasised that the occupation
we are discussing here is not nursing or plumbing, it is warehouse packing.
To
come to the boldest claim in your blog (and I admire its audacity, if nothing
else about it):
the costs to a business training and supporting an inexperienced and
under qualified team member in the workplace are very high.
To a small business like ours that cost is even higher, around triple
that of employing an experienced and fully trained team member.
I can see why on first glance it appear that we make money out of paying
someone £3.30 an hour – but it just isn’t the case.
Profit making is 100% not on the agenda as quite simply it doesn’t make
us any money.
You cannot even admit that the work of a warehouse packing 'apprentice'
makes money for your company. Bluebird is not an educational establishment or a
charity, it is a business. There is no shame in admitting this. There is
however, a great deal of shame involved in claiming the role of a college
campus or social service to avoid acknowledging the real reason you employ
workers and deny the real value of their work.
Are you perhaps confusing a passionate commitment to
improving lives above and beyond commercial interests with the routine business
practice of investing in new staff who inevitably become more productive over
time?
Are you seriously saying that the duties set out above are not profitable for the company unless
they are performed by "an experienced and fully trained team member"? (It is
revealing to note that even for a warehouse packing job an employer expects to
pay the adult minimum wage only to an already 'experienced' worker.)
And
are you really claiming that someone doing this work for £3.30 per hour costs
you more than a worker paid £6.70 an hour, even with the government subsidy you
receive for each apprentice?
The
individual journey of your ex-business administration apprentice - who apparently,
unlike most other people, managed to live on an apprentice wage and didn’t mind
being paid far less than her work was worth - is heart-warming. However, gushing testimonies from current employees, like your personal jibes towards me, are hardly objective, and distract
attention from the facts of the matter.
This
so-called 'packing apprenticeship' is an entry-level warehouse job, which
until a few years ago would have been fully paid. Now the cost of gaining on-the-job
experience has been transferred from the employer to the employee, and this has
been passed off as an apprenticeship "qualification".
As
for the experience of an apprenticeship providing a substitute currency which
is supposedly "just as valuable (if not more) to a team member as money", this can be easily disproved. Experience,
no matter how fulfilling or enjoyable, is not accepted in lieu of cash by
any landlord or supermarket, nor as far as I know by any of your own shops. This
economy of experience is therefore somewhat one-way, as the parents and
partners of 'apprentices' working full-time for £150 a week will no doubt
attest.
Your
indignation at criticisms of your involvement in this scheme is
sharpened by your image of Bluebird as an ethical company; but being ethical is
not just about being friendly or donating to charities, it is also about the
terms under which you employ people. If Bluebird wishes to set a positive
example to other employers and to its staff and customers, you will have the
decency to pay your 'apprentice' workers a full wage and withdraw from this
exploitative scheme, rather than be its "success story".
