Minimum wage + apprenticeships?

[ste_bla]

Misses was looking to do a hairdressing apprenticeship and they said that its;

£5.52 per hour @ 48 hours p/w
Minus £700 per month for GNVQ/Training

So it works out at £~350 a month. Now I thought that an apprenticeship meant free training or is that wrong?

 

[Fergie]

You can only get free training when you are under 21 afaik. And £350 a month is actually not far off what a hairdressing aprentice would earn anyway when they start. Minimum for an aprentice under 19 is £80 a week!

 

[VTR]

Ring the minimum wage helpline for advice. My mate in work rang them and then ended up with £4k back pay along with a load of other I.T trainees in the council. They had been paying them £90 a week for a few years but apparently you can only stay on £90 a week for a year if your over a certain age and then you are entitled to the full minimum wage as you would be in a full time job. The council had been under paying tainees for years but only recently when one of the boys looked it up did they realise!