Can you believe this?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/25/pret-a-manger-looks-to-uks-teenagers-to-tackle-looming-staff-crisis

Sandwich chain to offer unpaid work experience to 500 young people to head off recruitment challenge posed by Brexit

 

Apparently not too many people impressed so now they are agreeing to pay them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/25/pret-criticised-offering-teenagers-sandwiches-exchange-work/

After online anger, Pret A Manger has scrapped plans to offer sandwiches to teenagers in exchange for their time on an unpaid internship.

 

The chief executive of the sandwich chain has been forced to promise to pay interns after members of the public threatened to boycott the sandwich chain.

 

Pret is said to be on the cusp of a staffing crisis, as just one in 50 of job applicants to the sandwich chain is British. If foreign workers avoid the country because of Brexit, or choose to return home, Pret could find itself short of staff.

 

 

We dont know what is going to happen with Brexit and in any case, as I understand it - youngsters have to stay on at school/ college until they are 18 years old now.

All employees whether they are British or European are supposed to be paid the new living wage. It is wrong to say that British youngsters dont want to work, they simply want to be paid a living wage.

It's not the way to endear yourself to the British workforce, is it, CB/

HB

could it be that the story was put out to just be a scare about the effects of brexit? Not at all unlike the output of Countryfile on the BBC. Yesterday it was the CAP and farming subsidies. They glossed over the fact that golf courses and my cousin's back garden attract a EU subsidy just for existing rather than growing crops.

[Pret] pointed out that the placements "are to give participants experience of what it's like working in the industry".

Well, the "offer" certainly does offer an insight in to the industry. Young people being taken advantage of with little reward for the work done. Scraps of food for a days work harks back to the feudal era when the serfs fought over crumbs from the lord's table.

Can I clarify on Citizenb's comment that the national living wage varies due to the age.

I think the national living wage for school leavers is woeful but I guess that is because the government wants to encourage them to stay in education.