03.30.10
Survey Reveals Students Often Work without Pay
A sizeable number of young workers have been asked to work as interns or trainee by companies without any wages and some of the employers have even asked the budding professionals to give money for helping them gain some work experience in their chosen fields, according to TUC.
Paul Sellers, speaking on behalf of TUC, said that although some employers are badly informed about the minimum wage laws, others choose not to abide by them and instead take advantage of misinformed students. This custom of not paying workers has now started taking place in the IT and engineering sectors, but it has been a common practice in the arts and media industry for some time now.
According to a survey done among 2,000 students, 16% of them admitted that they had worked without any form of compensation for their employers in the past year. Shockingly, 86% of these students also said that they were not aware that asking them to work for no pay was illegal on the employers’ part.
The Employment Law and Human Resources Handbook 2010, which is an offering of the Workspace Law, has a complete chapter set aside on internships, apprenticeships and work experience. It specifically deals with the legal duties of an employer towards the interns at his or her workplace.
In an employment tribunal published in November, it was declared that the employer has to compensate the services of a worker employed on an expenses-only basis with at least the minimum wage set by the country.
Workplace Law Training & Consulting is equipped to provide professionally accredited training in key areas of workplace law and practice - see NEBOSH e-learning - for information on their web-based training course accredited by the National Examination Board for Occupational Safety and Health (NEBOSH).
