» Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:47 am Well, not really. They're getting paid 50-odd quid a week for their jobseeker's allowance anyway, on top of whatever other benefits they might be getting. And anyway, most apprenticeships don't pay a lot (usually about 100 quid a week, if that, though for a 16 year old that's pretty handsome) but what people want nowadays is experience. More power to them I say.
Except it's not the employer's paying them, it's the state. So it's free labor for the company at the expense of the government. You bring up 16 year olds, while the whole scheme applies to even 22 year olds. 50-quid a week is way, way below the minimum wage of 1,085 Euros(about 929 quid)/month, so living on their own is out of the question.
In the very same article you have Tesco announcing 3.6bn in profits, yet they're able to use unpaid labor. How on earth can you say "more power to them"?
