The Guild of Mute Assasins

Im raging.

Im still looking to secure a traineeship. My fall back plan was to offer to complete the traineeship on an unpad basis, not ideal but better than not getting one.

But noooo, on 27th april 2012 the law society of scotland decided to protect graduates from exploitation by announcing that they wont ratify training contracts falling below their new minimum wage guidelines. There are no traineeships out there !

People working unpaid are volunteering to do it and the firms accepting the offers wont be able to afford to hire trainees under the new minimum wage rules...Thanks for protecting out interests.

Surely it would have made more sense to implement rules that make it easier to find jobs, or help those working unpaid. Perhaps regulations that state that if you are employing an unpaid trainee then you cannot hire additional staff on a paid basis without first having to pay your existing trainee a wage. That way they help people get into the industry and stop firms from exploiting graduates at the same time.

BAH.

That sucks for you man and I really sincerely hope you find something but I dont disagree with the societies decision. I see unpaid aprentice/trainee/internships as nothing more than exploitation and a furtherence of privalge for those who come from families that can support them whilst they do it. Which when it comes to law/lawyers and politics and politicians (not to mention accountants and archietechs, oh wait I did) is essentially what has happened for years...

big hairy baws

Corm wrote:That sucks for you man and I really sincerely hope you find something but I dont disagree with the societies decision. I see unpaid aprentice/trainee/internships as nothing more than exploitation and a furtherence of privalge for those who come from families that can support them whilst they do it. Which when it comes to law/lawyers and politics and politicians (not to mention accountants and archietechs, oh wait I did) is essentially what has happened for years...

My problem is that people of means and privalge dont tend to have to worry about having to take unpaid traineeships. The majority of well to do law graduates are wealthy because their parents own a law firm. So they in fact secure the paid positions.

I do disagree with advertised unpaid apprenticeships, traineeships ect.....but when it is the graduate who makes the approach then to be honest it is their own choice to disadvantage themselves. I think especially at the moment there is a very high likely hood that the recession has created a group of graduates (2010-2014) who will not find work in their field no matter how hard they try and will perhaps even struggle to get jobs in generalised graduate schemes.

In professions like law where the costs of a traineeship include 6k or 7k of training ontop of the wage of approx 16k, there are simply many small offices who would love to get extra bodies in but cannot stretch to affording the 22k per year in wages. If these firms were took on trainees on an unpaid basis this would allow a much larger number of graduates to enter the proffession. Once in the proffession these graduates could build a career at these smaller firms, many of whom have ageing partners.

It is a fine line to prevent the mid sized firms and larger firms from taking advantage of graduates, but Im sure there are mechanisms available.

I think that many unpaid traineeships are actually occupied by graduates from far more normal backgrounds, who actually have to work other jobs to sustain themselves or live off the savings they have prepared in advanced.