Should my recently graduated son expect to work 55 hpw for £17500 pa?

trail_rat – Member
“my mates started at Ernest and Young 2 years ago as an apprentice. He had to sign a waiver to the WTD, and had to be based in London, all whilst paid £18,000 a year. He had no family in London so had to rent which cleaned him out financially. During busy periods he was working 7am til 9:30pm 5 or 6 days a week. He’s sticking with it because at the end of his apprenticeship was a degree from Durham university and a very well paid job.”

thats a totally different kettle of fish.

Why is it? similar money, similar hours? As I should have added, it all depends on the prospects at the end of it. But I certainly wouldn’t put myself through that unless I was absolutely certain that that is what I wanted to do with my life.

If his contracts stated 55 hours then he would have to waiver his right under WTD.

55 hours is ok you can still have a healthy work/life balance. However I have worked doing 70+ hours a week every week including 100+ hour weeks, I would never ever recommend anyone to do this as it will turn you into a mental wreck after a year or so.

If I was offered a job I liked the sound of and had good opportunities for the future I would consider it, however that rate of pay is pretty low.

I gained a Bachelors degree 5 or 6 years ago but didnt have ideas of grandeur. Realistically, even when I graduated everyone and their cousin had a degree. If you didnt, that was almost not normal. However, I have mates who have slogged their guts out, put in their unpaid overtime and are now flourishing after 3 years of hard graft. Its not any different to jobs before degrees were the norm. Long working hours and basic wage will get better and if it dosent it shows far more about the person that has done it and put the effort in. The problem arrises when he is still doing 50+ hours for under £18k 2 years in for the same company and hasnt aimed for higher.

I have been lucky to get onto the career ladder for my dream job and it was not directly influenced by my degree although it probably looked better.

I should add that I have always been in work since I was 16. 5 years of uni I worked throughout, through one summer I did 7-6 Mon-Fri as a groundworker, then Tesco employee two evenings and 10-10 Sat and 10-4 Sun for 3 months. Hard work shouldnt be avoided and he will get a feeling fairly quickly as to whether it will be worth it.

join union

take the job

refuse to sign the working time opt out

get sacked

sue

Long working hours and basic wage will get better and if it dosent it shows far more about the person that has done it and put the effort in.

Are you really blaming employees for crappy working conditions?

Doesn’t seem that great a job to me on the face of it. I would expect to see some pretty material promotion prospects with big uplift in salary and other benefits to consider it. I think the employer is taking the P*** as they know its a tough market. I have never done much less than 50 hours a week fwiw.

“Why is it? similar money, similar hours? As I should have added, it all depends on the prospects at the end of it. But I certainly wouldn’t put myself through that unless I was absolutely certain that that is what I wanted to do with my life.”

because there is light at the end of that tunnel.

enterprise – you “might” be lucky and get an area managers job in a cupboard on an industrial estate in a town a long way away.

Ive had friends go through this with a couple of wellknown supermarkets when they realised that their chosen degree didnt actually open any doors

at the end of it all they got was stress and a sicknote.

Lemonysam, not at all. I am saying the difference between someone who is willing to do 50+ hours to get on and up the ladder will show compared to the person who is happy working part time for no reason. If you want to get ahead, you have to work smart and have to work hard. 50+ hours a week does not make for crappy working conditions if he enjoys who hes working with, enjoys the job and realises its not forever.

I gained a Batchelors degree 5 or 6 years ago

a 2:1 in Cream Of Mushroom? 😉

(ooooh sneaky ninja edit.. well played)

and playing devils advocate its because people keep taking these jobs because they think in this way that employers get away with it…..

My sisters Ex worked for Enterprise on their grad scheme for 3+ years, his experience of them would second what Unknown has said.

It is not a graduate program it is a trainee program, I think he got up to a shop manager level but the pay didn’t increase much and hours and responsibility just got worse. I got the impression there was quite a hight turn over of graduates. Once at the store manager level there was not really a next step and the working hours seemed mental.

I’m with trail-rat it’s different if you are at one of the big 3 accountancy firms as stick with it and you know you’ll be sorted later on, Enterprise however, hhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm 🙄

If after 2 years of doing long hours for a low wage he does not see any benefit and its all empty promises he needs to change tact. Working hard doesnt pay off if he dosent learn from it and use it to his advantage.

I graduated in the thick of the recession and started on 15k a year. I completely regret it- the company knew there weren’t really any jobs going and I had no choice and took me for a ride for 3 years. It knocked back my career by a couple of years and only now at a new company am I earning more than what I should have started on.

The problem is when you start on so little for that amount of hours every time you ask for a pay rise you get bump from “practically nothing” to “very very little”. You can get a 10% pay rise and it make no real difference to what your take home pay is.

If I were him I’d not take the job. Times are better now, there are more jobs going than when I graduated and he shouldn’t have to work those hours. It’s very easy to say “oh, it’s a foot in the door” but there is probably more than one door, some of which won’t take the piss when you open them.

My first office job out of uni was £12500 pa, at 37.5 hrs pw, wasn’t a graduate job, just the first job I got. Data entry and they took on a lot of college leavers. This was in 06. Then in 08 I started another job at 17kpa with 9k otc. 37.5 hrs pw.

I don’t have a degree….

ninfan – Member
join union

take the job

refuse to sign the working time opt out

get sacked

sue

Done this before?

Although you are not obliged to, they can word it so you would be at a disadvantage if you didn’t

No they can’t, just signed mine again to allow me to work overtime. They are not allowed to disadvantage staff for not opting out.

Enterprise rent a car by any chance?

I’ve had friends work for them straight out of uni, they give you all the bs about being “a manager” and getting “promotions”, but none of it means anything, they are just after smart people who they can flog to death.

If he has other options, I would avoid – and £17.5k isn’t a great starting salary for a grad (depending on degree subject of course)

My Little Bro worked for Enterprise. Bloke walks into his depot one day to hire a car, likes the ‘professional’ way little bro deals with him, offers him a job managing a team of IT techies who look after the stockmarket trading system. Opportunities.

Really? Peter on Dragon’s Den does that sometimes….

Unless his degree is relevent to the industry, I see no reason why a graduate should expect a better sallary or more opportunities than anyone else.

Seems long hours and low wage, but I guess that needs to be balanced against what else is around for him.

What does he actually want to do? Presumably he didn’t undertake a politics degree with the ambition of becoming a car hire manager…does he want to get into logistics/HR/sales/marketing/something else? If he’s still living at home and both of you can tolerate it for a little bit longer this could be a good opportunity for him to do some unpaid work experience to try and work out what he enjoys and what he wants to do longer term. The experience could also land him a job in a preferred field.
If he moves away, gets a shitty job he doesn’t enjoy and is financially ‘stuck’ somewhere it’ll be a lot harder for him to work out his next step. He’s got a decent degree from a decent uni – £17.5k for stupid hours and what sounds like a crap employer is not a good step. Unless you’re about to kick him out he should try not to panic and keep looking/do the unpaid option.

Should my recently graduated son expect to work 55 hpw for £17500 pa?

Only if he agrees to it.

Could treat it as a test of negotiating skills.

TBH, there’s better out there. Could go agency temp for a few months whilst continuing applications for “career posts”.
Would pick up similar experience, make more contacts/ meet possible opportunities, and be paid at least minimum wage for the actual number of hours worked.
Doesn’t sound like he’d be any worse off career-wise either.

Thanks fionap, that makes sense. To be honest he is not entirely sure what he wants to do at the moment and it might be an idea not to rush into the first job that comes along.
Anyway, it’s my day off before a weekend of evening shifts, so I’m off up Jeffrey Hill on the bike for a bit before the rain starts 😕

OP, public sector grad schemes are around £20k with normal office hours and flexi-time

depends on your location, as said, in london youll struggle on that salary, whats his degree in, is this the career he wants to follow?

and he if he can stick this out for a year but keep his eye out for something better it might not be so bad

starting in science 15 years ago I was on 10K, certainly not 55 hours but that was in cambridge which wasnt cheap, so it took a while before I was able to pay off student loans and start having disposable cash!

I wouldn’t have taken a job like that even if I had an irrelevant degree.

We took on a couple of grads recently at £30k a year with paid overtime. But they have relevant (Masters in engineering) degrees.

Saying that, 17.5k doesn’t sound too bad, 55 hour weeks does.

It’s not about a graduate or not, I wouldn’t suggest anyone take it, under minimum wage, over WTD and probably just a way to get get as many as possible in the doors knowing most will jack it in and see through the long hours, low reward and slim prospects.

Work hard and one day my son this stapler will be yours….

Why not take it then leave when something better comes along of no other options now?

If it’s an area of work that he’s interested in then why not take it and see what the prospects are after 6 months/a year.

Or take it and keep looking for better opportunities.

It’s easier to get a job when you’ve already got a job.

“Really? Peter on Dragon’s Den does that sometimes….”
mudshark – i would have been skeptical of this also bar.

i bumped into an old school friend last weekend who got sidetracked by pot in his teens and fell off the rails/school etc

he had a kid a few years back – it seems to have turned his life around , he got a job to support him/kids mother. he ended up as a labourer – then supervisor for a transport company.

– then on one job the client asked if he wanted a job….. he is now the manager of my local parts shop – now that may not seem like a big job for some but i was genuinely chuffed that he had turned things around and someone had seen potential to give him the chance to be someone.

On the one hand £17.5k is better than dole money and it’s easier to find a job when you’ve already got one.
But we use Enterprise and it looks like the main qualification to work there is be thick as .. and I’d say £17.5k is well overpaid for some of the muppets I’ve had to deal with.

Enterprise rent a car by any chance?

I wondered that, not a lease company though really. A good friend went to work for them out of uni and it was utterly miserable. A lot seems to depend which branch you end up – friends who got Guildford, or a busy branch progressed relatively quickly, whilst my friend ended up in the Haslemere branch, which had 2 staff – him and his boss, so it was dead man’s shoes in terms of progression. It nearly killed him, he eventually jacked it in no better off financially than when he started.

When I got my first grad job in 2006 I was on 16k and ended up on site doing 12 hour days straight away for no extra cash as it was classed as “reasonable” overtime. Basically the grads were used as cheap labour and pretty much abused. I relocated for the job and was renting a flat near the office which I was never in as my site was located an hour from where I moved from. After four months of no training and generally being treated like crap I told them to get **** and went to work for a small consultancy where training was given and I got to work on some really interesting projects overseas.

I did a placement here (current job) in my last year of degree, and mine is very specific to my trade ( textile design with integrated technologies) . I work maybe 45-50 hrs a week on £20k

Yes really, but I don’t think it was peter from Dragons Den.

17k for 55 hours?

Directions to the nearest McDonalds please.

You do what you need to do to get a job and career. In any case, 50 – 60 hours per week strikes me as pretty standard for an office-based job. He’ll get paid much better after he’s proven himself.

If he doesn’t like the job – which is different from the hours – then reconsider.

Another point…

While looking for something better he’ll learn a lot more from 6 months in a job than from 6 months on the sofa.

At the very least he’ll learn if this is an area he want’s to work in.

50 – 60 hours per week strikes me as pretty standard for an office-based job.

Crikey. Really? It sounds to me like the company are trying to get away with not employing enough people to me.