TUC Congress 2009 - Joanna Wiczak interviews Gordon Brown

Joanna Wiczak, 22, Business & Administration Apprentice and Union Learning Rep at Merseytravel, Liverpool, was at this year’s TUC Congress 2009 in September. Joanna put some tough questions to Gordon Brown on the question of the minimum wage for apprentices. We’ll be catching up with Joanna in a future edition of the eBriefing so make sure you let your colleagues know that they can also sign up to receive it and find out more about Joanna’s apprenticeship with Merseytravel.

Read on to see what she asked at the TUC Congress 2009 and how Mr Brown responded.

Joanna Wiczak (UNISON): “Gordon - I hope you do not mind if I call you Gordon - I have never had the opportunity to ask a Prime Minister a question before but I wanted to be familiar because I have a problem for you. I am an apprentice at Merseytravel and at my workplace we have a good training scheme and are paid reasonably well. Under government legislation apprentices are guaranteed at least £95 a week, but while that is welcome it is not really very much and many apprentices are only getting that small amount. It is even worse for those who work in companies that do not have unions because there is nowhere they can turn to if they are being exploited and underpaid. So, Gordon, I am asking you, why can't all apprentices be paid at least the minimum wage? Thank you.

The Prime Minister: I was going to say that these were far better questions from the apprentices than ever we get in the House of Commons, so I do applaud them. I visited Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port today and I met a group of apprentices who are absolutely determined to do their best by the country. Half of them were Liverpool supporters, half of them were Everton supporters, you will be pleased to know, Brendan.

I think on the issue of apprentices, let's just be clear about one thing. Apprenticeships were dying 10 years ago. There were only 70,000 in the country and people thought that the end of the apprenticeship was coming. There are now 220,000 apprentices in this country, three times as many, and as Yvette will talk about I think nearly half of the apprentices are now women. There has been a four times increase in the number of women apprentices over the last few years and, as I said in my speech, we want to give a minimum apprentice income/wage so that people feel that what they are doing in apprenticeships is valued.

The future of apprenticeships not only depends on the private sector, it also depends on the public sector. If you go round the public sector there are very few apprentices in the Health Service, very few apprentices in local government, very few apprentices in schools or in education, and I think that is one of the ways over the next year, by agreeing to create 20,000 more apprentices, we can make progress. I want to say, as I said in my speech, to any young person, if you get the qualifications you will get into your apprenticeship and we will make sure that apprenticeship places are available for you.

Brendan Barber: Yvette, you might just comment on these issues?

Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.ukYvette Cooper: Yes. I do not think we should underestimate the importance of this. Getting young people that first step on their career ladder,that first proper training that actually I think for too long young people were just denied, getting people into jobs but also getting them good training as well, the apprenticeships are one of the best ways of doing that. It is good to see apprentices coming from a range of different areas but we do need to do more to get more apprenticeships in all kinds of different fields. We are seeing more and more women apprentices, which I think is a great thing because it was too often traditionally seen as just for young men. Actually, there is a whole load of women doing all sorts of apprenticeships in different kinds of fields.

It is true, though, as I think Andrew said, that there is more that we can do in some sectors where we are not getting enough women coming forward and we need to do more right through schools. We are doing work with schools on encouraging girls to go into engineering and to go into all sorts of non-traditional sectors in order to encourage those opportunities. We see this as being part of the wider work to give that support for every young person because never again should we lose a generation to work. The extra sports jobs that Gordon announced today for young people are alongside the apprenticeships as well.

I think Gemma's question was on the Knowsley Apprenticeship and what can local councils do. There are loads that local councils can do. Knowsley, I think, is doing some great work to support apprenticeships. A lot of local councils are coming forward to support the Future Jobs Scheme. There are even, indeed, a lot of Labour councils and actually some Tory councils coming forward to support the Future Jobs Scheme. It is just a shame that at national level David Cameron and the Conservatives are opposing the billion pounds for the Future Jobs Fund because I think you have to put that investment into young people. They say we cannot afford to. The truth is we cannot afford not to or we will have another generation abandoned as we did in the 1980 and 1990s, and we cannot ever go back to that.”

For more information about Apprenticeships with the TUC, contact Scarlet Harris, Apprenticeship Policy and Campaigns Officer on 020 7467 1281