YOUR MUM’S FAVOURITE DEPARTMENT STORE PROVES IT VALUES ITS YOUNG WORKERS
Shock news reaches Graduate Fog – some employers pay their interns MORE then they need to by law!
John Lewis has told our Pay Your Interns campaign that the company pays their interns “£300 a week — around £8.50 an hour”. This makes them the highest-paying employer of interns we have spoken to so far.
Nationally, the minimum wage is £5.93 per hour (rising to £6.08 on 1 October 2011). The ‘living wage’ – the minimum amount needed to cover life’s essentials – is £8.30 an hour in London and £7.20 outside the capital. So the department store is paying its young workers a lot more than it is legally obliged to.
The company runs a formal Retail Management Summer Internship scheme which lasts for six weeks, which 34 people young people completed this summer. A John Lewis spokesperson told us the company’s interns “work alongside the management team” and have “a structured programme which includes working on live business project” alongside management which is offered at branches across the country.
We suspect the reason that John Lewis is a shining example of class and decency when it comes to treatment of their interns has a lot to do with their staff policy in general. John Lewis is run as a ‘partnership’, where everyone who works within the company has part ownership of it. Here is how they describe the partnership on their website:
“All 76,500 permanent staff are Partners who own 33 John Lewis shops across the UK (29 department stores and four John Lewis at home), 264 Waitrose supermarkets (www.waitrose.com), an online and catalogue business, johnlewis.com (www.johnlewis.com), a production unit and a farm. The business has annual gross sales of over £8.2bn. Partners share in the benefits and profits of a business that puts them first.”
Are John Lewis’s competitors treating their young staff as well as they are? We have approached the store’s rivals – including Debenhams, House of Fraser and Marks & Spencer – and will let you know what they say…
*Are you impressed by how much John Lewis pay their interns?
Does it make you think more of their brand? Should other companies should follow suit?
What a fantastic company! That is really leading by example – a company that properly values its young workers, believes in investing in them and deserves to have all the success it gets.
I love John Lewis, in fact I’m off to buy something from there right now. Taxi!
They treat their staff well because the staff own the company! The staff bar in head office Victoria is excellent too and you get subsidised drinks – but you can only get in if you know someone! 😉
Well done John Lewis!!! Not all corporations are corporate bastards then!
For what it’s worth, I suggest you ask Metaswitch Networks as well: I interned there this summer, and they also pay their interns £300 a week, and provide housing for interns at £9 a night, which is very reasonable. Great place to intern, I count myself very fortunate to have interned there.
@Cory Benfield
I spend so much time harrassing the (many) companies that don’t pay their interns properly that it’s always so refreshing to hear that there are still some out there that do treat their young workers properly – thanks!
Good on John Lewis! From all accounts they are very much a decent ethical company.
I was paid a little bit more where I interned for two months. I guess one has to be wise about these matters before jumping in.
Semantics aside…. although John Lewis should, of course be commended, I don’t think that the jobs they recruited for could be remotely described as being “Internships”, and on previous occasions, may have been correctly advertised as being “Sales Assistants/Associates” etc.
Although, by definition, an intern is represented by “a student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training”, the fact that junior staff (incorrectly classified as Interns) are doing a real job on the front line suggests that the rate of £8.50 per hour is substantially less than that which would have been earned were they previously employed as Sales Assistants/Associates rather than the “in vogue’ term of “Intern”.
@Eowyn
You make a really good point – I often wonder how many ‘proper’ jobs have been rebranded as “internships” recently, and the salaries cut… It’s really difficult to prove of course that it’s exactly the same job, but my gut feeling is that this is happening a lot. Pretty much any junior job can become an ‘internship’ and then it instantly sounds more temporary and more junior – and I suspect the salary drops too…
I seriously doubt the voters are going to pay much attention to this gaffe. Its either going to be a very good year for the GOP, or a completely kick ass year. Take your pick. Voters care more about the economy and jobs.
Lies dam lies, john Lewis pays its apprentices less than £2.50 an hour, the tax payer pays an extra £2.50 per hour to johnlewis to bump up their hourly rate. So john Lewis don’t lie to us, you’re just as bad as Chinese slave labour only you’re getting it in the UK.