ADVERTS REMOVED AND ‘RE-EVALUATED’ AFTER WE QUESTION THEIR LEGALITY
*GRADUATE FOG EXCLUSIVE!*
* OOH! THIS STORY HAS BEEN PICKED UP BY BUZZFEED, THE TAB AND THE INDEPENDENT *
Oh dear – the government’s new National Living Wage is so confusing that even staff working at its own flagship youth jobs website are struggling to understand the changes, Graduate Fog can exclusively reveal.
The Graduate Talent Pool has removed several adverts for jobs and internships after we questioned the legality of the salaries offered, in light of the new National Living Wage (NLW) introduced earlier this month. A spokesperson told Graduate Fog that the deleted positions were being “re-evaluated”.
In fairness, it’s no wonder they are confused – the UK now has FOUR minimum pay brackets that are tiered according to age.
Include the Apprentice Wage and the Living Wage (London) and the Living Wage (outside London) and that’s SEVEN. And many of these will change again in October 2016:
*16 year olds above school leaving age
**Apprentices aged 16-18 and older apprentices in the first year of their apprenticeships. Other apprentices are entitled to the appropriate aged based rate SOURCE: TUC
However, staff at the Graduate Talent Pool can’t claim they had no time to prepare. Plans for the new NLW were announced by the Chancellor, George Osborne, in July 2015. That’s nine months ago.
The confusion came to light after Graduate Fog spotted three advertised internships which appeared offer a salary below the new NLW (£7.20 per hour).
One advert (for a Digital / Content Marketing internship with London-based digital marketing agency Tamar) specified an hourly wage of £6.94.
Two others (for a Graduate Analyst internship and a Graduate Marketing and Research internship with recruitment agency Inspiring Interns) stated monthly pay of £1,100. This would be legal for someone aged 25 or over if they were working 35 hours (or less) per week. The number of hours was not specified in the advert, but 37 is considered to be standard in most industries. If this is the case, the hourly wage is just £6.84 per hour – so, below the legal national living wage for workers aged 25 and over.
With many young people struggling to gain momentum in the early stages of their career, it would not be uncommon for someone aged 25 or over to find these paid internships attractive. Mature students may also wish to apply.
CREDIT: Save The Student
Graduate Fog warned the Graduate Talent Pool that stating salaries in absolute terms makes it unclear who can (and cannot) apply for these roles.
Should job-seekers aged 25 or over assume that they can’t not apply for these internships, as they’re too ‘expensive’ (beyond the employer’s budget)? Or, if their application is successful, should they expect to be paid less than the legal minimum for their age group because that’s what was advertised?
Clearly, real thought needs to be put into how to advertise salaries for roles for young people, given the recent changes in the law.
So, why hasn’t this happened? Why was it left to us to point out the problem? When Graduate Fog raised concerns about the salaries offered for these roles, the adverts were removed overnight.
When we noticed they had gone and emailed again, a representative for the Graduate Talent Pool – which is managed on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills by Graduate Prospects – told us:
“I can confirm that, yes, the positions have been taken down, amongst others. We are currently re-evaluating any vacancies which might be affected by the Living Wage by taking down the adverts temporarily, contacting the original employers, finding out whether or not they are aware of the change in legislation and whether their pay brackets have been changed accordingly. This is largely due to you pointing out the issues with the adverts below, so we thank you for bringing this to our attention.”
Commenting on the adverts and their removal, Graduate Fog‘s founder Tanya de Grunwald said:
“Despite having nine months to prepare for the changes, the Graduate Talent Pool appears to be in a state of confusion about how to advertise roles for young people to ensure that all offer a fair and legal wage and that opportunities are open to all applicants.
“Why were they so caught out, when the plans were announced nine months ago? Why was it left to us to point out such an obvious problem with the way salaries are stated in their job adverts? The fact that nobody at the Graduate Talent Pool was ‘on it’ suggests a serious disconnect from the young people they are responsible for serving.
“We’ve already questioned the ethics of a tiered minimum wage system based on age – why is it you can join the Army at 16 but you don’t get the ‘grown-up’ National Living Wage until your 25th birthday? Now we’ve shown there are serious practical problems with it too. The government must clarify what is and is not acceptable when UK employers advertise roles likely to be taken by young workers.”
The NLW has been heavily criticised for being unfair and insulting to the UK’s young workers. It seems perverse that can join the Army at 16 and vote at 18 – yet our politicians and employers don’t consider that you’re worth paying the full adult National Living Wage until you’re 25.
The only justification offered so far has been Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock’s statement that young workers are “less productive” than older workers.
Graduate Fog’s friends at the TUC say there are circumstances in which it may be legal to advertise roles aimed specifically at younger job seekers, but that conditions for this did not seem to be met here – and they shared our concern that older job seekers risked wasting their time applying for roles they could not legally be given. Positions aimed at young people or recent graduates should be advertised as paying “National Living Wage / National Minimum Wage (dependent upon successful candidate’s age)”, Graduate Fog’s founder Tanya de Grunwald said.
UPDATE:
Following up on Graduate Fog’s story, The Tab contacted the Graduate Talent Pool for comment. At 8.05pm this evening (19 April) they posted this update:
A representative from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has responded to the piece with the following statement.
“The Graduate Talent Pool website is run externally on behalf of the department. As soon as we became aware of these adverts, they were taken down, and appropriate checks have now been put in place to ensure this does not happen again.”
* WHOSE FAULT IS IT?
Are staff at Graduate Talent Pool incompetent? Or has the government not been clear enough about how wages for young workers should be advertised, since the new National Living Wage was introduced? And what do you think about the tiered wage system?
Seems to me like there were a couple of oversights that slipped through the net. Good that you noticed them, but barely worth a blog post of this length.
Speaking as someone who landed their current job from this site, they’re one of the better providers, if not the best, for recent graduates and nobody gets everything right. Case in point, I seem to recall when your website had a job search provided by Monster, search results contained unpaid and commission only jobs, which are hugely exploitative. I know you don’t need me to tell you that, and it was clearly an oversight on your part. Nevertheless, did you write a blog post about that? Because arguably, that’s worse.
You do great work Tanya and I’ve followed your blog for years, but this is petty.
@Barely news – Oh dear, sorry you didn’t like the story! BuzzFeed, the Independent and The Tab all seemed to think it was quite interesting.
I can’t remember the details of the problem we had with the Monster feed on Graduate Fog, but I seem to remember we fixed it immediately and Monster then became the first UK job board to ban adverts for unpaid internships. From there, the others all followed. To my mind, that was pretty significant.
You are right that the original incident was an oversight on my part, but please remember that I am just one journalist running a blog (working pretty much for free – I certainly was completely, back then), so I think you’re being a little bit harsh. Compare that with the Graduate Talent Pool, run by Graduate Prospects. Do you not think it is fair to expect the governement’s official graduate jobs website – which is awarded a huge amount of taxpayers’ money every year – to be better prepared for such an important change as the new National Living Wage?
Hi Tanya, thanks for commenting.
Of course those websites think it’s interesting. If there’s a story that involves the government supposedly doing something wrong, then they’ll be all over it.
I recall the issue because I was a jobseeker at the time and I also believe I was the person who reported it to you. Nevertheless, I agree, you fixed it immediately. And when you reported your concerns to Graduate talent pool, it also fixed the issue immediately. I apologise if I came across a little antagonistic with that comment. It was simply to draw a contrast between two similar situations.
I’m just overall a little skeptical at all the buzz this has generated, despite the fact that you only actually found one advert that was advertised below NMW/NLW. The Inspiring Interns adverts were only speculatively below the minimum wage, depending on the hours. They may or may not have been compliant. I checked this morning and there’s 120-odd adverts on there. 1 in 120 is clearly an oversight, not a systemic issue. The national living wage only came into force on April 1st, are you definitely satisfied it wasn’t just an old advert?
Nevertheless, the idea that one incorrect advert apparently “demonstrates a serious disconnect” from young people is a stretch too far.
I understand there are differences as you’ve pointed out (ie you run for free and they are taxpayer funded). Would I expect them to be prepared? Of course I would, but its early days. There’ll always be teething problems, especially given that there are NMW/NLW tiers. But if the teething problem is a single confirmed advert, then that doesn’t seem the end of the world.
It’s just my 2c. The work you do is excellent and important. I just felt this time, it was a little overblown.
Hi Tanya,
Just to confirm, the jobs posted by Inspiring Interns are fully NMW compliant.
Please note, we advise all clients accordingly and have written this into our contracts.
FYI We recently got a graduate a £35,000+ role at a bank.
To have a look at our latest vacancies please see http://www.inspiringinterns.com/candidates/graduate-jobs-internships/london-south-east
Thanks
Daniel
@Daniel – That’s good to hear, thanks. So can you confirm that if someone aged 25 (or over) applied for either of the two roles in question and was successful, they would receive at least the National Living Wage (£7.20 per hour)?
Hi Tanya,
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, I’m happy to confirm that Inspiring Interns are fully compliant with NLW.
Please note, NLW does not often apply to us, as Inspiring Interns specialises in recent graduates as opposed to 25+ year olds.
Thanks
Daniel
http://www.inspiringinterns.com
@Daniel
Again, that’s good to hear. So, just to be absolutely clear, this £1,100 per month wage stated in the advert is for how many hours per week? In other words, what do you calculate the hourly pay to be, if this is the monthly total?
Also, although I agree that most recent graduates are 24 or below, a significant number are older than that. As we all know, graduates are doing more and more further study and unpaid internships before they will be considered for paid jobs, so it would not be that strange for someone aged 25 or over to apply for your roles, surely? And of course, there are mature students.
Group Think has never been an endearing trait amongst any group…and perhaps the key learning experience is to avoid any employer which attempts to recruit staff without paying the market rate for the job, and implicitly, any website which attempts to rebrand a Salaried Job as something else.
Hello,
i am happy to confirm, the jobs posted by Inspiring Interns are fully NMW compliant. All graduates and all interns after completion course they are seeking jobs so to have a look to our latest vacancies here Latest Jobs