Date Tomorrow 30th May 2024
Time: 11.30 am – 12.30 pm
Venue: The Connect Trade Union Offices, 6 Gardiner Row, Dublin 1 (just off Parnell Square near the Garden of Remembrance)
Craft apprenticeships are vital to the future of housebuilding and economic growth in Ireland. However, apprentices are being forced to work for below the minimum wage, face long delays in their courses and exploitation by unscrupulous employers which is forcing many to leave their chosen trade or emigrate.
Connect Assistant General Secretary, Brian Nolan, said: “Apprentices are the future of our trades and their work is vital to the economic and social wellbeing of our country. However, increasing numbers are being forced out of their chosen career due to an inability to live on what is often below minimum wage pay, long delays in accessing college-based training and their exploitation as cheap labour by some employers.”
He added: “At the launch of the campaign tomorrow we will be highlighting the pressures which are undermining our apprenticeship system, a system that the current Taoiseach, Simon Harris, said he would fix in this last ministerial role but has instead left in crisis.”
At tomorrow’s event apprentices, employers and trade union officials will be available to interview concerning the problems encountered in the apprenticeship system.
The event will also see the launch of the Connect National Craft Apprentices Survey and a new short film promoting it to the more than 20,000 apprentices in the 21 trades represented by Connect Trade Union – The Apprentices Union.
For further information contact: Connect Assistant General Secretary, Brian Nolan.
Gavinberkeley78@gmail.com
Im a first year apprentice and its very very hard to have a good life after work with the low pay off 9.16 it’s not even minimum wage we have to pay rent the. Food for work petrol to get work other emergency’s in our life’s and we know it’s not going to get us anywhere with these emails it’s stunt to make yourselfs look better it’s scandalous