Apprentices' rights

We have a number of people on Modern Apprenticeships (MAs). One has been dismissed because the employer says there is not enough work for him to do. He had only six months to go before qualifying and since there are no other employers in the area taking on people under the scheme it seems unfair that he will not finish the course. Doesn't he have special rights as an apprentice?

Apprentices normally cannot be dismissed unless their contract specifically says so. In the Whitely case the EAT ruled that someone working under the MA scheme was an apprentice with all the rights that applied to that status. However, more recently, in the Thorpe case, the EAT held that not every MA is like a standard apprenticeship and that in some cases it was no more than a "training scheme".

The difference seems to revolve around the wording used in the contract. In the Whitely case, the EAT said the agreement signed by the apprentice consistently used the language of "apprenticeship" and was obviously intended "with some modern adaptations" to operate as an apprenticeship. In the Thorpe case there was no explicit evidence to this effect and so the EAT chose not to define the relationship as being one of apprenticeship.

* More information: Whitely v Marton Electrical [2003] IRLR 197l; Thorpe v Dul EAT/0630/02