Working hours in the catering trade

[madfrankfan]

Last September, my 20 year old son took a live-in job working as a Commis Chef at a fairly prestigeous 'Gastro-Pub' in Cheshire. For this he is paid a salary of around £14K, which seems to be the going rate and OK enough for a young lad with no expenses to speak of. The thing is, for that he is working an 80-85 hour week (over 5 days), with no proper breaks at all during the day. He starts at 9AM and 12.30 AM seems to be an early finish for him (2x 2AM's and 2x 3AM's last week) and he pretty much eats on his feet.

I know the catering trade is all about long hours generally, but is this scenario even legal from a H.R and pay perspective? It seems to me that even on minimum wage working those hours, he should be pulling well over £20K, although the real issue is about how long his working day is.

I'm all for promoting the notion of hard work and all that, but wonder if I should be standing by and letting this continue... He's never been one to complain about much, but I can't help feel his employers are extracting the urine here.

What do you think?

[madfrankfan]

Thanks for that everyone. It's as I thought it might be then. I take the point that he would do well to absorb what he can whilst he's working under a decent head chef (a Gordon Ramsay protege') and stick it out for a while then move on.

The 14K is gross and the accomodation allowance (cheap I suppose, at £135 PCM) is taken at source along with the tax. Those are killer hours though.. Understandable for someone firing up their own business sure... but it asks a lot of an employee, when they are not even being paid by the hour. I'm sure he'd laugh in the face of what you or I would call 'long hours'!