Can a business really be called viable if the owners run it off cheap labour. I know it’s dressed up as training opportunity but it is to my mind exploitative, some barns even get the “students” to pay for their own accommodation. Time this was looked into.
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Really depends what the trade off is for the student apprentice.
As far as being a viable business, many many horse barns are not viable if you look too closely.
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Internships are a valuable gateway to a profession which could work well for both the individual and the business.
Allows the individual an opportunity to test the profession to see it really works for them.
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For centuries apprenticeship was how you learned a trade. You’d get contractually bound over to the master tradesman at 12 or 13, he’d give you room and board, and you’d work for him learning the trade until you were 21 and then be qualified to go do the trade as a daily employee or journeyman. Working up to being a master with your own shop took a long time and didn’t happen for everyone. No one who had not done this process could work in a trade.
Obviously the factory system on one hand and higher education on the other hand squeezed out the old craft guild system and today even in trades that still have apprentice and journeyman and master designations, apprentice is much shorter and is subsequent to formal education in the trade.
But apprentice really makes some sense in a field like horses where repetition and practice is more important than formal learning.
That said, many baths do exploit young girls who can’t afford to pay their own way but desperately want to be around horses, and they do grunt work.
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A true internship the length could easily vary. However I believe most of the working student positions are not internships rather are closer to just a method of a barn owner/trainer to have access to cheap or no cost labor.
IEC Apprentice Electrician program I believe is five years,
My son who is a photographer he never made it through his internship as they hired him after three weeks of his summer internship
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People have been “looking into” this for years. There have been plenty of articles, podcasts, and threads on this forum discussing this exact topic. Whether being a working student is a fair gig really depends on the program. In a good situation (which do still exist in plenty of barns), the student will have access to learning opportunities and continually build skills that they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. The programs should also be short-term by design: the goal for everyone should be for the student to “graduate” and move on to something better. The programs where students just do grunt work indefinitely are exploitative, IMO, but it doesn’t mean the whole concept is bad.
Also depends how you define “cheap” labor. Most of the working student programs I’m familiar with offer some combination of housing, board, lessons, free trailering to shows, opportunities to ride a variety of horses, networking with local pros, etc. Depending on the barn the value of these may come out way ahead of a market-rate cash wage for the work.
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I’ve seen student positions advertised where they have to pay their own rent and food, lessons and transport to shows costs nothing but the pros time, as generally diesel costs are picked up by owners. It takes no time to train someone up if they are keen so hour for hour work wise it’s a real win for the employer. I prefer to pay the going rate which in Ireland is 20€ an hour. Lessons are included, meals and accommodation. It’s the least I can do for unsociable hours and long days.
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I dont think many yards could run without cheap labour.
they used to, once upon a time help was paid well
By your measure, there are many businesses that would not be viable: restaurants, hospitality, lawn care, food production, etc, etc. Cheap labor is at the heart of many things we enjoy in our modern day lives.
The issue seems to be that our lives have gotten so complicated that there aren’t many workers for those jobs- it used to be teenagers, part timers or break in workers willing to work their way up. Now everyone demands a “working wage” for these low level jobs. Everything has become “professionalized”. You used to be able to hire the neighborhood teenager to mow your lawn- now it’s a lawn care company. I remember the stall cleaners when I was a kid were high school boys working part time. Not anymore.
So working students provided cheap labor and apprenticed- learning the ins and outs of the business. It kept costs down for the clients. Professionalize every aspect of the business from feeding, stall cleaning, clipping, tack cleaning, laundry and guess what, it’s very expensive.
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Depends, like any relationship- if both parties are getting what they want out of it, then terrific.
I heard a trainer recently talk about the working student/apprenticeship period in a way that equated it to going to/paying for college. If you are going to college you are paying tuition and room and board to take classes to learn knowledge for your future career…and nobody bats an eye about students having to pay these expenses. He viewed working students in the horse industry in the same way - you are often paying your expenses and not getting paid while you learn the skills to work in the horse industry. Of course this is implying that your working student position prepares you for that and is more than just mucking out…
Not quite sure how I feel about it…but it was something I hadn’t thought about before…
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I’m really not sure what your point is here. There’s no way to evaluate whether a program where students have to pay rent is fair without knowing the rest of the package, or the cost of rent. And sure lessons cost “nothing but the pros time,” are you suggesting that time isn’t valuable? Depending on the pro that could be a pretty expensive hour they’re setting aside to teach someone for free.
You can run your business however you want. Sounds like a great deal for your working students, and if your business can afford that then more power to you. But many barns can’t afford to pay much in cash but can offer compensation in other ways, and many working students are ok with that if their board, training, and housing costs are covered and it sets them up well for their career. Just because there are bad programs out there doesn’t mean that every situation is a bad one.
Also, most of the responses here are going to be US-centric, so you may not be able to draw perfect comparisons to your situation. We have a different horse culture here and a totally different labor environment.
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It’s more using the word student in the job description that made me think, it infers that they’ll get a qualification at the end.
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I don’t have working students I have paid staff, if they need to learn the job that’s up to me to teach them. It was an interview with a girl last week that made me stop and think, she has been a working student for 6 months, but in reality was doing a full time competition grooms job for little money and a couple of lessons thrown in a week. I just feel there should be more regulation. My son is an apprentice, the placement is fully monitored, assessed, exams are part of it, and he gets wages and overtime while technically a student, perhaps something similar could be set up for equestrians,
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Except there are no “qualifications” for being a trainer!
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Honestly it sounds like you’re talking about something totally different. Offering to train your standard barn staff so they can do the job is not the same as taking on a working student and giving them a comprehensive education in running your business. I don’t know any barns that run entirely on working students, usually there are a couple of those plus normal staff. Working students trade labor in exchange for an education, not just training to do the specific job they’re paid for, and go into the process knowing that. I don’t see anything wrong with the girl working as a groom if she was getting an education out of it and went in with that expectation. If she did that for 6 months and was then able to transition to a paying job in the industry then I’d say the program was a success. I don’t know anyone who would hire a full-time competition groom that didn’t already know what they were doing, not at a higher level anyway; working student positions give people a chance to develop those skills so they can go on to compete for those jobs down the line or start their own businesses.
There’s no governing body that could regulate working students anyway. There are labor laws to follow depending on where you’re located, but the shady programs tend to skirt those anyway. I really don’t see anything wrong with working off your education as long as both parties go into it with clear expectations. It’s no different from students paying for a college education, and in this case at least you have concrete work experience and references after you’re finished.
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The issue with “working students” in equestrian professions (and several others, like the arts), however, is that unlike working a trade as an apprentice, the job opportunities and financial gain on the other end aren’t significant enough to justify the labor, expenditures on the part of the student, and the opportunity cost of the work, usually. A plumber or an electrician who is an apprentice is coming out with a marketable career with decent earning prospects, versus someone working with horses.
This isn’t just particular to the horse world. Publishing interns who were supposed to learn the trade and ended up making coffee and doing the busy office work no one wants to do (and gaining few marketable skills), actors playing bit parts (or none) doing front of house and the lower-level stage management stuff at small theater companies, even many people have noted rightly that the big loans and internships for culinary school rarely pay off, and it’s often better just to try to get a paying job as a cook and work your way up through a low-paying industry as it is.
Lots of horse people, even some very talented pros, are very pressed for time, and don’t (whether they admit it or not) don’t really have the time or teaching ability to make a working studentship a true working studentship.
It’s one thing if someone has spousal and family support, and they want to take a gap year to get out of their head and immerse themselves in horses to learn before getting a real job or career, and don’t mind paying a bit in time and probably money to be a working student for a decent pro, or if they are truly contemplating horses as a career and want to give it a try. But I do think people have to do it with their eyes open, and horse pros that offer working studentships need to be vetted to make sure that what they’re offering is worth it to the student.
I’m much more dubious of backyard barns that offer pure labor trades for lessons, because from what I’ve observed, often those lessons never happen or are given short shrift versus paying customers.
And yes, if your business model is solely reliant upon people paying to work for you an unreasonable number of hours until they quit because they need sleep and money, and then you complain how kids today don’t want to work today, then I’m going to give some side-eye.
I think the working student always needs a plan for what they want out of the position, rather than become emotionally invested in keeping the pro’s business going.
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There are all kinds of working student positions.
I quit my pleasant, very secure (as in “set for life”) government job, all excited for a working student position. I was living with my boyfriend, so housing, meals, etc. were taken care of, a good idea as this new position paid zero.
Well. It was just cleaning stalls all day, every day, with one lesson a week on half-dead horses and one hour a week of lecture on questionable topics. I remember being “taught” that all new horses to a barn should be fed only one pound of grain (this was the old days, when horses got hay and grain, period) per day, because that wouldn’t be too much for any horse. Yeah. I’d been taking full care of my and my family’s horses and ponies for about ten years at that point, and knew a little something about estimating a horse’s feed needs based on breed, size, body condition, and amount of work. Plus you could always ask the owner and/or previous feeder! I didn’t stay in that program very long.
I should never have left my previous no-stress, extremely well-paying, guaranteed-promotions, in a great place, job. That’s the absolute best way to fund and do horses, in my opinion, having enough money, time, and mental energy (not drained by job, commutes, financial worries, etc.) to do horses your way. Rant over.
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By whom? You’re not in the US so perhaps your government has applicable laws and designated authorities who could “look into” the working student situation. We certainly don’t here.
When it works as it is, in theory, intended to work, the working student model is an excellent entry point for a talented, hardworking young person aiming at becoming a pro. But in order for it to work, the people running the operation have to be honest, ethical, and qualified to run it and the operation has to have sufficient income to support the working student - emphasis on student - because otherwise, the situation devolves into one of WORKING student.
What percentage of working student programs meet those criteria? I have no idea, my guess is not very many.
But who can police that? Especially when being a working student and becoming a professional rider is a romantic fantasy that young people (mostly girls) cannot be talked out of. I mean, look at all the young wanna be actors and singers and dancers who run off to Nashville or New York or LA to make it big and end up playing for tips in some dive bar or spending all day going to casting call after casting call, all the while working some dead end job trying, often unsuccessfully, to make enough money to not starve and end up homeless. Who is the authority that can (should?) step in and put a stop to it?
If people make those choices, then who are you to step in and prevent it? It’s not like those overworked, underpaid working students are being forced to continue to be overworked and underpaid. They can always leave.
On a bit of a tangent, have you read Tik Maynard’s book, “In the Middle Are the Horsemen?” It’s about his experiences as a working student and I thought it was quite good.
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