He's a locksmith, and he's a lifetime resident in a small town, and between being related to bikers and having a barely-not-jailed criminal past himself (25 years ago) and working for half the town now that he's straight, he knows about everyone. He's become a guy who gets calls about “I need a job”, and he knows fully that a lot of these people are unreliable to start with, and most of them think they'll just stand at a counter and punch a cash register. He needs a lot more from them than that, because who pays for one register person and one key-maker/advisor/salesman/emergency lockout person? No one does.
So his solution is to tell them that they can come along for a couple days and see if it's for them. I greatly suspect that they're working for free during that time. It's all totally informal, and I think part of his point is that there's no paper trail, because so many of them find out there's a LOT to remember and they have to work in very hot conditions on big security system installs, and it's way harder overall than they suspected, and they bail out, which overall is better for everyone. But this unpaid “volunteer” work doesn't strike me as legal. What should be happening?