Posted on 04/05/2010 11:10:20 AM PDT by usalady
There is growing evidence that employers are increasing the number of unpaid internships instead of hiring employees.
Some employers use internships as a relatively risk-free way of trying out a potential employee. If the intern does a great job and is otherwise qualified, that person has the inside track for a job opening when it occurs.
Employers have always done this to the extent they could get away with it.
Raising the minimum wage leads to hiring freezes and laid off minimum wage workers, thus not benefiting many low income earners.
Dictates that any full time employee must be paid benefits leads to companies hiring two 20 hour per week employee instead of one 40 hour week employee, thus many low income earners must commute between two “part time” jobs.
And.... mandating that full employees have X and Y benefits and are more difficult/legal liability to let go; and you get a bunch of “internships” or “temp to hire” or “temporary” positions that they do NOT have to pay benefits for, and if the person isn't working out, they can just no re-up the “temporary” job and get a new “temporary” employee for that “temporary” job.
Wow. Shocker.
Are you REALLY surprised? Do you think more government involvement is the answer?
I am a little leary of this article put out by the NYT. There is a growing trend in the MSM to not demonize just banks, but to also demonize all private enterprise in the United States. This is part of the plan to try to gain public support in Obama’s march to socialism.
Hmmm...to think that one can be replaced by an unpaid intern doesn’t speak very highly of one’s contribution to the company, does it?
Spot on!!!!!!!!!!!
We do it all the time. Helps filter out the weak ones. Too many twenty someethings show up still seeing tracers from the acid they dropped at the kegger last fall /sarc, thinking the world owes them something. I love watching those ones wash out in a few weeks, and I love seeing the cream rise to the top too.
The flip side of that is when everyone must be given a expensive benefit no matter how many hours they work, then there will be no part time workers and likely will even have their expected number of hours bumped up to 60, because it is cheaper to pay time and a half for those last few hours than to buy health insurance for another low wage employee. Bye, bye part time work for people who only want 20 hours a week for some pocket money.
I do wonder how many of these intern positions are actually unpaid. I personally do not know of any company who doesn't pay their interns. They get a much lower wage than regular employees, but they are paid.
Our LLC does it too. Let’s put it another way, potential employees have a chance to impress the employers for a designated number of days which our company is honest about..
However, there are LOTS of abusive companies who say they will make a decision within 3 months and are STILL interns working past that. That’s just plain wrong.
There’s an infamous law office here close by in Glendale CA who does that by posting the same ad for the past 5 years...EVERY WEEK. They make them type, slave then fire them after 2 weeks. Then you have free work for paying nothing.
Key word: "When ".
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