Posted on 06/15/2010 6:16:53 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When I was a college student, a summer internship at a big-city newspaper seemed just the thing to boost my nascent journalism career. But instead, I spent the summers as a big-city doorman, filling in for the regulars while they were on vacation. The reason was simple: Being a doorman paid a lot more, and I needed the money for tuition.
A generation later, for a student in my shoes, the situation is quite a bit worse. Nowadays many internships don't pay anything at all, yet landing an internship has come to seem almost essential. The National Assn. of Colleges and Employers says that in 2008, about half of graduating students had held internships. The same organization found, in a 2009 survey, that "more than three-quarters of responding employers said they prefer candidates with the kind of relevant work experience gained through an internship."
I will leave aside the debate over whether minimum-wage and other labor laws safeguard workers, promote unemployment or both. Nor will I plunge into the age-old question of when it's morally permissible to violate the law. What I'm interested in here is hypocrisy.
The reality is that unpaid internships are a great way of giving the children of affluence a leg up in life. If they really do help young people get permanent jobs in desirable fields, then the current internship system has the effect, however unintended, of reserving this advantage mainly for well-to-do families — families that happen to be disproportionately white. (Unpaid internships are No.105 on blogger Christian Lander's hilarious list of "stuff white people like.")
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
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Unpaid internships seem to be especially prevalent in show business, journalism, the arts and at nonprofits, most of which are hotbeds of liberal ideals. Denizens of this world, I daresay, would mostly defend state and federal labor laws (to say nothing of labor unions) as a crucial bulwark for the protection of workers against exploitation by vastly more powerful employers.
But unpaid interns don't fall under such protection. They do not get minimum wage, or enjoy legal safeguards against discrimination, sexual harassment or wrongful termination. And they do not pay Social Security or Medicare taxes to support the safety net so many of their employers cherish.
Unpaid interns at nonprofits qualify as volunteers, but hiring people without pay at a business isn't even legal unless the arrangement meets federal standards requiring that the employer "derives no immediate advantage" from the arrangement. In other words, it's supposed to be pure altruism.
In a remarkable outbreak of such altruism — one that that happens to coincide with the recession — a bevy of employers have been offering unpaid positions lately. So many employers have jumped on the bandwagon that various government agencies are reportedly looking into possible labor law violations. Federal investigators won't have to look very hard to find collegians toiling without pay. Washington is usually crawling with unpaid interns, including some in Congress, which conveniently exempted its interns from minimum-wage and overtime rules.
Just as they support protection for workers, most members of the chattering classes are disturbed by increasing income inequality. But unpaid internships are an ideal system for perpetuating and increasing inequality, just like the creeping credential inflation that requires ever-more schooling, however costly or irrelevant, to land a job. A professor friend complains that at his institution, Harvard dropout Bill Gates couldn't get hired to teach business.
Good article. The MSM media in particular violates this law all the time. Unless you are a non-profit or government entity, UNPAID internships are ILLEGAL.
I don’t think there should be a minimum wage but do not expect the GOP to immolate itself by proposing its elimination. Maybe allowing a “training” wage below the minimum wage for the first 6 months or 1 year of employment
could be enacted, although unions would howl over even that.
They can start with radio and television stations, probably the most egregious of offenders when it comes to unpaid internships which they certainly derive benefit from. Then they can move on to political organizations, like ACORN.
Unpaid internships are the only real way for those who can’t get paid internships to get some real experience, they are invaluable in getting ahead. Making them illegal will not cause them to suddenly become paid, it will cause them and the real world experience they bring, to disappear.
I even paid the college for my internship and got not a penny in return. It’s called student teaching. The teacher was with me for a couple of weeks and then said I was good to go. She left me alone and I taught the classes for a whole quarter while she caught up on her paperwork in the teacher’s lounge.
The thing is, intern jobs are volunteer, you don’t have to take them. My wife actually started as an intern where she has now worked for over 15 years. She interned for about a month, working her rear off unpaid no less, and applied for every position posted during that time. It was a huge win when she was hired since she was able to try before she bought and was offered better compensation than if she had walked in off the street. THis was mostly due to the fact that her employer had a much easier time selecting her since they had experienced her abilities, talents, and ethics first hand.
It is wrong to violate the terms of their agreement with their employer. (excepting certain workplace safety issues)
Unions, and compulsory wages, are by their very nature, violating the property rights of the business owner, and the employees.
Conservatives don’t see the need for minimum wage laws and many other labor laws. Liberals see labors laws as their gift to humanity, and bash conservatives over the head with them at every opportunity
“In Robert Bork’s world, child workers are abused by big businesses” to paraphrase the swimmer senator from Massachusetts.
Yet, businesses in traditionally liberal industries (newspapers, journalism, television, radio, and movie production) are the worst violators of the spirit (if not the letter) of laws designed by liberals to protect workers. We need to keep pointing this out.
He also called the government on the hypocrisy of the law saying that government work could be an unpaid internship.
Posts 5 and 8 are spot on as to this issue. Unpaid intern jobs are a way for a person new to the trade and with no prior experience to get a foot in the door. This pay issue is just the left and the unions trying to stamp out another way to grow the economy and get good people jobs. Don’t buy the red herring that many internships are in media and entertainment, so what? If you kid can get in the permanent job force, do you care he or she worked a summer as an intern without pay?
Don't know where this is coming from, but 'journalism' is neutral, not 'liberal'. At least that is what I hear from the journalists.
The writer seems more bitter that he couldn’t afford to take an unpaid internship than that they exist and can be undertaken only by more affluent students. Class envy much? That’s life.
Internships, if well developed by the organization, provide more and more valuable learning to students than a semester full of classes on most universities.
Don't you just hate it when those mean, rich, white people take advantage of everyone else by WORKING FOR FREE?
Internships are one of the best ways I know of to get the relevant experience to help land the first job. Sometimes even with the same firm. That is the tradeoff, the kid's time for the experience. No it is not easy. And plenty of kids work at part-time jobs while they are interning. It is not simply a privilege of the rich.
I am not rich. Not even close. My 19-yr-old son has interned in our state legislature, with our congressperson in DC, with a gubernatorial campaign and now, because of all that, has a shot at a paid position with the campaign for the rest of the summer. He has also been working part time. The experience and contacts he has gained already have made it well worth it.
Exactly, which is why Obama is leading the charge to get this all unionised.
Unpaid internships are a way to gain invaluable experience.
I know of no engineering interns in industry that are unpaid.
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