The Jobs Americans Should Not Have to Do? (One must wonder what kind of society we have become.)

The jobs I had before I joined the Army;

Lawn Care - Now done by illegals

Construction grunt - Now done by illegals

Dishwasher - Now done by illegals

Anyone notice a trend?

Cheers,

knewshound

It is not just a matter of supply and demand, it is a matter of how much the intern will learn on the job and how much staff time will be needed to train him.

I've worked with interns before in a professional (supply chain management) setting. No slam on the interns, because all those whom I've worked with have been nice kids. But the fact of the matter is that for every hour of real work you get out of them doing mundane stuff like entering data and checking spreadsheets, you will spend at least an hour showing them how to do some of the other things (generally more glamorous and complicated jobs) which also have to be done.

Generally, your added workload is at least as much as the workload relief which the intern provides.

So he or she is getting a cheap education at your expense. Most of the companies where I've worked with interns do not add them because they need help with the workload, they add them as sort of a civic responsibility to educate the upcoming generation in the realities of the workplace and, on occasion, get a good look at potential recruits.

In these happy occasions, it is sort of like renting the model car which you are considering buying. In this day and age, when most business don't even want to take a chance on new college recruits, it can be a win-win for both parties.

Here's the thing that ticks me off - I'm workin' the crap jobs right now, I've been doing it for 3 1/2 years. I would be doing O.K. if I could work 60 hours a week, but since THE LAW says anything over 40 hours MUST be paid TIME AND A HALF, my boss - and ALL the crap job bosses - won't let ANYONE work over 40 hours. So that forces me to have 2 jobs. So even though I work over 40 hours (at 2 jobs), I STILL only get paid the regular hourly. So what good is this freekin' law other than to force me to juggle 2 jobs?

This stupid law should be abolished or at the very least an opt out.

The same could be said of any trainee. You can spend weeks or months training someone without any guarantee they will work out. And many times they don’t. There is a huge cost and risk associated with training. But you don’t expect the trainee to work for nothing. Same with an intern. In many cases, the company selects the best and the brightest for their intern program. Even though the task at hand may be mundane, they are watching them to see if they will make a good future employee. Think of it as prescreening to reduce risk.

Its a sore point with me as I have seen some companies take advantage of interns. I just think that if you work, you should be paid. Not saying they should get gold plated wages—just fair compensation for their time.

You're right, but with a key difference: Companies hire trainees because they do not have an adequate supply of the right type of people to promote in their own organization. They use interns because these type of people are lining up to get into the organization. The old law of supply and demand.

Because our society has conditioned people to think they have to go to college and work in "exciting" jobs, which always include air-conditioned offices and almost never include making anything, the "exciting" jobs can bid down wages, even to zero, and still have people lining up to take them.

The less exciting ones even have to pay their interns well to get them.

I will say that the companies I've worked for and interns whom I've worked with have always been treated well. We would give them gasoline cards, commuter passes, meal allowance, etc. We would have even paid them something, but it would have put us over corporate headcount targets or run us afoul of the labor laws. In all cases, we were approached by the interns (or the people who sent them such as colleges, vendors, etc.) asking for such positions, not the other way around.

I realize some, probably even the majority, of companies do not behave in such an ethical manner and use interns simply as a way to avoid hiring temps because they can. I just do not want to see another government edict enacted which shuts kids out of possible opportunities because some abuse the privilege.

The best check against such abuse is a fluid and dynamic economy which forces companies to compete for labor resources in the same way that people have to compete for jobs.

“What I think he’s trying to do is to destroy what we are. The coming Dark Ages isn’t going to be a result of failed policies. It will be the result of successful policies.”

I’m with you there.

We he & his cabal not afraid of what they were doing, they’d do it at high noon, not, either figuratively or literally, in the dead of night.

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