A news story came to my attention a couple of weeks ago that caused me to shake my head, hit it against my desk and cry simultaneously. To the unknowing onlooker it would have looked a lot like some sort of mad, masochistic crisis, first bludgeoning myself and then attempting to dry my resulting tears with the oak tabletop. Thankfully, this all occurred in the privacy of my own room, so only me and everyone who was watching the live stream through my Trendnet home video monitoring system could see it.
The article in question which caused me such dismay was regarding the following BBC story entitled “Young people's internships and paying for work experience”, and can be seen here - http://tinyurl.com/82q4acu. It struck a particular chord with me, as I have recently completed a three month internship myself, and hence have firsthand experience of what it’s actually like. For those too lazy to watch the clip themselves, in summary, it seems that our helpful and courteous pal, free market capitalism, has now adopted a “kick ‘em when they’re down”, curb stomping attitude with regards to the masses of unemployed youths. As if you weren’t poor enough being out of University with £20,000+ debt, in a saturated job market where no one will hire you unless you essentially become a slave for a number of months first, now the heads of the beady-eyed, greedy, money-grabbing hands of business have reared up from their cess pits of profit margins and overheads in which they reside and actually want to CHARGE you to work FOR FREE.
Since the recession, there has been an explosion in the popularity of unpaid internships where, for the most part, a company will take on a graduate for a number of months, getting them to do all the toilet scrubbing jobs that they can’t afford to actually pay someone to do, in return for said graduate gaining a quite variable amount of work experience in the field they are actually interested in being employed in. Graduates are often lured in by the prospect of bolstering their CVs, whilst often receiving ambiguous hints from the company that there might be some possible slight probability that they maybe could be offered a permanent, paid position at the firm after their internship has concluded... perhaps. It’s essentially the same thing as making a donkey walk by dangling a carrot in front of its nose. This practice (the internship thing, not the donkey thing) is not only illegal - http://tinyurl.com/7ezx4vq - but also, the reality of these situations is that there simply is no job at the end of the process and, instead, the company will just employ another intern to replace you. They call this a “rolling internship” and it seems to be the done thing nowadays in the UK.
But of course, the government wouldn’t dream of acting on any of the thousands of cases of this illegal procedure, as they know that exploiting graduates for free labour is probably the only way that many small businesses and start-ups are staying afloat at the moment. If you believe that this gambler’s gambit system of economics we are unfortunately lumbered with is actually working – i.e. if you’re blind, ignorant and/or stupid – you might say that saving small businesses was a “good thing”. Even so, what about the bigger businesses who don’t even seem to have enough money to spare to give the poor whelps minimum wage? And what about these thieves who are charging people to work for them, or these companies like Inspiring Interns (http://www.inspiringinterns.com/) who are making a fortune from pairing companies up with their free labour slaves? That, dearest readers, is unequivocal and unarguable exploitation.
Don’t get me wrong, if done properly I can definitely see the value of an internship, and the idea of hiring interns is, in theory, both morally decent and corporately responsible. I do have friends who were offered permanent jobs as a result of their internships and, moreover, I myself gained a great deal of worthwhile experience from my own. The people at the company I worked for were extremely helpful and professional with me and taught me a lot – also, I was paid for all my travel expenses, as well as a generous amount for food. This being said, I was lumbered with the horribly monotonous customer service jobs in exchange for all the decent experience I actually wanted – an aspect of the position which was not mentioned in the initial job advert, (although it admittedly was at the interview). Furthermore, there was a rolling internship scheme in place at the company but, even so, it was never made 100% clear as to the possibility of available permanent employment; indeed, I might go so far as to say that I felt marginally ‘lead on’. Finally, all this experience is well and good but, at the end of the day, I worked for this company for 45 hours a week, for three months, for free. By law, that should entitle me to approximately £3283.20, if paid minimum wage. In reality, I received £2197.20, leaving me over a grand short of what I was legally entitled to.
Thankfully, this wasn’t a particular issue for me, as I’m lucky enough to have parents who were able to support me throughout the three months; however, this just isn’t the case for most people. As such, here lies the crux of my issue with unpaid internships: in the current state of the economy, nobody can be expected to be able to work for free, let alone be charged for working for free. The concept is completely unreasonable and, frankly, insane. I mean, at least the slaves from history were provided with food and somewhere to sleep, for christ’s sake. But thanks to a combination of the mainstream media (see the BBC’s tepid and predictably bleached out, unbiased account above), as well as complete inaction from government and universities in standing up for young workers’ rights, everyone just accepts their fate as ‘just the way things are’.
How is unemployment ever going to get any better when paid positions are substituted for unpaid ones? I like to call it constipation of the job market, that is: most people can’t afford to work for free, so remain unemployed due to lack of experience; whilst simultaneously, those who can afford to be unpaid are effectively blocking the employment of the person who should be doing their job, whilst still technically remaining unemployed. On top of this, do internships even make much of a difference to employability? Well, I can tell you that I’ve applied for about 30 jobs since finishing mine and managed to land just one interview. Moreover, my friend who has done no less than four internships doesn’t have a job either. What are we supposed to do, continue being interns forever? Also, now that this practice has been going on for so long, will it ever stop? Even if the economy does somehow manage to miraculously raise itself out of this swamp of a depression, why on earth would any company want to stop getting free labour?
It’s a situation which spawns from a society in which the bottom line is top priority. At a time when people are at their most vulnerable; when the cost of living is ever increasing; where you see hundreds of people applying for one position; and even those who are fortunate to be employed are getting paid less than they’re worth, constantly worried that their positions might be at risk... what do we do? We stand idly by whilst the slave trade resurges from the 19th century before our very eyes, all because we’re told and made to rely entirely on the antiquated concept that profitable business = economic growth = good. That money from the top will trickle down to the masses. Well, as we all know, not much trickling happens when you’ve got constipation.
Something needs to be done. Universities and the media need to do more to raise awareness of interns’ rights. Most importantly, the government needs to steadfastly and fundamentally state the illegality of all unpaid internships. Companies must be enforced to pay at least minimum wage to interns AND to be crystal clear from the beginning as to the potential for further employment. Don’t let money get in the way of simple decency and respect.
To fully understand your rights, and for information on what you can do, visit http://www.internocracy.org/
