The Unpaid Revolution

When an article starts with:

A revolution is coming. And it will not be funded. At least for now. Who’s going to revolt? Unpaid interns.

… you know it’s going to be good.

Juliette Dannas-Feeney gets it right more than once in the GW Hatchet. Some examples:

Unfortunately, there’s sometimes a fine line between unpaid internships and slave labor.

Unpaid internships like these are the elephants in the room.

While this blog has shown little interest in the issue of “boring internships”, Juliette brings a fair point about them:

In other words, the work I do at my internship cannot benefit the company or the way it runs its business in any way. According to these criteria, it’s essentially illegal for me to file papers, organize a co-worker’s calendar, or deliver mail.

Indeed, if the internship is unpaid, how can it be legal if it consists of administrative work?

Let’s hope that this article will light a spark at George Washington University.

Follow legal rules when hiring unpaid interns

The title of this article from TechRepublic is nothing new to this blog and shouldn’t surprise anyone who lives in a lawful society. Now, it may surprise people who live in countries that shall remain nameless.

Since we’ve covered the fact that the law does not allow for free labor a few times, here’s a selection of recommendations that on which we haven’t insisted yet.

Decide beforehand if the business has the time and personnel to closely supervise and mentor an unpaid intern.

Wait a second, some may say, an intern will take time and staff? Yes, and more than it will provide labor. An internship is a training that a company is offering, not free help that it is receiving. Now this:

When in doubt, businesses can avoid legal problems by paying interns at least minimum wage.

Isn’t it cool: minimum wage will get a company out of trouble! Quite cheap. But it’s really a minimum. If a company needs staff to do something productive that adds to the bottom line, why not offer a fair pay?

UK: FAQ about Internships and Minimum Wage

Great document put together by the UK Department for Business Innovation & Skills: Internships and National Minimum Wage – Frequently Asked Questions. The answers do not surprise us the slightest.

Does it matter what I call the internship/job? Whether someone is entitled to the national minimum wage depends on the actual circumstances of the arrangement, not the title given to the job or the role.

As they say in the UK: What’s in a name?

They make an interesting distinction between “worker” and “volunteer”.

If you have a contract of employment then you are a worker. (…) A volunteer does not have any form of contract of employment or contract to perform work or provide services.

And before any employer think they have found the loophole, note that “the contract does not need to be written”.

This is an argument that always puzzle me: interns are paid in work experience. Who doesn’t gain work experience through their job? How does that cancel the need to pay an employee? The BIS does not tiptoe around the issue when asked whether someone who is doing work experience needs to be paid:

Someone who enters into an agreement or contract to work for experience will be a “worker” for national minimum wage purposes and entitled to be paid the national minimum wage in the normal way, unless they are a genuine volunteer or fall into one of the groups who are exempt.

And very importantly, they provide guidance on how to report an unfair internship in the UK:

If someone thinks they are a “worker” and not being paid the national minimum wage, they can ring the Pay and Work Rights Helpline on 0800 917 2368 (Text phone 0800 121 4042). The Helpline is open from 8 am to 8 pm (Monday to Friday) and 9am to 1pm on Saturdays.

Please do.

UK Parliament urged to respect interns

A British political party has taken the side of interns:

Parliament should “set the standard for the rest of the nation” on the treatment of interns, Phil Willis has said.The Liberal Democrat MP’s comments came as around 100 interns, MPs and lobbyists gathered in Parliament on Monday night to demand an end to the abuse of “generation intern”.

This is good news.

David Willetts told the event: “I can sense this is the start of a movement, it feels like an uprising.”

Let’s hope so.

UK: An inquiry into unfair internships

Could it be happening?!

A government watchdog is to investigate whether companies are exploiting thousands of graduates by employing them on unpaid, long-term internships during the recession, the Guardian has learned.

And even politicians, who make and break the rule, are to be investigated.

A Guardian inquiry has also discovered that MPs could be breaking the rules. Ministers have estimated that unpaid interns work up to 18,000 hours a week inside parliament, a saving of more than £5m a year on the national minimum wage. MPs are each given a staffing allowance of £104,000pa.

This practice is looked at more closely in a separate article. It states the obvious:

However, guidance provided to MPs states that “interns who are obliged to do work under the control of the member or member’s representative are likely to be workers under the minimum wage legislation and so should be paid the minimum wage.”

This interest for unfair internships from a regulatory body is more than welcome. Those who think that it’s ok just because it’s widespread may be in for a surprise. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll follow the inquiry of the Low Pay Commission.

Are Unpaid Internships Destroying America?

This is the provocative title of a post from Derek Thompson at the Business blog of The Atlantic. It is built around Anya Kamenetz’ article in the NYT three years ago. I’ll reproduce my comment here, which sums up arguments made over the years on this blog.

Unpaid internships are often unfair and illegal (see the Fair Labor Standards Act).

The short explanation: if you’re contributing to a company, you deserve a salary. Call it an internship, a job, a contract, an assignment – it’s all the same. If your internship is actually an apprenticeship where you’re a drain on a company that goes out of its way to train you, it’s legal.

Yes, interns gain valuable experience. But aren’t all employees benefiting from their work experience? It leads to improved productivity, pay increases and promotions. Entry-level employees already receive a lower, entry-level salary for their lower productivity.

“I do think the internships paid off, inasmuch as they led to other internships and, eventually, to jobish things.”

This illustrates well the collective action problem: some time ago you could get a job out of school, then to get a leg up, you would do an internships, then everybody does and you need two to get ahead, then everybody has two… This is where we are now. There is a law against it. It is just ignored because graduate students have little power in the job market and their internships are just a transition.

More questions are addressed at UnfairInternships.com. Thanks for talking about the issue.

If by any chance I get visitors coming from The Atlantic looking for more, have a look at the FAQ for more answers or click on the tags such as “Legal” for more references.

Debating the legality of internships

There’s an interesting discussion going on at Model Mayhem, a site about photography and modelling, about the legality of internships. Unpaid internships are common in this business and a quote from UnfairInternships.com got the conversation started.

Since I’m not a member of this site, I’ll address a few points here, even though many are already discussed in the FAQ and Resources sections of this blog.

If someone wants/accepts an unfair internships, it’s their own business.

This someone is putting everybody else one step behind. The fact is that this practice is endemic. People who do not want to take an internship now have to do so because they compete for an actual job against people who have internship experience. It’s a collective action problem.

An internship is a great way to learn and get into the business.

That’s very true. And so is a first job. An unfair internship is not better than a first job to learn a profession. The only reason why the former replaces the latter is competition between new entrants on the job market that lowers the bar.

Congressmen have interns.

It would not make it legal, but if they are offering unfair internships it may explain why they are not acting much against this form of labor exploitation. This being said, I am not privvy to the contracts between interns and congressmen and I don’t know what is the salary offered.

Not all internships are bad.

Also very true. This is why this website is about unfair internships. When internships are shaped like apprenticeships, they are a very good way to learn without being exploited. When they’re paid a legal wage, it’s just a job.

Is volunteering evil then?

No. The difference is generally that the organization does not derive a profit from your work.

The SWEAT Team

Overt at The Watercooler, a forum on the British film industry, there’s an entire section for posts on unpaid jobs – whether they are called internships or else. The debate is well-informed and heated at times. The industry is hit hard there as much as anywhere else and people who want to enter the industry are getting frustrated, with good reasons.

There’s an informative thread answering some common question about regulations, volunteers and competition.

The issue is that many Film and TV companies are breaking the law with regard to not paying young people the National Minimum Wage where it is due. They will take on someone as a “runner” or “work experience” (using the claim that it is “good for your CV” or “good experience”) and then not pay them. This is illegal. Every worker (with a few minor exceptions) is entitled to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage for every hour they work.

It’s worth noting that SWEAT stands for “Stop Working Experience Abuse Today”. Have a look at the list of successes that they claim.

Keep your own House in order

The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons in London, Chris Bryant, is not only a lawmaker but also part of the management of the Parliament. As part of a review of the working conditions of MP staffers, he was asked a question about the labor (or labour) practices of the Parliament. More specifically, he was asked about internships:

7^th Question from the floor: What about interns? The situation is not satisfactory will they look at their pay and expenses?

CB: Personally I feel very uncertain about the situation with interns.

1. It is not good to employ people for free
2. It is not right that people with contacts or wealth get on in professional life because they have those two things.

I will not criticise colleagues who have interns and I know people are prepared to volunteer because they are so passionate about it. It is not our intention that the independent Committee on Standards and Public Life will look at that although the work being done by Alan Milburn on access to the professions may address it. I think interns should be a separate issue and I would support a formal system of internships like they have in the EU.

Notice how the MP makes very good points about how the labor market should operate. If lawmakers start respecting the labour laws, maybe they’ll feel less uneasy about enforcing them.

(via Interns Anonymous)

Unpaid internships: common but illegal

Another labor lawyer looks at unfair internships, another layer finds an illegal practice. Michael Tracy:

A common, but frequently unreported labor violation is the use of unpaid interns in violation of minimum wage and possibly overtime laws.  The scenario is fairly typical: a company offers an opportunity to ‘break into the business’ in exchange for the intern working for free.

He also provides his perspective on college credits in return for job experience:

Some companies try to get around the law by requiring that the internship be part of a college program.  However, there is no exception to the law allowed just because the “intern” may receive college credit.

He also has an interesting opinion on the lack of lawsuits:

The main reason that you do not see more lawsuits regarding unpaid internships is that the interns are very unlikely to sue.  In most cases, they fear being blacklisted, as they will undoubtedly need to use the internship as a reference to get any future work.

I would add that interns see their situation as a transition. By the time they file and win a lawsuit, they will have moved on to a proper job. They won’t benefit from their effort. But the law has provisions to address this problem, at least in California:

This is where California’s Private Attorney General Act comes in.  Because this law allows anyone at the company to sue for labor violations, even if they themselves are not affected by the violation, it is now possible for these companies to be brought into compliance with the law.  If you work for a company that uses unpaid interns and would like to put an end to this illegal practice, you should consider bringing a Private Attorney General cause of action.

So if you’re an employee that’s been displaced by an unpaid intern, you have the law on your side.