Battle to end slave-internships more important than it seems
One of the unacknowledged, up until now, villainies of modern America is the internship. I was spared this torture by clever, unconventional thinking and a stubborn refusal to compromise on my protest of the unhealthy experience. However, nearly all of my peer friends, and most of my acquaintances, have suffered through the slave driver routine of the internship: Perform menial tasks as a glorified go for without pay for 8-12 weeks, while possibly paying their university for the privilege of doing unpaid work for rich companies. The reason of buttressing the holy grail of capitalistic documents, the resume, was always begrudgingly given from young people attempting to justify their voluntary exploitation. Wealthy corporations and organizations take advantage of the highly competitive job market, which now resembles a pack of lions fighting over the carcass of a wildebeest, and exploit the fears and ambitions of college students and recent grads to create a slave labor situation that not only betrays the foundational spirit of internships, but may also violates labor laws.
Internships were created to function as high impact teaching and training apprenticeships that benefited the intern much more than the company. It was under this system that internships were held up in court when they were originally challenged as illegal. Current law, under an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, states that internships cannot be simply unpaid labor without highly beneficial teaching and training in the desired field of the intern. In other words, a profitable business does not have the right to make a 20-year-old stuff boxes, fetch coffee, and stock shelves all week without compensation.
Like most business regulations, this one has been ignored by employers, workers, and the US government. The painful consequences of neglecting the internship labor law go beyond the obvious mistreatment and abuse of intern. It also contributes to the growing and gnawing inequality of American life. Internships have become more important for obtaining a high paying job in the increasingly corporatized, dehumanized economy. If many valued internships refuse to pay, they will be feasible only for rich students who can afford to report 25-40 hours a week to a job, on top of classes, without the slightest financial reward.
Universities that sponsor and supervise internships, and more importantly state regulatory agencies and the Department of Labor, have suddenly had a stroke of conscience and are seeking to simply enforce the law. The New York Times reports that the party, in this small respect, may soon be over for exploitative companies:
Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.
Many regulators say that violations are widespread, but that it is unusually hard to mount a major enforcement effort because interns are often afraid to file complaints. Many fear they will become known as troublemakers in their chosen field, endangering their chances with a potential future employer.
The Labor Department says it is cracking down on firms that fail to pay interns properly and expanding efforts to educate companies, colleges and students on the law regarding internships.
“If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” said Nancy J. Leppink, the acting director of the department’s wage and hour division.
Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
The good guys are beginning to win.
Internships may seem unimportant in the grand scheme of illegal and/or unethical practices by outlaw corporations. However, a strike against the internship status quo is a strike against the heart of the system that elevates private tyrannies to divine status and demands that everyone below the heavenly throne be so grateful for its existence that they simply bow down, kiss the king’s ring, and ask, “What else?”
All humanistic and democratic parties should applaud and assist, in whatever way possible, the current effort to monitor and regulate company internship policies, and punish those who violate the law. Exploitation on any level should not be tolerated in a decent and civil society. Small victories against criminal treatment of workers may very well become the traffic guards that wave larger, more transformative victories through the intersection.
Conversely, the acceptance of small violations may lead to the allowance of large ones. The effects of such suicidal leniency need not be described.
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[...] Battle to end slave-internships more important than it seems … [...]
You all cheered when slavery was introduced into the American healthcare system a cuople of weeks ago by Obama and crew….forcing 300 million american to sign up for and pay for Obamacare….
Unpaid internship as it is now operating is a scam, because corporations (and even some individuals) aren’t even paying a University for the free labor and the “student” offered the internship doesn’t get college credit for the work. Instead, the “employer” gets free labor with the promise that – someday, somehow – the intern might – just might – be offered a paying job.
These internships aren’t just being offered to students, they’re being offered to anyone looking for a job regardless of how many years of experience he or she has. It’s the corporate way of scamming people who don’t have jobs.
I look forward to the government shutting down such scams, and I also understand why “reform” will be vigorously opposed: who wouldn’t take up arms to defend their right to enslave others?
I finally entered an internship during the final year of my master’s. I had avoided it for years out of principle — resisting the prevailing mindset of my peers (and those of the poster, apparently).
It was a valuable experience, but the ultimate indignity came from paying my university for the “privilege” of commuting an hour each way, three or four days a week, when I could have taken on a part-time job and paid my rent on time
Paying your university to do this, and tongue is planted firmly in cheek here, may make the financial arrangement actually worse than slavery.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m torn about this one. I agree that if a college kid is not getting credit for the internship, s/he should be paid. But if you’re using the experience to augment your classroom studies, and there is a real academic purpose for completing that internship, complete with a required thesis/paper on the experience, I don’t think there is harm in that practice and it certainly does look good on a resume in a very competitive job market.
I did an internship last summer, and the only way to possibly fund it was to get academic credit from the University, and then take out a financial aid loan (You cannot take out a financial aid loan unless you are getting credit).
So, on top of the loan for living and traveling expenses, I had to take out another few thousand so I could pay my University tuition. The University justifies this by providing you with a “faculty supervisor” who is supposed to stay in contact with your “field supervisor.” They are supposed to read your weekly journal and what not.
My faculty supervisor responded to a few of my emails during the experience, never read my journal, or even asked for the mandatory “reflection paper” at the end of my experience. A total farce.
Some student are actually in a worse place if they get a paid internship, simply because then they cannot qualify for certain grants or financial aid. In other words, even if the employers decided to pay, say, minimum wage-$10 an hour, it wouldn’t be enough for a student to live on necessarily, and it leaves the student without other traditional recourse.
The entire higher educational system has steadily become a money making scam. Plenty of good comes out it, but stories like this only reaffirm the suspicions many people rightly have when they look at unjustifiable increases in tuition, the move to hiring more and more adjuncts, and petty penny squeezing tactics such as aggressive parking ticket policies, fees associated with nearly every on campus activity, and consistent cutting of scholarships.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] not only betrays the foundational spirit of internships, but may also violates labor laws.” Battle to end slave-internships more important than it seems, [...]
Not only today is there a rising issue with so-called “Unpaid Internships” but light should also be shed on a new phenomenon that is that of the “Eternal Internship”…
Many of us, part of the summer 2008 and 2009 graduating classes were unfortunately incredibly hard-hit by the smack of the recession and the rise in unemployment…
Eager to gain experience and hopeful to one day find jobs, we thus, entered an endless cycle of “Eternal Internships”…one after another in hopes of finally reaching “Eternal Employment”…
It seems as though there is finaly a little light at the end of the tunnel, but times have been tough and the “Eternal Intern” phenomemon is not one to be ignored (often coupled with the ‘unpaid’ phenomenon – double whamy!).
If you want to check our story out (my story as well as that of two friends), please check us out at : http://www.the-eternal-intern.blogspot.com.
We span 2 continents, 3 different cities, 3 different industries…and yet we are still restricted by this Eternal Intern phenomenon…
Flora
http://www.the-eternal-intern.blogspot.com