Unpaid Internships And The Jobless People Fighting For Them

Los Angeles Times:

Working for no pay isn't the preferred route out of unemployment, but it offers valuable experience and the inside track to jobs once they do open up. But critics say employers are exploiting the slow economy by not hiring paid workers.

Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[fortressfountain]

11:00 AM on 03/17/2011

Isn' this in violation of the wage and hour acts? When did slavery become legal in the USA?
No matter how much you learn is that a gaurantee of a job? I see a lot of educated, highly skilled people out of work.
This is just a gamble for a corporation-much like subprime lending where they do not have to take a risk in a decision.
What is free market about this?

[GoodbyeRubyTuesday]

02:04 PM on 03/16/2011

I work in a profession that has always had apprentices as part of the work environment. The work is complicated and depends upon the guidance of individuals with experience to teach the apprentice.
These people are paid, not highly, but they are paid.
Right here on HP I have seen advertisements for interns, "Help an interior designer" etc.
It is appalling to use people without pay - at least a person should be paid minimum wage to offset cost of transportation, lunch money etc..

[saltpeter]

04:16 PM on 03/16/2011

Unfortunately also what's happening is some people prefer to take internship because getting paid minimum wage means that it discounts or disqualifies someone from receiving unemployment. Depending on some people's previous job, the unemployment could be more than the minimum wage and that should tell you as much about how underpaid even minimum wage workers are.

Still, particularly the competitive and creative jobs like interior designer or publishing or the like (fields that can be known to pay some professionals 6 figures and more) claiming that there's not enough money to pay the underlings anything, these fields know that people will slave away for the potential of something lucrative down the road. And that faint promise is what makes people jump through these arbitrary and artificial hoops to prove themselves.

It's ironic that you mention interior design because that's what I'm refocusing my career in but instead of slaving for nothing for months if not a year or more for an expert making six figures, I'm opening my own furniture store and learning the ins and outs through that avenue. Not only will I be my own boss but the vicissitudes of the industry won't mean that I have to ACCEPT someone else's opinion of my worth, I will determine and create my own worth for myself and my future customers.

[GoodbyeRubyTuesday]

04:20 PM on 03/16/2011

All the best of luck in your endeavor, saltpeter!
A furniture store with a side of interior design sounds like a good plan for the future.

[Carrie Krueger]

10:33 AM on 03/16/2011

I work with a lot of job seekers who do unpaid internships and find them a valuable part of their path back to work. Some are making a career change and want to get experience in a new field. Others want to avoid a large employment gap on their resume, or want to add a new skill to their resume. A key to a successful internship is for the intern to be very clear about what they need to get out of it and for the company offering the internship to be supportive of those objectives. Having them in writing and checking in regularly is critical. The company will gain benefit from the intern but they must be committed to truly helping the intern, in return. More on getting the most out of an internship in this blog:
http://blog.jobfully.com/2010/06/getting-the-most-out-of-your-internship-goal-setting/

It can and does work in the right circumstances.

[Arts4u]

11:17 AM on 03/16/2011

And how are these people to support themselves during this time? Nice idea which should be limited to students while in college... to expect working professionals to do this is immoral.

[StopMakingSense2]

02:06 PM on 03/16/2011

This is the republican era, moral doesn't enter the equation. Let see take 100 of the unemployed and let then fight for three months or longer with no pay for one job while enriching the company. If its unethical and illegal its just that republicans haven't crafted a law to shield it yet.. Unethical and legal is how they fly..

[GoodbyeRubyTuesday]

01:52 PM on 03/16/2011

It works if this is a new graduate from high school or college with housing paid by their parents and no family to support. It works when the internship is for a short period of time, like a year.
It does not work for the vast majority of workers.

[GoodbyeRubyTuesday]

03:42 PM on 03/16/2011

Oops, I misspoke: a short period of time less than 6 months.

[OldTulsan]

08:59 AM on 03/16/2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/ballinger03112011.html
Jeffrey Ballinger: Is Corporate "Responsibility" the New Justice?

" This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.

—Frederick Douglass, 1857

[snip]

As union leader A. Phillip Randolph said, "At the banquet table of life there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take and you take what you can hold. And you can't hold anything without power. And power comes from organization."

[RightnotLeft]

08:46 AM on 03/16/2011

Four and six year educations and still dumb enough to work for free.

[Arts4u]

11:19 AM on 03/16/2011

Agreed. I realize how desperate people have become in their search for work, but this gives completely no incentive to actually pay someone.

[48thGuy]

08:30 AM on 03/16/2011

Unpaid internships, returning shareholder value the old-fashioned way.

[Sam1USA]

07:57 AM on 03/16/2011

Unpaid internships are and always have been a Right Wing Labor Hating Wet Dream. You bring the skill, you work for free, the employer gives you little to nothing in return. Keep driving those wages down and actively creating a value scenario that supports lower taxes on the rich because the public prosecutor's office can't pay people.

Love it.

[wdw808]

08:23 AM on 03/16/2011

oh stop as internships have been around for hundreds of years........they serve a purpose

[laaambchop]

09:42 AM on 03/16/2011

Yes...to gain experience. Is it ethical to bring on an intern who does have experience?

[Arts4u]

11:36 AM on 03/16/2011

For students in college. Beyond that it is simply taking advantage.

[Alex Moschopoulos]

07:40 AM on 03/16/2011

Employers have been exploiting labor for decades. Ever since Reagan.

I don't know a time since the mid-90s when even college educated professionals had it so bad.

The employers have the keys and guard the doors though. They force workers to take free gigs because they hold it over workers if they have gaps in employment. Plus they play the "foot in the door first" politics.

You gotta love capitalism.

[wdw808]

09:07 AM on 03/16/2011

i don't hire people with large gaps in their work history either....... greater than 6 months your application is not even looked at.......applications are reviewed without seeing the applicant first then applicants are called in with a requirement to have a police check done and brought in on the day of the interview........we reimburse all fees........his ends up being self correcting....we can weed out the chaff by having these guidelines....if you see how bad your record looks and don't show-up i cannot help that........credit checks are done also.........

i still had 64 applications for 1 job......

these practices do work....as a general rule i promote from within unless it is dealing with a family member in need of employment

[Ashley Anderson Isadore]

09:18 AM on 03/16/2011

so if someone got laid of for more than six months you wouldn't hire them?

[laaambchop]

09:38 AM on 03/16/2011

Still on that power trip...

[saltpeter]

07:24 AM on 03/16/2011

I've had friends who have worked these kind of dubious internships which for all intents and purposes should be paid work and the problem with taking them on is that you don't get credit for the actual work that was performed. The traditional internship used to consist of the kind "fetch my coffee" type errand boy/girl type of skills but now more and more are the equivalent of, at least, entry level jobs or more. But when someone who has done these kind of enhanced internships, the next potential employer just sees "internship" listed on a resume and they automatically think that few skills were required for the job and treat that employee accordingly.

In the end, it's time for Americans to seriously reconsider the entire system and ask themselves if working for the "Man" is really helping them. Considering the "Man" now deems such things as health care and benefits as extraordinary privileges instead of Rights and the "Man" deems a workforce that actually expects to get compensated for their input to be hindrance to the "Man" doing business.

The "Man" has forgotten what our economy is all about. The vast majority of it is consumer spending and without PAID workers, there is no consumption, taxes, or producing going on.

[thoreau101]

07:24 AM on 03/16/2011

Free labor: the perfect GOP dream come true. Certainly makes bookkeeping clean and easy.When can we apply to be slaves?

[European1919]

07:22 AM on 03/16/2011

Surprised anyone?

[pep1]

07:15 AM on 03/16/2011

Nothing as good as slave labor... high quality, produce real results and FREE. Meanwhile we are shipping jobs overseas by the thousands, giving work visas. All this while highly educated, skilled Americans are working for the best corporate wage in town FREE.

And they just keep feeding the line Americans are not skilled, not educated enough, not industrious enough we are just a bunch of 'nots'...

How much longer before we start demanding some JOBS....and not Walmart jobs... real jobs.

[thoreau101]

07:24 AM on 03/16/2011

First we have to vote for better people, not Reagan clone clowns.

[eagle17765]

06:57 AM on 03/16/2011

never-ending loop

Greedy Corps hire free-labor(slaves) & pay nothing taxes - thus decreasing the State's Revenue.

The loss of State Revenue gives rise to no $$ to pay State workers - who become "volunteers"

Make the Corps PAY their workers, make them PAY payroll, income & property tax and then the state will have $$$ -- duh!

[eagle17765]

06:42 AM on 03/16/2011

Sweatshop labor - that's what all the GOP Union Busting & vilification of the Middle Class is all about

[maigrey]

06:30 AM on 03/16/2011

Yeah, got one of those offers from a company that had previously put me through the all day long interview process. I said no, I now own my own business, got tired of waiting. Then the butt nuggets offered pay. Let's put it this way, it was nearly as insulting as working for free. They don't get my brain. But my business is doing well. So for those who are still unemployed, hang in there and don't let the b@$t@rd$ get you down.

[saltpeter]

07:12 AM on 03/16/2011

I'm right there with you. I'm starting my own business as we speak. I worked too long and acquired too many skills to be unpaid for just another grinding job that EVENTUALLY might pay the bills but it isn't what I really want to do with the rest of my life. If you're going to hustle for somebody for nothing, you might as well hustle for yourself.

The best way to stick it to an abusive system is to take yourself out of that grind and recommit to what it is you really want to be doing and then find a way to do it without the disloyal corporations and businesses that have already proven that when it comes to American workers, they can take them or leave them. Let them lose all their talent and remind them how they became a viable company in the first place, through the efforts of their WORKERS.

[GoodbyeRubyTuesday]

03:45 PM on 03/16/2011

Thank you, maigrey and saltpeter, for standing by your values.