Unpaid internships

[Sunshine55]

Am I being unreasonable to think that unpaid internships should be banned. It seems a lot of companies just use this as an excuse for unpaid workers and once their contract has finished they get someone else in for unpaid work its just not fair.

And who would be performing these tasks alone and efficiently if you didn't have the intern, OfaFrenchMind?

I mean, it's one thing to have low starting salaries and probationary periods, with reviews at 6 months and a year.

It's another entirely to not pay workers for the work they do.

Internships are truly necessary for students and young professionals. There is no way a company will burden themselves with somebody with no work ethics of knowledge of workplace behavior and work responsibility. You mostly learn that during an internship, between 2 to 8 months

Rubbish! DS works for a top company in London and started in a proper job with pension scheme etc. He had had 3 years at university of course he was responsible and had knew how to behave in the work place. He was on probation for the first 3 months-they could have got rid of him had he not been worth employing. Very unfair to expect him to do it for no pay and then probably not even get a job in the end. We couldn't afford it anyway.
Why on earth would they even want an intern who didn't know how to behave and wasn't responsible and didn't have a work ethic?!!

YABU. If you banned unpaid internships a huge chunk of this country's MH services would collapse

That is training and quite different.

It also shows that MH services are massively underfunded-a disgrace in a civilized society.

OTheHugeManatee

I was just coming on to say something similar to you.

I am also a trained psychotherapist and currently practice within a private hospital and in private practice.

However once I completed my training I did around 2 years unpaid practice within a leading MH charity as this was the only way to complete my clinical hours and gain experience.

I was able to supplement this lack of income with flexible locum work in my other health based profession.

However I was struck by how many of my fellow trainees and trained volunteers were able to live without earning a income, this was usually due to having a partner in well paid employment who could cover the household outgoings.

Very difficult for someone without this financial support [or without another flexible way of earning money around therapy practice] to enter psychotherapy as a profession ime. This is probably a major reason why so many psychotherapists are of middle class to upper middle class background.

We would. Seriously, we would be able to, but in my company, most if not all of the entry level new hires are former interns. We consider the internship as a 6 to 8 month job interview to be honest. It saves time and resources, and most of the new contract do not have a probationary period.

It may help to mention that I work in a huge company that do not shy from hiring full-time employees, and treat them well. Interns have a good chance of being hired if they perform well. They are paid enough to work and live in London without needing additional income or help. I know I did when I interned.

My son did an unpaid internship for six months and is now doing a paid one for nine months. The problem is he had to move to London and its costing us a lot of money. They've said there might be a job at the end of it - it all comes down to head count. This is a global company yet they can keep him guessing until the last minute. If there won't be a job why is he working twelve hour days just now? I worry that they'll get rid of him and employ another intern.

an you clarify, OfaFrench - are "interns" in your company paid or not? You're now talking of people being "paid enough to live and work in London"?

Because being a low-paid worker, with a contract and T&Cs, etc, is a completely different kettle of fish to not being paid.

YANBU

My point is really that! Interns should be paid!
There is nowhere in my posts where you could think I support unpaid internships! I wrote it clearly enough.
I just say I support the fact that students go on internships to learn how to be professional and learn the basics skills their future job will demand.

YABU. If you banned unpaid internships a huge chunk of this country's MH services would collapse

That is training and quite different.

Not really. Clinical placements are usually organised by the student, not by the training institute. Most placements provide zero or very limited training as it is expected that volunteers are trainees at one institute or another. Some don't even provide supervision and expect the volunteer to pay for private supervision.

What volunteers are getting is on-the-job experience, unpaid. They need this in order to qualify - hundreds of hours of it, in fact, in order to gain accreditation. I don't really see what the difference is between this and an unpaid internship in, say, a bank, for the purposes of gaining work experience. If anything it's more exploitative because arguably you don't have to do an unpaid internship in a bank in order to get a job in one.

And the fact remains that without this unpaid labour - effectively internships - most poor people wouldn't be able to access counselling of any kind.

So again: if you want unpaid internships banned, you're also effectively arguing for the withdrawal of MH counselling services from people on low wages.

What a pile of crap claiming that those who don't intern first are of no use to an organisation.

Health professionals hit the ground running. So do unregistered health and social care workers. The bursaried training across all areas of the health service is NOT the same as an internship and all unregistered staff do not have formalised training apart from whatever each trust decides to provide.

My first day as a qualified nurse was as bloody shift coordinator on an acute MH assessment unit- not ideal but that is what happens when staffing levles are poor. I was petrified, taking charge of 42 acutely unwell patients. I can assure you I was of very great use that day, despite my lack of unpaid internship preceding my formal employment.

And I agree that without unpaid therapists, the MH system would collapse. It is very very wrong.

Nursing clinical placements are arranged by the university. Pre reggers can choose an elective BUT it has to be approved. The hours in placement and in learning are legally regulated by the NMC.

They aren't the same as training for counselling.

Interesting thread and I agree with the OP, I think internships should be paid.

Mumsnet/ Gransent usually has about 5 interns at any one time (on 6 month internships) in a staff of around 85. They are paid around £1k a month plus we pay NI.

Of the interns we've had since we started the scheme about two years ago I'd say we've hired at least 50% with the majority of others going on to fully paid jobs. I do genuinely believe it works brilliantly for the candidates to get a rung on the ladder/ test out a career and it certainly works well for us - it's like an extended job interview.

It's certainly also popular as we have huge numbers of applicants for each post.

Do let me know if you want any more info.

No, you haven't been clear at all.

This thread is about unpaid interns, and you have come in saying you think internships are a great thing.

If you're actually talking about workers paid at least National Minimum Wage, then that's completely different to what everyone else on the thread is talking about.

That's lovely that you don't support the idea of unpaid interns.

Seems several of us on this thread also think "internships" are a bad thing, where it's a euphemism for "being an unpaid worker."

Thank you for the reply.

When are you going to pay your local editors, many of whom work full time?

Sorry, that was to Ofa.

Justine, can you tell us why you call these staff "interns", not temps?

It would help pick apart what is going on in this field.

pausing media may have an enormous influence on the country, but any journalist will tell you that journalism as a profession is dead. Too much free content. No value on edited content. It's over. I could never advise anyone to go into it as a profession, whatever their background. If rich kids want to play foreign correspondents, well good luck to them. The best thing for social mobility is for working class kids to do chartered accountancy instead. That way they might be able to buy a house.

A thou a month in London though.... and that's for FT I assume? I would imagine that for a press intern, they're well below what they are worth, even as an untrained beginner.

Doesn't add up- living independently, maintaining a home would be very hard and most of them are handily pretty young so- bank of mum and dad.

And why do you need an extended job interview of 6 months? Do you have no faith in your ability to recruit young staff/ inexperienced staff using the more common 1/2 day interview?

Would you be able to afford to run Mumsnet without poorly paid staff?

The hours a trainee counsellor has to get under their belt aren't the same as internships though, I don't think, as they form an essential part of professionally qualifying. Interns don't come out of their internships with any qualifications or membership of a professional body: they have just had extended work experience which may lead to work in their chosen field.

But what is 'worth'? It's simple supply and demand. That's what I'm saying. In some industries- eg the meedja- more people want to work in it than there are jobs. That depresses salaries. In others,the converse is true. That increases salaries to attract people. Graduates should be very wary of getting into industries where unpaid interns are the norm as that implies a very high attrition rate/ crappy salaries for many years.

There are definitely some companies that take advantage of the large pool of people wanting to get their foot in the door, but banning them isn't the answer.

I have a moderately 'trendy' job and have many requests from people wanting to get work experience by spending a few weeks with me. There is no upside for me in having someone shadowing me, and slows down my own work, but having a short stint doing this job can be enough to make a recruiter or company take a look at a new graduate's CV.
I sure as hell ain't going to pay for the privilege of having to explain the why and how of everything I do, so would be stopping any offers of work experience...

Agree with AggressiveBunting - some sectors will always be fiendishly difficult to get into, and indeed some things like journalism are not what they were.

I heard a businesswoman on Woman's Hour saying that people really should give their chosen career a health check. She said she talked to a depressingly large number of young women students who wanted to work in "fashion journalism". She asked them, "Do you buy magazines?" and thereby rested her case.