Your thoughts on unpaid internships? Slave labour or needs must?

[FrancesMumsnet]

Hello. We've been asked by the folks at InternAware for your comments, experiences and thoughts about unpaid internships, the system where young people work for free, sometimes for extended periods, in return for something to put on their CV - and maybe a foot on the first rung of their chosen career ladder.

InternAware are worried about the financial toll this system is taking on family life. They say 37% of interns complete 3 or more internships (European Youth Forum survey) and, as most
unpaid internships are based in London (where living costs are high), a single typical three-month internship could end up costing a much as £3000.

If you'd like to, you could sign InternAware's letter to Nick Clegg, which calls on the government to do something to help families struggling to help their children get a job. (Clegg, if you remember, said last year that "internships have been the almost exclusive preserve of the sharp-elbowed and the well-connected", and that they should be paid).

But most of all, we'd be interested in hearing your thoughts: do please post them here.

maybenow,am I right in thinking though,that there are not full time jobs for all these people?

it's difficult to say, when i was in a big organisation taking in interns, i managed to get 4 out of 6 into full-time jobs, albeit one in a very low-level position. Of the interns i've had in the last two years, a few have gone back to other countries (they were studying here) and a few have vanished (i assume left the sector). However, if the universities are training these people in specific skills for our sector at post-graduate level then they've already made their choice that they want to try to get into it as a career.
Generally i'd say we get about four times as many applications as we took interns and those we took were the cream of the crop and mostly got jobs in the sector in the following six months.

Maybenow: There is a huge difference between volunteering: someone gladly giving X hours per week/month and internships: (usually) graduates working full time for no pay.

bookfairy - but how could you legislate against internships without affecting volunteering? in our industry all are managed by our volunteer manager, and our interns don't all work full-time but we wouldn't want to limit how many hours a volunteer or intern could do if they wanted to.
i understand that some internships are exploitative but i'm VERY worried that any attempt at legislation will cause really big problems for sectors that rely on volunteers, or graduates who rely on their volunteering experience to get them a job.

Agree with BookFairy.Vast difference.
Two different things.

I am completely open to suggestions of how you could stop one while encouraging the other.... until i hear a proposal that meets that criteria then i will not agree to support any steps to stop internships.

may you mention bringing in minimum wage would mean hundreds of Interns wanting a way in being kept out, but doesn't it mean now that the majority of people doing Internships have to be financially supported by someone?
That financial support is not always available for everyone, which means it is and will eventually create a bigger class/financial divide?

If the Internship is a structured program with a high-profit turnover i agree with Minimum wage, however if it is a few weeks work experience or with a small company it isn't quite the same.

i wouldn't have thought any letter to nick clegg would be acknowledged

internships have always gone on

don't eton old boys have to provide work experience for new eton schoolboys?

the old boy network it's called

lol that they're trying to be transparent with it now

I think they are unfair. My DS has just finished at university and getting a job is proving tough, as we knew it would be.
Most employers are wanting experience - one way to get it is to work for free - if he could find someone to take him. In his case the problem is that London is the most likely place and we just can't afford to keep him there, for more than a very short period, if he wasn't earning anything and with no guarantee of it leading to a job.

He will never get a job near home, we live in the wrong place, therefore it is very difficult to find anywhere that he could travel to from home for the work experience.

If you need someone to do a job, you need to pay them. Not everyone is in a position to be able to afford to spend several months of their life working for free, no matter how much they want to get into their chosen profession.

I did a lot of unpaid internships/ voluntary posts when I was trying to get a job in the heritage sector. Quite often this is the only way to gain experience as even entry level positions are highly sought after despite being badly paid and even with a relevant Masters degree you are up against a lot of people in the same position with experience.

The heritage sector is for the most part non-profit making and therefore there are not the funds for paid placements. I applied on spec sending my CV out to anywhere within travelling distance as I wanted to gain experience. I was fortunate in that I was living at home and working part time as a lot of the placements were only one or two days a week. It definitely played a huge part in my success in getting my first job.

Having said that in profit making industries I would expect an internship to be paid even at a very basic level, and it would be nice if non-profit making organisations could at least fund travel and lunch which mine did not.

Thanks very much - all of this is great stuff and v v interesting.

May: The DWP already acknowledge that there is a difference between volunteering and an internship. As an unpaid intern in London I was not eligible to claim JSA as I was "working" full time and unavailable for work. Now that I'm back in NW England I volunteer with four charitable organisations and am able to claim JSA as I am available for full time work. Job Centre Plus/DWP allows a JSA claimant to volunteer, so long as the claimant is not working full time for one organisation.

Exotic: Major sympathies for your son. NW England is an economic blackhole and I'm desperate to clambour out of it. I tell myself that I'll be working for so long that even if it takes me another 5 years to get sorted that will still leave me with a 35 year career. Plenty of time to pay back my JSA and make a slight dent in the extortionate interest my Maintenance and Tuition Fee Loans have built up!

I have done loads, years of unpaid voluntary work for the NHS, in order to get enough experience to be considered for the career I want to pursue. The NHS advertises for volunteers - must have a degree, they/we're highly skilled people working for free, doing the same job as others who are getting paid, except those roles are very hard to come by and why would they bother recruiting paid workers when there are volunteers who'll do it for free? I think it is scandalous that the NHS are doing this because everyone pays taxes for a quality service. The service is then using free staff to save money and ultimately, the contracts are going to private companies anyway. It's a big pile of shit and i'm very bitter.

too many companies exploit desperate,keen interns
a short identified period to get experience is ok,but habitual use of interns as unpaid staff is exploitative
and only horahs and trustafarians can manage to be unpaid interns without discomfort

The problem with trying to draw the line between volunteering and internships for legislative purposes is that as soon as you draw the line, internships will be offered just to the other side of the line.

e.g if they say "If you work more than 20 hrs per week for more than 10 weeks, you must be paid the min wage" then miraculously all the internships will be 19 hrs a week (they'll just hire two)or for 9.5 weeks.

Also, they can't stop people "waiving the right to be paid". It's like the EU working time directive. On the first day at your blue chip job you're given the opt out sheet and a pen and asked if you want to opt out.......and you know what the right answer is ........

I dont think it's right but I don't think you can legislate for it. If people believe that taking an unpaid internship will boost their chances, they'll go for it.

But Richman,they can try.
They could make it say 20hrs a week for 4 weeks.
That is still enough to give the intern a taste,and potential employers to see who they may be getting,without the whole thing being exploitive.

It can be done,if the will is there.

Yeah, but is it worth taking up parliamentary time with legislation that can just be got around? The "employer" probably doesn't care if he's using one person to do the filing or 10 consecutive people.

It's also the monitoring of this. Who's going to do that? It all costs money?

There is also a high chance that those supposedly being protected by the law collude with the employer.

I think it is like the minimum wage issue.
A lot of people made a fuss beforehand.Saying things like,a lot of businesses would go out of business.
I wondered how it would all turn out.
I think I am right in saying that very few if any did go out of business.

And very few people want to do away with the miniumum wage now.

RichMan But at least that would allow time for a part-time job which would open up the opportunities a bit more. Obviously the issue is deeper than simply saying everybody doing more than 20 hours must be paid, but it's a move in the right direction.

two of my friends have managed to get jobs in a competitive field straight after graduating with no work experience done. With jobs being rare also, so I'm slightly dubious as to what W/E actually achieves. In my field, i think it is mostly a networking tool.

We employ young graduates/those who have been working for a few years, and I have to say that the "permanent intern" puts me off employing them, as it screams to me "rich mummy and daddy" or "I don't know what to do". One, for say 3-6 months, is fine, but we get people applying for jobs with us who have been doing internships for two or three years. I would much rather employ someone who has had a proper job at McDonalds or as a care assistant (so not related to the wonderful world of policywonk at all), as they are more likely to have a good work ethic (this is my experience) and not strut around saying "I didn't get my first class honours degree just to do your photocopying/filing/take the notes at a meeting."

I totally agree with you Mrs You have just described a couple of my friends.

My friend and I graduated at the same time a couple of years ago from the LSE having done the same degree. I got a higher pass than her and my dissertation won an award and got published.

She lived in London, I'm on the SE coast. Her family is very wealthy and mine is a bit skint. There were hardly any jobs when we graduated and enormous competition for those there were. She took an unpaid internship at a prestigious London company and worked there for six months, supported by her family. At the end of it they gave her a job.

I applied for loads of jobs but it took almost a year to get one, and in the meantime I worked nights at a cab company.

The thing that bothers me about internships is that usually the only people who can afford to do them are those who are well off or who have well off family willing to support them, so it's always the same people doing these jobs. I'm just an oik from Margate done good and I cannot compete with people like this.