Are unpaid internships illegal? in pharmaceutical industry?

[possiblepickle]

I left a great research career 7 years ago after having children and have been working for the last few years in data analysis but not at the bench.
Is there a possibility of getting back into a research lab via doing an unpaid internship? People remember my work and will provide reference if an employer requests for one. I can also provide references from my current industry.
Has anyone done something similar? Can you please share your expeirces of unpaid internships and how you got them?

Interns are usually entitled to National Minimum Wage, the exception being if they are doing it as part of an educational course, such as a year in industry for a degree, or as a voluntary worker for a charity. www.gov.uk/employment-rights-for-interns

Thanks. That was my main concern. At the moment, I cannot pay for any new degrees or educational courses to use them as an opportunity to get back. That is the problem. Is there a legal limit to shadowing? That will be very helpful too.

No specific limit no, but there’s a limit to how long you can observe what someone is doing without doing anything yourself. A week, maybe two?

This is ridiculous, I had no idea this was a thing. Could you maybe offer your services as a consultant at £1 or whatever to get around that? (assuming you find someone willing to take a chance on you that way of course).

There are quite a few return to work in science fellowships - google Daphne Jackson Trust and also the Janet Thornton Fellowship. You might also want to try working as an RA - your skill set sounds very useful!

”This is ridiculous, I had no idea this was a thing.”

What’s ridiculous? The minimum wage?

@EmperorCovidula

This is ridiculous, I had no idea this was a thing. Could you maybe offer your services as a consultant at £1 or whatever to get around that? (assuming you find someone willing to take a chance on you that way of course).

That sounds like a great idea. How will that work out legally? Will ACAS be a helpful route to look for advice on expanding this idea?

@flowery

”This is ridiculous, I had no idea this was a thing.”

What’s ridiculous? The minimum wage?

In a way, I totally agree with making unpaid internships illegal. That is a route for exploitation. But for people like me, who are in employment (hence not dependant on a paycheck from that internship) and want to get just enough experience to get back in, it feels like a joke sometimes. I don’t know what the middle ground is. But I know that this rule is holding me back at the moment. The only other possible route is to get into a re-training programme (a degree in the field where my past experience is) which places you as an intern as part of the programme. Problem is most of these educational programmes are expensive and full-time too. I wonder about the consultancy route. What worries me is that I am not sure how permissible it will be in the environment of life science industries because these are heavily regulated industries.

Calling yourself a 'consultant' won't help you. Employment status (whether you are an employee, a worker or self-employed) isn't determined by what the parties decide to call it, it's determined by the nature of the relationship between the parties. If you're doing work of a kind that indicates employment, rather than consultancy, then your employment status would be a worker or an employee, and your employer must pay you minimum wage.

There is no way of differentiating between the various situations where workers are waiving their right to be paid the minimum wage. They might be doing it to 'gain experience' and may be in the very fortunate personal situation of being able to afford to do so. Or they might be doing it because they can't get a job elsewhere and want to feed their family so are working for pittance for an unscrupulous company happy to exploit that. The second group need to be protected.

I get that it's frustrating, and I wish I had the answer for you.

If you are currently working, are you suggesting that you give up a paid job to do an unpaid job? I'm not suggesting you should or could do an unpaid role, just asking if that is what you mean. Because in some parts of the country it is possible to join programmes that enable you to do this, but they are usually specific to certain conditions and often focus on economically deprived areas or specific skill shortages. But they run to very tight sets of rules due to needing to avoid exploiting people unfairly, and they are very, very limited in number. If you still have contacts in your old workplace, then it might be worth asking them if they know of any schemes, or at the JobCentre - although the latter may be useless about knowing, as they are quite specialised. Many are associated with EU funded initiatives, and these are usually funnelled through regional rather than local government structures. It probably won't help, but it's worth a shot if this is what you want to try.