Growth of unpaid internships probably illegal

[PCLoadLetter]

Our shop eliminated internships a few years ago because of the pay issue.

We gained nothing from the interns, so there was no reason to pay them. Those interns used to get a good learning experience for class credit, and now they don't.

Not sure who won here.

 

[Mark2010]

I overheard the powers that be around my place the other day say they planned to make the traditional 2 summer interns we get unpaid. I just kinda walked by and said "good luck with that."

What do you mean? They'll probably have enough applicants to be able to get away with it.

Exactly.
If the place is full of kids that really want it – they'll beat the door down to work for free.

Very true. I can't say too much because back in my university days I did a summer internship for no money, just course credit.

It's a time-honored tradition. I'm not going to argue the morals of it. But I will say no one forced me to do it. I could have sat at home playing video games or gone back to fast food for $5 per hour. So I have no one to blame but myself. My only real regret was taking the first thing that came along and not being more selective. If I was going to work for free, I could have found a better place to do so.

 

[Armchair_QB]

But are robot interns illegal?

 

[Captain Obvious]

I think I've got a different perspective. I would prefer to make nothing while doing something than the opposite. I'd rather agate, write a gamer, cover a house fire and go to a 5k for diabetes and not get paid than answer phones for $6/hr.

College is an investment in your future. And what better investment than covering a whole bunch of stuff for a paper / radio station / TV station. Look, I never had any money in college. I worked - at one point - at eight different jobs at the same time to make ends meet. And I took two unpaid internships, too. I worked like a DOG in college. And it taught me more about time management, budgeting and real life.

Sorry kids, everything in life isn't easy. The real world isn't easy. You want to get ahead? You have to earn it. Besides, so long as it is for credit, a student loan can be applied to it. Again, college is an investment. It's not for everyone.

We did away with traditional interns (do work, get experience, etc) where I'm at because we weren't allow to have them do "work" anymore. Now interns simply shadow different people on a rotating basis. So not only are they unpaid, they aren't gaining any skills.

What is the point in that?

The idea: "Interns have a chance to learn from each person in the newsroom"
The outcome: "Interns learn nothing because very few people learn about how to DO a job by watching someone else do it"

Just my two cents.

Answering phones is definitely a job that requires a college degree. Sorry, but when papers across the country hire kids to take calls, you can't use the argument unpaid interns are acquiring valuable experience.

 

[JimmyHoward33]

I should clarify, answering phones as in taking scores and writing them up. Not just taking messages or setting up lunches.

It's all stuff that we do anyway, but it sure helps having an extra body on the desk. Does it add value to the company in the strictest sense? I suppose. But I cut my teeth doing it and I don't think its wrong. It would be to string a kid along doing this for no pay for a year or more, but one semester in conjunction with a class to me seems reasonable enough.

 

[SnarkShark]

I think I've got a different perspective. I would prefer to make nothing while doing something than the opposite. I'd rather agate, write a gamer, cover a house fire and go to a 5k for diabetes and not get paid than answer phones for $6/hr.

College is an investment in your future. And what better investment than covering a whole bunch of stuff for a paper / radio station / TV station. Look, I never had any money in college. I worked - at one point - at eight different jobs at the same time to make ends meet. And I took two unpaid internships, too. I worked like a DOG in college. And it taught me more about time management, budgeting and real life.

Sorry kids, everything in life isn't easy. The real world isn't easy. You want to get ahead? You have to earn it. Besides, so long as it is for credit, a student loan can be applied to it. Again, college is an investment. It's not for everyone.

We did away with traditional interns (do work, get experience, etc) where I'm at because we weren't allow to have them do "work" anymore. Now interns simply shadow different people on a rotating basis. So not only are they unpaid, they aren't gaining any skills.

What is the point in that?

The idea: "Interns have a chance to learn from each person in the newsroom"
The outcome: "Interns learn nothing because very few people learn about how to DO a job by watching someone else do it"

Just my two cents.

And by earn it, I mean work without earning money.

 

[Cyrus]

I'm not philosophically against unpaid internships, but in most cases they're against the law. It doesn't matter if there's a demand for them.

And if they're against the law, newspapers, who love to uncover corruption in other big, bad companies, shouldn't be looking to circumvent the law.

For it to be unpaid, it's supposed to be a situation where the intern is learning, not not doing work that benefits the company and not taking the job of someone who would otherwise need to be paid.

They're not supposed to be filing, doing clerical work, or getting coffee.

One of the big reasons against them is that it benefits richer people who can afford to take an unpaid internship at the expense of poor folks who can't afford to.

I'm surprised how many liberals on here are justifying the illegal, undemocratic, unpaid internships.

I'm just stopping by to agree with every word you've said, and surprisingly I'm a slightly moderate liberal. Allowing businesses to not pay people for work is one of the most core personal human rights issues. Privilege at its base does not get any more than "are you lucky enough to be able to work for free?" Because there are billions of people who aren't.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

Well, those unpaid internships should be for college credit, so the "can't work for free" argument doesn't hold a lot of weight for me. It's essentially a class. Depending on the hours at the internship, it can be a pretty even trade that's invaluable to the student.

Having said that, I have a big problem with unpaid internships where the interns are performing needed tasks for the newsroom. My interns made my job more difficult. I was happy to work with them, but they weren't taking someone's job by being there -- more often than not they were writing stories for my newscast, and I would spend 5 minutes working with them on a script I could have written myself in two minutes.

In my first shop, a number of newsroom employees were laid off (including me) and interns were scheduled to do some of those jobs starting the next day. They actually laid off the sole assignment editor and made that an unpaid intern position. That's unconscionable.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Well, those unpaid internships should be for college credit, so the "can't work for free" argument doesn't hold a lot of weight for me. It's essentially a class. Depending on the hours at the internship, it can be a pretty even trade that's invaluable to the student.

I had two newspaper internships. One paid I think $300 a week and the other, I hit the motherlode at $500. This was in the early '90s. They offered great experience, they were great on my resume and they gave me a leg up at a very competitive time in the industry. Plus I had beer money.

If they were unpaid, I never could have taken them. I would have been back in the door factory making $6.20 an hour plus overtime. And I was in no way underprivileged. We were solidly middle-class or maybe above.

As college costs have gone up, even a low-paying internship is geared to the wealthy. An unpaid internship is exclusively theirs.

 

[NQLBLQ]

I think I've got a different perspective. I would prefer to make nothing while doing something than the opposite. I'd rather agate, write a gamer, cover a house fire and go to a 5k for diabetes and not get paid than answer phones for $6/hr.

College is an investment in your future. And what better investment than covering a whole bunch of stuff for a paper / radio station / TV station. Look, I never had any money in college. I worked - at one point - at eight different jobs at the same time to make ends meet. And I took two unpaid internships, too. I worked like a DOG in college. And it taught me more about time management, budgeting and real life.

Sorry kids, everything in life isn't easy. The real world isn't easy. You want to get ahead? You have to earn it. Besides, so long as it is for credit, a student loan can be applied to it. Again, college is an investment. It's not for everyone.

We did away with traditional interns (do work, get experience, etc) where I'm at because we weren't allow to have them do "work" anymore. Now interns simply shadow different people on a rotating basis. So not only are they unpaid, they aren't gaining any skills.

What is the point in that?

The idea: "Interns have a chance to learn from each person in the newsroom"
The outcome: "Interns learn nothing because very few people learn about how to DO a job by watching someone else do it"

Just my two cents.

And by earn it, I mean work without earning money.

Point made. But let us be real, my work wasn't WORTH the money most times. As PC said above, intern work is usually not up to professional level and people spend time working with the interns to help them get better. Or at least that was my experience.

Example: I was the "runner" for a summer league baseball team's play-by-play guy. I'd grab stats, let him know who was up in the bullpen, etc. I even got to call part of a game one day. In return, he said, "ask me anything. I'll answer it." At the time I was considering a career in play-by-play so it was a GREAT experience.

Can anyone say they would EXPECT to be paid for that at 19 years old?

 

[PCLoadLetter]

Well, those unpaid internships should be for college credit, so the "can't work for free" argument doesn't hold a lot of weight for me. It's essentially a class. Depending on the hours at the internship, it can be a pretty even trade that's invaluable to the student.

I had two newspaper internships. One paid I think $300 a week and the other, I hit the motherlode at $500. This was in the early '90s. They offered great experience, they were great on my resume and they gave me a leg up at a very competitive time in the industry. Plus I had beer money.

If they were unpaid, I never could have taken them. I would have been back in the door factory making $6.20 an hour plus overtime. And I was in no way underprivileged. We were solidly middle-class or maybe above.

As college costs have gone up, even a low-paying internship is geared to the wealthy. An unpaid internship is exclusively theirs.

In a perfect world, I think paid internships are better than unpaid internships.

In the real world, I know that the alternative to an unpaid internship will be no internship, 99% of the time. Like I said, when the lawyers raised concerns about our interns being unpaid, my company immediately eliminated the internship program. I don't blame them at all, because there's no reason to pay the interns when they are the ones benefiting, and not the company. That's not the case in many internships, but it was for all of ours.

I got into this business through an unpaid internship. The week it ended I was hired part time, and the week I graduated I was hired full time. I would not have had that job without the unpaid internship.

We had interns who drove their BMWs to the station. We also had interns that rode buses to get to the station. So, yeah, it was a heck of a lot easier for the wealthy, but other kids made it work too. They can't anymore, though.

 

[LongTimeListener]

I do remember all the broadcast students bitching about the unpaid internships, come to think of it. Served 'em right.

Seriously, though, I do also remember that anyone going places in broadcast (and this was out of Mizzou) was pretty wealthy to begin with. Needed parental support both for the internships and the first $14K-a-year job. That industry has grown up around the idea.

Internships have taken on such a different form now. In addition to hurting the kid, they're also hurting the job market as a whole -- a lot of times that unpaid intern really is doing work that would otherwise need to be done by a paid employee, often full-time.