How long is too long? Internships over 6 months qualify as employment.
The Donal MacIntyre show on graduate schemes last week highlighted the following problem: that graduates looking for work experience get caught up in unpaid placements that can last over three months. The discussion was geared towards the Graduate Talent Pool, a government scheme set up in 2009 to help graduates find work experience in their relevant fields. The project serves as a kick start for recent graduates facing unemployment because of the recession. However, it emerges that a large portion of the internships advertised on the GTP are unpaid and have an extensive period of over 6 months.
Words by Lemma Shehadi
Graduates fresh out of uni and looking for employment enter a vicious cycle: for though they have the qualifications, they do not have the experience required. Without this, they are unable to get a job, and are furthermore barred from gaining experience. Internships, paid or unpaid, help to resolve this problem.
There is a flexibility as to what qualifies as an internship, which leads some people to see it as “volunteered” work and others as exploitation of labour. The problem of definition begins with the distinct lack of grants available for interns, which make the opportunity exclusive to those who can afford to work without pay. Unpaid interships cover expenses only, and the Job Seeker’s Allowance is only legible to those who have been claiming it 6 months prior to their internship. This likens internships to indefinite unemployment.
In contrast, interns in Wales can claim a minimum of £240 for 10 weeks. What the Go Wales Work Placement does, in limiting the allowance to 10 weeks, is also restrict the length of internships to that time. This makes the shorter placements more appealing and reduces the risk of exploitation.
Consider the classic nightmare intern scenario. This is the one where the intern, hoping she will be offered employment by the company, or unable to find a placement elsewhere, works unpaid for over 6 months, during which she is asked to make coffee or squeeze oranges. What is clear in such cases is the following: a six month placement is no longer an internship, and neither do running jobs count as work experience for qualified graduates.
The fear is that in such cases, internships are breaking the minimum wage law, whereby anyone over the age of 22, working full hours should be paid a minimum of £5.80 an hour. A philosophy student argued that a worker’s relation with a company are purely financial, and his work contributes to an economic system of gain. To not receive monetary rewards in return is exploitation. Another student however points to a loop hole whereby because interns volunteer to work, they can do so without pay.
However interns have reported very positive unpaid experiences, many of which would no longer be available should pay become a requisite. Small businesses, online magazines, underground record labels cannot afford to pay their interns, but can provide them with great experience and the possibility of a job. A consultant at Chatham House in Picadilly told me about an intern for whom a solid position was actually created in order to make her an employee. When she left that job, the position was offered to another intern. Chatham House’s internships pay expenses and are restricted to three months.
It is not the pay, but the length of an internship that should be monitored, as well as the company’s work ethic. It is clear that this ethic will not change even if paid internships were enforced. This may, in the end, justify exploitation of employees, by becoming a disguise for what is really an underpaid job. To restrict the length is to reduce the time given for exploitation to become possible. This works on a number of levels, namely that it highlights the “temporariness” of an internship to both the intern and the employer. The former is less likely to feel trapped in an unpaid job with no financial or intellectual benefits.
See the article on jotta
