The security risk is actually lower for the intern than most people in the company.
It is not like these interns are not heavily screened, like anyone else in a organization, including, but not exclusive to, of a couple references, professor recommendations, background checks etc. All interns in such positions are also over 18; none I know really were below 20, and they all sign NDAs with an impetuity clause. Executive interning is some serious stuff and gets the same personnel clearance as any employee, except that intern knows jack and is there to absorb and learn, not work in the sense that people are thinking on here.
The unpaid intern is not the security risk to worry about, as often he is just so darn grateful to be able to witness and learn what is going on at the higher levels. It is the executive you pay $450,000 who he thinks he is worth $600,000 who is the risk. That guy is the person who knows the tiny important details, which can screw you with a competitor if he leaves or leaks it. That is why you need to lock him down with non-competitor clauses etc.
It is also the lower paid employee who has yet to grasp the importance of his position who often drops the ball because he is not careful enough, such as the Apple tester who left his unreleased iPhone 6 in a bar.
The unpaid intern who even thinks about leaking anything, if found out or even just suspected (which is all way too easy to find out given IP addresses and everything is digital) would never have a career after just whispering the threat a lawsuit. Even the unpaid interns know that, and are reminded of that, rather vividly, in the exit interview.
Well, the unpaid internships are out there, so not sure what he ll breaks loose you are talking about. But, if one does not seek out unpaid internships, then I guess it is easier to just pretend they do not exist, if you cannot get or use them.
Looks like these unpaid interns who are shadowing executives and not doing grunt work are pretty rare (there are not that many executives to shadow in the first place, and not all executives or their companies see a need to have shadowing interns). Also, such interns who are shadowing rather than doing grunt work are not the ones who would run afoul of labor laws anyway.
True, there are a good bit of client and friend-referred unpaid internships. If a top client, employee, or friend asked about such an internship for a son or daughter or for a friend of his kid, a company would be nuts not to put them at the top of the list. Hey, depending on the person asking, I would have directed an unpaid internship be created for him / her.
The “unfair” part to the middle class and poor is a bunch of nonsense, and really is just more of the middle class jealousy schtick that is so prevalent on CC. People need to drop this whiny working-class BS and look at the facts.
The fact is a company, which favors people who it knows in distributing internships and jobs, is not doing anything any differently than anyone else in another job / profession does on a daily basis.
Does a lawyer charge his neighbor the same as his corporate clients for the exact same advice? No. Does the lawyer have some silly obligation to extend that treatment to others he does not know? No. And is it unfair if he does not extend this to strangers? Of course not. The lawyer treats his neighbor better, as he should, because his neighbor is also jointly invested in the neighborhood and the lawyer’s overall well-being.
An acquaintance from the gym is a pediatric surgeon and cardiac specialist of some sort. When his wife got an issue with one of her glands, his doctor buddies treated her with the very top procedures within 2 days, when the wait for the average person would have been one to two months with all the tests etc. Do the doctors have some obligation to extend that to everyone who is middle class and poor and whose insurance may not cover that procedure? No. And is it unfair if they do not extend? Of course not. He said that the most unexpected thing was that surgery cost him less than his kid’s bout with pneumonia, i.e., the doctors and the hospital extended professional courtesy with very low rates, less than 80% of what it should have cost.
I was talking to my favorite bartender just last night, and he filled me in on his new walkway. When he told me the materials and what was done, I had to ask him, “How in the world did you pay for that?” I asked because what he mentioned was way beyond common sense on a bartender’s pay. He then smiled and said his BIL is a contractor and did it using left over materials from a job where the client bought stuff and then changed his mind and did not use 15% of it. Is the BIL under any obligation to extend that goodwill to anyone just because they are middle class and poor? No. And is it unfair if he does not extend? Of course not.
When the middle class professionals and the poor stop doing each other favors and stop practicing nepotism with people they know, only then can they ask a corporation to treat the people it knows like strangers. Therefore, I call absolute BS that a company, which has relationships with its executives, with other companies, with paying clients, and others, is under some made-up, pie-in-the-sky “unfair” code to treat people they do not know at all the same as people with which they have business and personal relationships, i.e., treat the people who actually spent capital and time helping it succeed, as if what they did for the company did not matter anymore than someone who has done zilch.
But this devaluing of relationships will never happen because, after all, a corporation is simply the relationships between a set of people for the sole purpose of producing a product or service. And the most efficient way to produce the best product or service is to make sure the people who work for you and with you know that, in the long-term, you value and treat them better than the stranger who just walked in off the street. Instinctively, people know and get this, and thus, practice it.
“I will speak for my company when I (and my executives) had unpaid interns - the unpaid internships that were with executive management were posted in the career listings of our four main go-to schools which were Harvard, Williams, Amherst, and Princeton. They were slated for only superior rising juniors and seniors.”
Out of curiosity, awctnb - can you give us the general industry in which you compete (understanding that you cannot provide specifics)? And was this a publicly traded or privately owned company?
I think awctnb should tell us the actual name of the company. If they aren’t doing anything illegal, why not be open about it? I’m sure it doesn’t have government contracts because someone who’s just there a few weeks doesn’t have access to any secure information since they don’t make friends of friends pass security clearances. Just a bunch of Ivy and associates running a friendly business. No need to worry about labor laws.
The scenario AWC describes would land everyone involved on the unemployment line in my company.
Nobody is hiring their squash partners kid to shadow an executive. Yes, we use professors as informal sources of referrals to top talent… but kids who come through the door in that way face the same screening and assessment process as anyone else.
All interns are paid (as I’ve stated before) and we follow the labor laws in every jurisdiction (both US and around the globe) where we have a facility. We are not the United States Senate (where there is both a “civic duty” component to the educational value of an internship) nor a local blood drive (where people who want to volunteer have to meet minimum criteria- training, TB test, safety checks on use of gloves and masks).
The idea that AWC’s company has a lower bar for kids shadowing its “top executives” than my local red cross chapter… not sure I buy it.
I think there are some nice unpaid internships where the interns learn a lot, get to attend meetings, network, etc.
However, I think there are plenty of internships where the intern is led to believe that’s what it will be like, but the reality is that the intern is doing routine work, and often has little contact with anybody who is actually doing work relevant to the intern’s interests. And because the intern is the weak person in this relationship, he doesn’t quit, and doesn’t sue. That’s why we need laws and standards, to discourage exploitive employers from doing this. It’s even worse if it becomes a norm in an industry.
If the internship is paid, and turns out not to be as good as advertised–well, at least you’re getting paid.
My analogy is flawed only if the proper economic understanding of price is ignored, and the proper economic identification of value is also ignored. This is why there are books dedicated to explaining what a price means.
The short version - your post totally ignores the fact that price does not refer to a monetary value, but only to value in general. And that value goes both ways, i.e., it has meaning to both parties (buyer and seller) and the true definition who is the buyer and seller is really determined by which party holds the most value.
Logically, it should not be difficult to understand that the party who holds the least value is in the weakest negotiating position and regardless if you want to identify that party as the seller, that party is actually the “buyer” of an offer lower than he wants for his good, even if he identifies as the seller.
Not that simple, if you understand what I wrote above about what a price represents - a value that has meaning to both parties.
The error is your assumption that what the intern has for sale is valued by the targeted buyer (the company) at the price the intern wants. However, the intern is not paid base on what he thinks he is worth; as with all positions, he is paid what the position is worth and valued at.
Worth (pay) is not arbitrary and is not determined by outsiders who have inflated views of themselves - worth is a calculated function based on production of said position and the ROI of that production. If a certain position produces / returns less than what the intern thinks he should get paid, he will be offered or get paid less than he expected.
Therefore, even if the intern is the initial seller, given the situation where an intern erroneously bases his value on something else other than the position, he soon finds himself in the reverse position, i.e., that of the buyer, since the company will not pay him his inflated value. That is, the intern finds himself the buyer of an intern position at a lower pay than he expected.
In a nutshell, whenever a party assumes his value (pay) based not the ROI of the actual position, but on some unconnected outside criteria, he is no longer the true seller, as no one is buying his overpriced goods. He becomes the buyer of the positions, which are available.
Correct, the Mercedes party is the true seller here because he does not give a hoot if you walk out the door, i.e., he is in the strongest negotiating position and the true determinant of the product’s value. i.e., price. They are selling all the cars they can make and another buyer is around the corner. He does value your $70,000 more than the car (that is why he is selling the car), but he values anyone’s $70,000, so if you leave, no skin off his back.
In contrast, the intern, who overestimates what he should be paid (overestimates his value), is not in the same position as the Mercedes seller. Unlike, the Mercedes seller, the intern better take an internship quick at lower pay before the internships all disappear. Since the intern has no bargaining power to get inflated pay, he quickly becomes the “buyer” of whatever internship covers what he wants to learn about.
This is a economically nonsensical analogy, as your assumption that the company is giving away the unpaid internships is beyond wrong, makes no sense. You are confusing price with costs.
It is not too hard to see:
The pay of $0 for the unpaid internship is the price of the internship the intern sees, but that is not the actual value of the position to the intern, only the value the company places on it in terms of what it brings the company re beneficial production.
Value is relative, even for the same price - it depends who is assessing. For the intern to take the unpaid internship, there is a cost, i.e., the opportunity cost represented by the forfeited pay of a paid internship. Therefore, in real economic terms, the intern actually “purchases” the unpaid internship. Even though the company does not get the money in its pockets, it did economically “charge” the unpaid intern for the position; it did not give away the internship.
Hence, in reality, the intern is not a seller here, but a buyer of an internship he sees as more valuable than money he could have made from a paid internship.
Now, why do some interns do this? Very simple answer - they assessed what they would get out of that internship is more valuable than the costs they paid to partake in it. Specifically, the intern assessed the unpaid internship no differently than he would any other purchase, as a trade of unequals where, from his economic vantage point, he comes out ahead.
Again, another erroneous economic assumption that what the intern brings is more beneficial than what the company brings.
It is only exploitation if what is done by the intern during the internship benefits the company more than what is gained from the internship. However, if the company is actually doing the teaching and the intern is doing the learning, then there is a real case that the intern benefits more.
Another irrelevant analogy.
See previous section above. The company is not giving away the unpaid internship, as the intern who takes said internship pays with his opportunity costs, same economic value as money he could has made elsewhere. The unpaid internship is not free.
Unpaid internships (and paid one too), like fast food jobs, are not meant to be permanent positions for one person. They are short in duration because, by definition, you are not supposed to be there long.
And, any intern who cannot afford to take such a position, should, well, not take such position. Not hard to figure out budget-wise. As with everything else, do not live beyond your means, unpaid internships included.
Have not a clue what this means, as the unpaid internship is built into the overall structure of company costs, just as the price of the car represents a specific, calculated percentage of overall company costs. (Sometimes prices are solely done based on division costs dependent on how the supply chain is set up).
Going off the deep end here a bit - silly to compare a 15-minute test drive with 4 to 12 weeks of actual use of a company personnel, desk, office space, and parking passes etc. A 15-minute test drive is not equivalent to the hours sent in an internship, not to mention the legal responsibility the company takes for the intern.
The apt analogy to the test drive would be taking a company tour and watching a factory in operation; in contrast, participating in the unpaid internship is equivalent to short-term leasing the Mercedes.
If you cannot afford the lease, do not buy it, and get the lease that you can afford. Not everyone can afford a Mercedes lease, and not every student can afford an unpaid internship. Welcome to life - different people can afford different things.
Your posts are constructed based on so much ignorance that I wondered if it was even worth responding. Then I realized that students and others may benefit from a proper response, so they are no misguided by the self-proclaimed intellectuals of CC, and are properly informed.
No - one must not pay all interns, as there are guidelines as to what is considered a paid internship structure and an unpaid internship structure. You keep talking about illegal this and that and that all interns must be paid without having a darn clue of the difference.
Yes - it is a good thing that there are laws against the overwhelming majority jobs being internships - that is because the company directly benefits from the job.
I actually think that the case, which is the subject of this thread, involved internships that were too muddied in their concept and what they were doing for the intern in terms of teaching and education. Not knowing the specifics, on its face, I could easily see where one could equate getting coffee and cleaning up, as the same as working at McDonalds. When I was running it, my company paid interns who did such things because they did make the life of executives and regular staff easier. A lot of what seemed in question in this film studio case is basic manual labor, which as a company, we classified as a job, not an internship.
I agree that standard legal interns and investment bank interns should be paid. After all, lawyers are hourly workers and the interns are doing work to reduce the type of work the licensed lawyers need to do. That is beneficial to the law firm’s bottom line. Same as with investment banking interns - most do grunt research and basic analytical work that relieves the menial duties of the real investment bankers. Not much, if any, real training or new learning going on there.
No - People could not just pay their way to Silicon Valley and work free to get in the door because 99% of the jobs require specific skills and actions that are brought to the company for the sole purpose of improving products and services, i.e., the person is directly beneficial to the company and its products. None of these positions could even be remotely classified as internships, so your conjecture that this could happen is all made up, as it could not even occur.
You keep talking about illegal, not following the laws, and others talk about scams and not believing etc. Well, at least it clear who is ignorant. I am fine with you living in your ignorance, not my issue to clear up for you.
However, for those who want to know, the structure of unpaid internships should follow certain guileless that any top employment and labor firm or lawyer can asset with navigating.
Here are is legal summary breakdown on how the unpaid internships I refer to are set up and what conditions cover the unpaid status:
The link above does warrant the question of "If these unpaid internships are illegal and should not exist and do not exist, then why in the world would labor lawyers openly discuss or even waste their time posting such information? Yeah, I guess the lawyers are promoting illegality, since these unpaid internships cannot exist legally, as you say. And I guess companies that have such unpaid internships hide them in the open with their labor lawyers help. You will not find what you do not believe exists and never look for. Not my problem to help find you find the obvious, but the smart kids do find them.
Um @awc I think you need to go back and read the OP. According to the article in the original post the Second Circuit just threw out the 6 pronged test you linked above in the Dinsmore article. They instituted a new 7 pronged test.
And if you happen to still have one of your interns hanging around this summer, maybe they could proofread your writing for spelling.
Why don’t these magnanimous companies who are doing it benefit the student and with no benefit to the company just pay the intern $7.50/hr and not worry about the internship being declared out of compliance?
I think all internships beyond 2-4 weeks should be paid unless they are set up through the school and there is school supervision and credit given. Of course it is wonderful to be a white house intern or work at the red cross or follow Tom Brokaw around, but it’s a slippery slope. What if you aren’t following Tom Brokaw but Mike the Weatherman from a station in Wichita, and you are expected to do errands and fetch coffee and answer phones? If you weren’t there, who would do it? Just pay the kid.
I simply cannot keep up with the brilliance of the people on CC.
Anyway, a while back I ran into a former executive at the track and I remember that his kid, a college sophomore, was doing some internship at Mass General this summer; first, for some psych unit and then shadowing a doctor for 2 weeks after that. The issue of paid and unpaid was not something I even thought about, but I do recall him talking about how much it costs him and laughing about how in our youth we could travel to Europe for six months and live like kings for the same amount of money. He is paying travel, room and board etc. since kid does not live there.
On a whim, I looked and, darn it, I found the first internship, but I gather the first easily leads to the second with a doctor, if you are accepted and you are a top candidate. I know I got my second unpaid internship three decades ago that way - just by being part of an initial one in the organization and then being offered the second, which was more exclusive. Would not be surprised if the doctor shadow internship is behind the hospital’s career section security wall and not part of the general public unpaid internship lists.
One of my unpaid internships was similar in that I was in all meetings and did all rounds with the lead research doctor, studying the most critical patients, and discussed all patient cases with him, and also even presented in the clinical presentations. It was great; learned a lot. Would do it again.
OK, now you all can inundate Mass General and tell them of their crass exploitation and that these interested future doctors and researchers, who are willing to spend their own time and opportunity costs, should not be given these opportunities even if they can afford it because some other kid cannot afford it. It would be interesting what they tell you in response.
Do you all not get the sheer silliness of this “everything must be paid internships” approach - that is, if all kids cannot have the exact same opportunities, then we must dumb down and limit the opportunities for all kids, to get some equity standard that is lower that we could be as a society, as a whole. That is nothing but the systematic dumbing down of the population in the name of equity. And that makes sense to people, as a way to excite ALL kids to be their best? Bizarre thinking, to say the least.
AWC- your sarcasm aside, surely you see the difference between a kid volunteering at a lab at Mass General Hospital, vs. “volunteering” at Morgan Stanley? As I see it, there is some “societal good” being produced by having a kid working at Mass General for no pay, vs. that same kid working at a global, for-profit enterprise for no pay.
In theory, doing so at a non-profit is like volunteering for a charitable cause. In practice, as non-profits are often engaged in similar types of activities as for-profits (e.g. medical and education contexts), the ethical lines can be fuzzier for those who want to argue along those lines.
You will not find what you do not believe exists and never look for. Not my problem to help find you find the obvious, but the smart kids do find them.