“So you’re arguing that working for free first should be a condition for getting a job?”
I’m not arguing anything.
I’m citing the reality that certain skills are a condition for certain kinds of jobs, and those skills are acquired during internships which are part of the education for those jobs.
Is this REALLY so hard to understand?
edited - I see you added that last line. But as long as you live in this worker-unfriendly nation, requiring employers to pay interns is as unlikely to happen as requiring them to offer healthcare.
So my kids knew a few kids got paid nothing for a year. Mom and dad finally decided that if they didn’t find a paid job they will be cut. The information must have relayed back to the company and they did get minimum wage jobs with benefits.
But for my kids, especially the oldest child in the movie industry, she did a fantastic job for nearly 2 semesters and one summer and got nothing in return. It’s a big company. My kid got nothing from the internship. When she graduated, I stood firm and said no financial help, she was welcome to come back home to live rent free. So that’s how she found a job at a law firm. But they also told her not to do the side business. She almost stopped but she loved the work. Finally after six months the law firm laid her off and she went back to work on her business. Her business has since took off, she last told me it’s no longer considered a small business, whatever that means. I need the kid to visit me so I can find out more.
So my point of view it’s unfair, they take advantage of you even with the credit given. The time and energy she could use somewhere.
So for kid #2, she interviewed for paid internships only, I told her not to even bother with unpaid internships.
There should be a minimum time, like after so many months of internship, it must be converted to paid minimum wage. No more free labor.
I don’t have a problem w internships being an educational prerequisite for a job. I just have a problem w UNPAID internships being a prerequisite for a job. As i pointed out, doctors are required to do an internship, but they get PAID.
As a student, my engineering internship was both a learning experience for me and a test drive for my employer, and i got paid, and paid very well.
In a nutshell, not only did unpaid internships not help students to get jobs, but when they did get jobs, they were offered lower pay, lower even than those who had done no internship.
“Hire” the students as unpaid interns,
Then, when they graduate, hire them as “1099” workers. It is great for the company’s business and the shareholders’ interests are protected:
Long live capitalism, American style. The internship “debate” is a storm in a tea cup. It’s a cute little distraction from many of the REAL issues at hand.
Are u suggesting that i support Disney’s actions??? As a guest worker in a foreign country, I felt strongly about the incident. I was thoroughly disgusted by Disney’s behaviour. I don’t work for peanuts to undercut local wages.
The internship issue and the Disney travesty are related: they’re about undercutting fair wages.
You’re being once again disingenuous. I cited the Disney outsourcing as an example of far more egregious – yet hardly unique – behavior by American employers which make the issue of unpaid internships (affecting a small percentage of American workers) seem, in the grand scheme of things, like kids’ stuff.
I have a broadcasting degree. Entry level jobs are tough to get because it seems like everybody knows someone who’s always dreamed of working in television. Many jobs, even those above entry level, depend on who you know. If you didn’t have a broadcasting degree, you filled what could have been an entry level job of someone who did.
Of course unpaid internships are unfair. The fact that businesses use other unfair and exploitative practices does not mean that using unpaid interns is okay.
How am i being disingenuous? The Disney outrage doesn’t make unpaid internships right… BOTH foreign sourcing of under-marketwage workers AND not paying interns should be illegal. Don’t know why u think it’s only possible to find one thing objectionable.
This is inaccurate for the broadcasting industry. The only internship I ever did was designing brochures for an assisted living agency. I was a poor kid who had to work full-time in school. The kids whose families were well off enough for them not to work spent a lot of time schmoozing with our professors and got internships at actual broadcast stations. However, none of us were paid for them.
I got my first broadcasting job because I took a clerical job at the station and made sure the production manager knew I had a broadcast degree. When he got me transferred to his department the only hands-on experience I had was in the college studio. It was more than enough for me to be successful at my job.
Time is money. I’m advising my children not to work for anyone who won’t pay them.
“If you didn’t have a broadcasting degree, you filled what could have been an entry level job of someone who did.”
Very true, @austinmshauri, I didn’t have the degree. I did gain much of the practical experience of those with the degree during the internship. But I also offered my news director skills he wanted/needed, among them foreign languages, which were part of the degree I did have. Also, I did much better than most broadcast internship applicants on the current events and ‘cultural literacy’ test I took as part of my application. I wasn’t unschooled or a total rube and had something to offer the newsroom. That’s why I thought I could succeed in it. Which I did.
As to your post #34… what can I say? In the top 20-market where I worked (a major-network-O-&-O) an a"demo tape" with writing and producing you did during your internships (school work didn’t count) was the way you marketed yourself. Those without it – like me, before my internship – wouldn’t be considered. Maybe it’s different today. It wasn’t in the early 80s. Internship was THE way into the job.
I am not sure that it is fair to compare medical internships with other types of internships, but -
Does anyone know when it became customary to pay medical interns, or to pay a living wage to interns (aware that this has always been a subjective assessment?)
My late father was an unpaid medical intern during the early 1940’s, or perhaps he was paid a pittance, but he was nonetheless dependent on his family. He and his family understood when he went to medical school that the result would be an unpaid (or minimally paid?) internship, and planned accordingly with the expectation that there would eventually be a return on investment. They were immigrants and not by any means wealthy, and did without quite a lot to help him launch his medical career. I think he was given room and board at the hospital, and that was it.
I am not sure that he got paid as a medical resident (late forties, early fifties?), either, but by then he was married and my mother could support him. I do remember being told that when they were married they were dependent on my mother’s modest income to rent an apartment, etc., and that many told him that the financial sacrifice of pursuing a medical residency (rather than continuing as a general practitioner) would not pay off.
When we were growing up, he often marveled that medical interns were paid, and more so that many felt that they were underpaid, expected to be able to afford luxuries such as automobiles, etc.
So, I am guessing that sometime in the fifties or sixties it became customary to pay a stipend to medical interns?
That is why these kind of internships are illegal. Requiring internships is just a way for companies to make you pay for your own employment. They can only get away with it in high supply jobs where where they sit on the nice end of an extreme power imbalance. Since prospective employees can’t do anything about it, we passed legislation to deal with it.
What about when the unpaid internship gives you academic credit? That was the case with broadcast/journalism students way back when. They got academic credit (so did I, being a student was a requirement for the internship) and the ability to put together a professional-quality demo tape to help them with job hunting after graduation.
How does the law reflect that aspect of internships?
You really think you gained the practical experience by working an internship that I gained from 4 years of college? I find that more than a little insulting.
You remind me of a network owner I once worked for who had the unfortunate attitude that “anyone off the street” could do our jobs (technical directors, camera ops, etc). He had an elite school education and we were cc and/or state school grads, so we were clearly less intelligent than he was. To prove his point, that summer he got a couple high school interns and expected us to train them. He wasn’t smart enough to realize that a major network was opening a facility a couple hours away from his, and in less than a month the entire crew walked into jobs paying twice what he was. I hope his interns worked out for him.
Low income kids who can’t afford to work for free don’t have access to industries that require unpaid internships for entry into the field. Expecting students to work for free creates an unfair burden on the poor.
and had something to offer the newsroom. That’s why I thought I could succeed in it. Which I did.