Because it inherently unlevels the playing field. Unlike institutional FA for middle class & lower income students to attend college, there’s no institutional FA for middle class & lower income students to bribe employers w free labor to get their foot in the door. With unpaid labor widely proffered, why would employers bother to hire for entry paid level labor if they can count on enjoying labor starletts giving them free ****jobs? It entrenches exploitation.
When u did your (illegal) unpaid work, how did u support your living? Savings? Trust fund? Mommy & daddy?
How do your children expect to support themselves as they work for free? Mommy & daddy?
GMTplus7, You husband charges $700 per hour. I am sure that he knows influential people. Your daughter doesn’t need to network, she can use her parent’s network, classmates, college buddies, etc.
I didn’t have such opportunity. Volunteering - was the only option that was available for me. I didn’t have parental network, pedigree, etc. I could not impress anyone with my resume. My English was primitive. But I could say, "please, give me any job, and I’ll try to do it well."That was the ONLY option that I had. How did I support my living? I had a very cheap living, nothing really to support. Besides, a volunteer in a good company can often snatch some free snack, left-overs from a meeting, etc. I could smell any free food from a mile.
Volunteering - was the ONLY option available for me to level the playing field. To get, at least, a chance to be noticed.
It’s not like or unlike. It’s a practice that if we keep doing, it will not be fair for the poor kids. For my creative kid, I thought that was the norm because of her field, but the more I read here on CC, the more I realized that kids were basically taken advantage off.
When I graduated from college, the unemployment rate was like 10%, but nobody I know off did work for free. It was a foreign concept.
When entry level work actually costs employers something, they’ll be more inclined to select on merit rather select on pedigree. When it’s free, it’s no skin off an employer’s back to select a rich kid as a favor for a friend.
Just so u know: I’m arguing against my own self interest. I can afford to support my kids as they do unpaid internships.
But I’ve seen 1st hand how my son’s rich prep school friends get unpaid internships as highschool students: their rich NYC parents simply swap free positions for each other’s kids. Theie companies wd be disinclined to do this if they had to pay the kids.
Californiaa, my husband charged $800 an hour and that’s a number I pulled out of thin air when he asked me how much he should charge them. Yes he has technical knowledge and the law firm needed his consulting for. He has a permanent job that doesn’t pay $800 dollar an hour. That was just for consulting work.
Like you I’m an immigrant came here with zero money, lack of English skills. But I was legal, I could work. From your post, you were accepted to a PhD at Stanford, so you were way better off, pedigree wise than me. I went to TTT, I believe it stands for third tier toilet. That’s why I want other kids with similar background to succeed in America. Unpaid labor is not fair for them.
Californiaa, you said you weren’t a citizen when you did your free work. Then you took the oath of citizenship and agreed to follow US law. It is against the law to do unpaid internship, work for free, whatever you want to call it, for private businesses. There are laws requiring minimum wage, requiring employers to follow laws, requiring employers to establish the eligibility of workers. Like it, don’t like it, it’s the law.
$800 an hour - I am impressed.
Cleaned up my closet last weekend and came across some very old consulting invoices from early 90’s.
I was charging $50 an hour for one and $75 an hour for another company and I thought I was the cat’s meow.
Now, I realize that I am such a loser - waaah.
It’s illegal because it undercuts minimum wage laws and other workplace protections. The unpaid “intern” is taking a spot that could be filled by a paid employee, and very likely an employee who would be entitled to benefits like health insurance.
Here’s the scam the court ruling seems to enable: The company wants free labor, and can get it as long as it can convince a college to give credit for it. The college gets paid for the credits, but doesn’t have to expend anything to actually teach the student. Bad incentives all around.
Nobody is “forced” to work for free, but the current “system” intimates that pursuing internships should be the NORM for students to complement their education and increase their chances for employment. The system also “expects” students to participate in their education costs by earning money during the summer or even the year. This is an almost ubiquitous tenet of financial aid. Yet, what you end up is that the offers for summer employment might not only be uncompensated by end up costing the student quite a bit (or the willing parents.)
Unfettered and unregulated, such a situation would result in “good” internships to be only available with people who can … afford them. Fwiw, some places have been pushing the envelope in requiring a donation to offset the cost of offering an unpaid internship.
All in all, the current situation is far from healthy and ripe for all kinds of abusive practices. Look at the simple fact that if a student were to post right here on CC and ask about how to maximize his or her chances of employment, there is a 100 percent chance the answers will include the line “Make sure to get a couple of internships under your belt!”
The point is not that internships are bad or serve no purpose, but that the “system” has veered into a practice that borders indentured servitude, with or without the duplicity and complicity of the academic institutions that already master their own set of abusive practices in the “employment” of the young.
Having basic sets of labor protection in the form of minimum wages or wages that reflects one’s education should not be a hardship for most corporations or non-profit organizations. It also does NOT close the doors to straight volunteering as it is a different subject altogether.
My kid just got her first real paycheck from work, let say it sounds a lot but it’s not a lot for take home pay. It’s barely enough to cover anything expensive. Lots of tax is taken out, if it’s not paid, I don’t know how she can manage it.
