<p>According to the WSJ, the Charlie Rose show just reached a six-figure settlement that involved payment of $1100 to many past interns on the show. According to an editorial by Steve Cohen,
[quote]
The lawsuit was dumb and the settlement worse.</p>
<p>Companies will now be less likely to bring on interns. That isn't because of the incremental cost, but because it opens the door to increased regulation and meddling from labor activists. College students will lose out on important benefits, from seeing how companies really work to building important skills and gaining exposure to people who might hire them.
<p>They’re not really free labor. Students are signing on for a short-term assignment, and there are often costs associated with bringing someone on for such a short time. Yes, some tasks are pretty straight forward, but others require training and supervision.</p>
<p>From the student’s perspective, they have the option of looking for a regular job (with the understanding their will only be there temporarily), or a paid internship, if they want to be paid. The lawsuit seems to consider the perspective of those who might have otherwise had a paying job in place of the intern as the most important. If there was no unpaid intern, someone else would be paid to do these jobs, after all.</p>
<p>I suppose the concept of apprenticeship is a bad thing too?</p>
<p>A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work… it doesn’t just apply to miners and factory workers.</p>
<p>The economic environment today makes unpaid internships out to be godsends when they are, in many cases, complete exploitation of students. And Mr. Cohen’s article is nothing more than drivel. He argues that interns can be unpaid because they get more from the internship than the company gets from them. Does that mean that when an electrician finds a problem with my wiring that he hadn’t seen before, I don’t need to pay him? After all, he is learning quite a lot from fixing my electricity. If you get a job at an ice cream shop, shouldn’t you go unpaid for the first two weeks? After all, it costs a lot to teach you how to scoop ice cream, and you are learning more than the shop is earning off of you for the first two weeks.</p>
<p>The idea that ancillary skills substitute for fair payment is simply insane.</p>
<p>Any time a company hires an employee, there is a simple question that must be answered in the affirmative: Is the employee fairly compensated? And, no, I’m sorry, but “learning the subway system” is not fair compensation. </p>
<p>I can think of one scenario in which an unpaid internship DOES provide value to students: the students treat the internship as a college course. That means that there is a clear educational aspect to the internship, the interns create some kind of output (whether it is used or even considered by the company is immaterial), and the interns get college credit, for which the company pays. That last part is crucial… a couple friends of mine actually had to PAY for their unpaid internships because they needed to earn credit to get the job, but the company would not pay for the cost of the credits.</p>
<p>Scoutmom, there are two issues with your assertions:</p>
<p>With regard to apprentices… apprentices are paid. No issues here.</p>
<p>With regard to…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In the current economic environment, many students feel compelled to get an internship (just look at this forum if you want confirmation on that… it’s very easy to feel like an internship is a necessity, even though it is not), so the regular job is only a last resort. Paid internships are common in consulting, banking and engineering, but they are very hard to get; unpaid internships are far more common in other areas. That means that many students believe there is no reasonable alternative to an unpaid internship… so it is not quite as simple as what you are saying.</p>
<p>Who doesn’t want to be paid? But I rather have a unpaid internship that is a good experience over something that’s paid, which ends up doing meaningless work.</p>
<p>From my perspective as a low-income student, this is more of an issue of access than fairness and parity with other workers. It’s not merely that one would like a paid internship–there are many who cannot afford unpaid internships. I was exceptionally lucky to land an internship the summer after my freshmen year at an education nonprofit, making several thousand for the summer (money I’m now using to cover an unpaid internship with the federal government over the winter break).</p>
<p>Have this latter internship opens doors like other summer jobs (e.g., waiting tables, lifeguarding) just don’t. And as much as old-timey CEOs talk about valuing local state universities where students are paying with a part-time job… it’s certainly not been my experience. Often, you need to be at a very well-regarded university and have direct, relevant experience at respectable companies. Maybe you can make it otherwise if you’re wealthy and have family connections, but the rest of us have to play the game.</p>
<p>In comparison, my brother is at a non-flagship state school. He hasn’t been able to land even a part-time job while in school, work-study positions are nonexistent, and he can’t even get an interview for unpaid internships.</p>
<p>Frankly, however, many “internships” are not internships and should not parade themselves as such. Hire a student part time or at minimum wage to be your nonprofit’s “Program Coordinator”–don’t call it an internship. An internship is supposed to be an educational experience, not a regular job (though it would make more sense for many to hire students as short-term workers at minimum wage).</p>
<p>I don’t think there should be a minimum wage, but that is an unpopular view. If there were a
lower minimum wage for the first 12 months at an employer, more interns would be paid at least something.</p>
<p>It’s pretty exploitative, at least when you’re talking about juniors from high quality colleges, IMHO. (I think it’s a much better idea for high school students in a low key, viable way – eg. a few hours a week, and they can still work elsewhere.)</p>
<p>It’s also ill-considered IMHO at the college level…unless you only want to ultimately hire/recruit kids from affluent families who can afford not to work in the summer! </p>
<p>It is a form of unequal access to opportunity and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to mandate minimum wage to prevent those companies that readily exploit it – and I believe there are many. With internships, you get to “try it before you buy it.” Competitive companies should recognize how expensive it is to recruit truly talented employees. In this regard, it’s an inexpensive and mutually beneficial situation.</p>
<p>I agree with Beliavsky. Minimum wage is a terrible idea. We can argue if the government has any right (which they don’t) to mandate any minimum price to be paid for a service, but that isn’t even the best argument.</p>
<p>No person is forced into labor in this nation. Everyone has the choice. In some cases it may not be economical feasable for a business to pay and if they were faced with the choice of having to pay another intern minimum wage or not having anyone at all, there is a great chance that they wont add another person. </p>
<p>If my current employer was forced to pay me minimum wage, I would never have worked in his lab. I would not have learned and gained expertise with a lot of equipment and other tools. I would not have gained knowledge from his past experience. Instead, I would be unemployed and have an empty resume, since he was incapable of paying me and was doing me a favor while also gaining a grunt worker.</p>
<p>I completely agreed to this without any form of force or undue stress by the employer, so it was not exploitation. That doesn’t happen in America. </p>
<p>And if you don’t like that point, the federal government isn’t legally allowed to mandate minimum wage.</p>
<p>If places all have to start paying students for internships, then many internships will disappear. It’s as simple as that. Places don’t want to pay people who won’t stay long, don’t already know what they are doing, and most likely will just get in the way.</p>
<p>Imagine if someone came to your job, without any actual knowledge of the actual workings of a real job, and only book smarts, and you had to teach them about your job, do you think that you would be MORE productive, or LESS productive. Most likely less, and therefore you don’t want to ALSO pay the person making you less productive.</p>
<p>This is perhaps the best thread on CC I’ve ever seen! </p>
<p>From personal experiences, I would venture to say that unpaid and paid internships are different. Let me elaborate. A paid intern in Position X will do boring stuff (usually make copies, answer phone calls). Now, an unpaid intern in the same Position X will usually not do boring stuff. Yes, it does seem paradoxical… wouldn’t companies want to challenge their paid interns, seeing how they are PAID? This is surprising to many but this is true. I’ve been an unpaid and a paid intern. </p>
<p>What is the rationale for this you ask? Unpaid interns could just get up and leave at any given moment if they don’t like what they’re doing. They’re not doing the internship to chase after money–they’re chasing after an experience and knowledge. </p>
<p>Of course, unpaid internships are not for everyone, no matter how beneficial the experience can be. If you’re a working class kid from somewhere in the midwest who is aspiring to work in the NGO sector (most internships in this sector are unpaid and are based in DC and NYC), it is simply not worth it for you to do an unpaid internship, regardless of how great your employer name is. </p>
<p>Internships provide great opportunities, paid or unpaid. But, this topic should be looked at socioeconomically for the interns.</p>
<p>I work in the medical industry, and medical students who come to the facility positively slow down the physician, especially if the person takes time to explain in detail what he’s doing. In a setting where the physician goes through many patients rapidly, he could be spending twice as long because of student. At the same time, the student doesn’t really do anything that benefits the provider. So to pay the student on top of this makes no sense. </p>
<p>I’ve also experienced cases where companies used the internship opportunity to do an “extended” multi-month interview. DS was fortunate enough to be in a couple of these, and was paid handsomely in both cases. I’m sure the employers assessed the cost of hiring someone who didn’t fit in, and felt it was in everyone’s interest to offer internships to the kind of students they would like to hire, and make the pay high enough so that it attracted the right sort of kids.</p>
<p>I think this is why the Department of Labor and others are trying to differentiate between internships and jobs. An internship is an educational experience that will likely not hugely benefit the organization and may, in fact, hinder it.</p>
<p>A job, on the other, is quite different in its function with the company. You might learn things and it might be educational, but the primary point is the work the student provides. Companies shouldn’t be able to get free labor integral to their operation by passing it off as an “internship.”</p>
<p>The organization bringing the intern in gets something very valuable from the process: a trial run with a potential employee. Essentially they get that possible future employee’s work for free for 8-10 weeks, while the employee pays all living expenses, travel expenses, etc. I would say the company gets the better end of that deal by a mile.</p>
<p>As a professional who has been assigned summer interns to train and supervise, I can attest that interns are NOT free labor. They are a net productivity sink for experienced staff.</p>
<p>That said, I still think interns should still be paid at least min wage; otherwise, poor kids get financially precluded from participating in a critical trial-employment opportunity.</p>
<p>Yes, there are expenses of hiring someone other than an intern, but the expectation is that they willusually stay longer than 8-10 weeks. The time spent training them is recovered over time, while the time spent training an intern is considered lost if they never return. This is why many companies (at least in our area) do a large amount of their hiring through temp agencies. If an employee works out, they then hire them, but their ternure with the company doesn’t start until that later official hire date. You also don’t take a hit for unemployment premiums when you don’t hire them vs. firing them or laying them off.</p>
<p>As for apprentices, some states allow a training wage for certain positions. Perhaps interns should earn a similar training wage? </p>
<p>I suspect most internships combine some work which is educational in nature along with some tasks that would otherwise be completed by paid employees. But that would be true of any position. I am a taxpreparer, but sometime I have to do filing in our office, answer phones, and run the front desk, change the paper & toner in the printers, make the coffee… I’m not paid separately for those tasks.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a issue regarding access, and maybe interns are being used in more situations than they used to, but in some industries it is the model that is used, just as apprenticeships are used in some, and commission structures in yet others. If you want to work in those industries, you follow the model that is used, or choose a different career. Does it seem unfair to make it difficult for a low-income student to break in? Yes, but there are a lot of things that seem unfair.</p>
<p>It’s bad enough to have to work for free. It’s worse to have to PAY to work. IMO, it’s even worse that kids are BORROWING $–including federal loans</p>
<p>To get around the minimum wage laws, a lot of companies require that interns get course credit for the internships. This usually means that the intern has to PAY to work for free. You have to pay for the “course” like any other course. Sometimes, the college requires some other things to get credit, e.g., writing a paper describing what one learned. These are a “cash cow” for some schools since you don’t have to pay a professor the same as you would have to pay to have him teach a course.</p>
<p>Now, if the internship can lead to real employment, I have more sympathy. Usually, however, no interns or fewer than 1% have been offered jobs. It really is just a free way to get smarter people to do menial tasks. At best, you’ll end up with a recommendation that says “This person showed up on time, dressed appropriately, and seems to have a pleasant personality.” That’s worth something. But at some companies, you can’t even get that. Company policies state that all they will say for anyone is that you worked for the company from X to Y date and left voluntarily. Getting that kind of recommendation isn’t helpful. But kids doing the internships often don’t realize that is the company policy. So, they work for free and then simply get a “recommendation” that says “(S)he did an internship with us and got academic credit for it.” That’s it.</p>
<p>But some of the other value is the networking that can be done while an intern. As they say, it’s not what you know but who you know. In certain industries that could be of immense value. Maybe not if you’re really doing menial labor, but even just delivering the mail gets you in the proximity of some of the movers and shakers. We were not interns at the time, but many years ago H and I were volunteers with a large non-profit in Washington DC. They had a huge event on the mall, and we were tasked with picking up VIPs at the airport, and delivering them to the VIP tent. This task was not given to interns because of their inexperience driving locally, but many were in the VIP tent tending to the needs of the VIPs - exposure they wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere.</p>
<p>Not all internship are the same, but there is a place for unpaid internships. I suspect a large part of this is the need for the HR department to understand the local labor laws, and make sure they follow them. No different than knowing the difference between an employee who is issued a W2, and a contractor who can be issued a 1099 at tax time.</p>
<p>This very subject is addressed in the book “Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs” by Peter Cappelli, who is, I believe, a Wharton economist.</p>
<p>An opportunity for experience is a wonderful thing—I myself try to use unpaid interns when I can, because my legal organization is understaffed, and its the best way to get some help. I try to make the experience as meaningful as possible for these interns, and to help them use it as a means to obtain paying work. I would see them be paid if I could, because they deserve it, but I don’t call the shots as far as that is concerned.</p>
<p>Having said that, I can see that the internship mindset has created an environment in which employers now feel that the training that occurs through unpaid internships is required of potential applicants. Moreover, it adds to the belief by employers that they no longer have to pay for training—because the employee (or in the case of a student, their parents) is going to pay for it.</p>
<p>These same employers will complain that they cannot find enough qualified workers (aka, enough people who have paid for their own training by having internships, and who arrive at the doorstep of the employer with all the skills needed to do the job.)</p>
<p>It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that only people who can afford to work for free are going to get the training.</p>
<p>There is a social and economic cost inherent in this scenario as well. Talented people are being passed over because they didn’t have the money or contacts to get an internship, and entities will suffer in the long run because of the loss of productivity they might have realized had they invested in training.</p>