Photo: Schlusselbein2007/flickr: CC
View from the front line
Tanya de Grunwald, founder of the GraduateFog careers advice website, tracks the rise of unpaid internships
For the last four months, Jo, 22, has been working for a PR company in central London. She’s at her desk by 8.30am and on the phone all day to journalists, pitching stories and inviting them to champagne press launches at the swanky West End bars and restaurants her firm promotes.
Jo doesn’t take a lunch hour and regularly gives up her evenings to work at the glitzy events she has organised, greeting journalists as they arrive and handing out expensive goodie bags as they leave. But, unlike her older colleagues who are paid for their hard work, Jo doesn’t earn a penny. Why? Because she is an ‘intern’, and, she tells me ‘there’s no money in the creative industries.’
Stories like this make my blood boil but they are shockingly common in 2011. The Institute for Public Policy Research think tank in a recent report estimates that over 128,000 young people have interned in the last twelve months, paid expenses only (travel or lunch money, usually £50 per week) – or nothing at all.
Their ‘placements’ last up to a year, but these young people aren’t work ‘shadowing’ or making tea. They are doing proper jobs with real responsibility and set hours. The law says the majority are entitled to at least the national minimum wage (NMW £5.93 an hour), but officials aren’t enforcing this and most interns feel powerless to stand up to their employers for fear of being labelled a troublemaker. Even worse is the situation of graduates who cannot afford to work for nothing after graduation.
I began investigating the scandal of unpaid internships in April 2010 when I launched the careers advice website graduatefog.co.uk. What I have discovered has appalled me. The evidence suggests that this practice is spreading fast. Unpaid internships are no longer restricted to the historically worst offending industries of media, fashion and politics. Now you’ll find unpaid internships within architecture firms, human resources (HR) departments and charities of all sizes. They have been reported in the NHS and local councils.
I have discovered that everybody is at it – from big supermarkets advertising for interns for their in-store magazines to luxury department stores recruiting for interns to work in their HR, buying or press departments. The longest unpaid internships I found were nine months in a high street fashion chain and eleven months in a consultancy. It isn’t reasonable to expect free work for almost a year.
In the current climate interns are extremely vulnerable. While the idea of internships as a brief ‘try me before you buy’ period for employers has some merit, this is no longer what is happening. When one intern finishes their placement another is simply ‘hired’ to replace them. Often the existing intern is required to train their replacement. Internships no longer lead to entry level jobs – they are actually replacing them.
Where is the interns’ protection? There isn’t any. Those responsible for policing the NMW laws – the Pay and Work Rights Helpline, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Department of Business – have shown either an inability or unwillingness to grasp the complexities of the problem (see Alan Sealy ‘Who’s afraid of the Compliance officer?’). Hundreds of thousands of desperate young people have been allowed to compete in an unlawful price war which pushes wages to zero while some unscrupulous employers grab all the free labour on offer.
The open advertisement of these internships on brands’ own websites or big industry sites gives the impression that they are legal, or are a ‘grey’ area, but interns’ rights groups disagree. Intern Aware, Internocracy and Interns Anonymous say that new laws are not needed to protect interns, the existing NMW Act should be sufficient. The law says that if an intern’s role has specific tasks and set hours, then they are ‘workers’ and should be paid at least the NMW. The intern can’t waive this right and in theory their employer can be prosecuted for refusing to pay.
Recently I found recruitment advertisements for an ‘intern receptionist’ at a record company and a ‘work experience graphic designer’ at a design agency. The ads played up that the roles offered a chance to break in to a competitive industry, implying this was more than enough payment. One stated the salary was ‘expenses only’ the other was a ‘volunteer role.’
Most interns don’t realise that what is happening is illegal and those who do know fear that asking for pay will jeopardise their chance of impressing their employer – which is the sole point of the internship. Current enforcement procedures do not take account of this delicate situation.
Those who decide to take action are faced with a reporting system that is stacked against them. Taking legal action against exploitative employers is almost impossible. Companies which violate the NMW laws will only be prosecuted once it has been proved that they have done so on multiple occasions – highly unlikely when the reporting procedure is so off putting to interns. Only one intern has been awarded back pay so far and not one company has ever been prosecuted for using unpaid interns. When I recently interviewed an official in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, I was told that the system ‘works well’ and prosecuting those employers who use unpaid interns was ‘not a good use of public money.’ Ironically, in December the NMW was voted the most successful government policy of the last thirty years!
An entire generation is being brainwashed into believing that young workers simply do not deserve to be paid. The most disturbing aspect of this is the emergence of what I call ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ interns. They are adamant – against all the evidence – that they are not being exploited, because they are gaining such valuable experience. Some will attack intern rights groups for fighting for them to have the wage they deserve. One wrote on my GraduateFog site: ‘You are going to end up ruining employment opportunities for young people everywhere with this crazy crusade’.
The vulnerability and desperation of interns only underlines why it is so important we address this problem. I am encouraged by the protests over tuition fees and I hope it is a sign that young people have finally found their voice.
