Why the government is cracking down on unpaid internships
If a summer job isn’t on your horizon but you want to gain valuable experience in your field, perhaps an internship is the right thing for you. Internships allow students and recent graduates to exercise the skills and knowledge they have learned through their education by providing them with hands on experience in the workplace. Internship placements are usually available in six month to 1 year increments.
Most internships aren’t paid—their purpose is to provide experience for people so that they can put it on their resume for chances at future employment. However, recently these unpaid internships have been cause for debate and evaluation.
The Labor Department in the United States has been investigating the amount of unpaid internships being offered because they have been largely increasing in the past couple years.
Nancy Leppink, the director of the department’s wage and hour division says, “If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law.”
The increased amount of unpaid internships is thought to be due to the fact that companies just don’t have the money to pay students, but they still have work to be done. Internship work should only be unpaid if the student is getting educational benefits. Interns shouldn’t be doing photocopies and fetching coffee for workers—but that’s what most of them have been doing.
The problem with this equation is that many interns don’t want to complain because they want to get good references for future employment in the field. What they don’t realize is that they should be getting paid and their employer is actually performing an illegal act in many cases.
Many companies approach universities so that they can spread the word about the internships that they have available. At Stanford University, there were over 600 internship postings on their website—more than triple what was available two years before. Also, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, in 2008, 83 per cent of graduating students had internships. In 1992, only nine per cent of graduates took that route.
The rise in the number of internships is related to the recession and the fact that students are finding it extremely difficult to find paying jobs. The problem is students can’t keep going on without making money. Students who have to pay for their own tuition and other expenses can’t afford to give up a large period of time doing work that is unpaid—especially when it is completely unrelated to their field.
According to the New York Times, some students are hired for internships only to find themselves booking appointments for their boss and working in shipping and handling. Others are forced to do menial tasks like cleaning and maintenance—jobs that they weren’t hired for.
It’s hard to deny that an internship is beneficial. Ross Perlin, a graduate from Stanford University who is now writing a book about interning said, “Internships have become the gateway into the white-collar work force. Employers increasingly want experience for entry-level jobs, and many students see the only way to get that is through unpaid internships.”
Another issue related to interning is the fact that interns aren’t considered employees of the company, especially when they aren’t being paid. Therefore, should a legal problem arise, it is much more difficult for them to be dealt with properly because they don’t have any rights.
The Department of Labor has started to seriously look into the issues surrounding unpaid interns. In the state of California, they have been sending out letters to companies who are employing interns letting them know that they are breaking the laws regarding minimum wage.
In Oregon, companies have been reprimanded for mistreating interns. Bob Estabrook works for the state’s labor department and he says, “We’ve had cases where unpaid interns really were displacing workers and where they weren’t being supervised in an educational capacity.”
If you manage to get yourself an internship for the summer, make sure you know your rights. There is no way that you should be sweeping floors or going on coffee runs for no pay. Internships are meant to hone your skills related to your field and help make you a better candidate for a paying job in the future.
