Scummy Business
That's what I call unpaid internships by clever cheapskates who use interns as a substitute for wage-earning employees, often taking advantage of their need for "experience," and often giving them little more than the business' name value on a resume. From an article by Steven Greenhouse in The NYT:
Matt Gioe had little luck breaking into the music and entertainment industry after graduating with a philosophy degree from Bucknell last year. To get hands-on experience, he took an unpaid position with a Manhattan talent agency that booked musical acts. He said he answered phones and looked up venues. Although he was sometimes told to make bookings, he said he received virtually no guidance on how to strike a deal or how much to charge. But the boss did sometimes ask him to run errands like buying groceries."It was basically three wasted months," he said.
...Joyce Lee, who received a film degree from Wesleyan in 2010, moved to Los Angeles and did six unpaid internships, including one for Scott Rudin, a top Hollywood and Broadway producer.
Her duties included reading scripts and picking up the mail. To pay her rent, she worked at a coffee shop and handed out fliers for a taxi company.
"Scott Rudin is made of money," she said. "I don't think it would be so hard for him to pay five interns the minimum wage."
A spokesman for Mr. Rudin said he could not be reached for comment.
Ms. Lee, who is now in New York making her own film and supporting herself by again working at a coffee shop, said interns deserved better.
"If I ever become a famous filmmaker," she said, "I promise I will pay my interns."
Hint to Matt Gioe and Joyce Lee:
YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO DO IT.
I picture these people driving straight to their parents' houses after every bowel movement so a grown-up can wipe their botties.
Kevin at May 5, 2012 12:05 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/05/05/scummy_business.html#comment-3176162">comment from KevinAnd these companies may not "have" to pay the people they use as free labor and teach little or nothing -- but to me, it's the right thing to do. At least minimum wage. I could have interns -- a team of them. But, I don't. Anyone who does any work for me, whether the woman who regularly edits me part-time, or the daughter of a friend who offered to read through and comment on my book chapters, gets paid. It's the right thing to do.
Amy Alkon at May 5, 2012 12:36 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/05/05/scummy_business.html#comment-3176171">comment from Amy AlkonPS I had plenty of internships. I saw a shoot for a Rickie Lee Jones video in the 80s in the West Village, told them I'd been a P.A. in Detroit, and begged to work for them. I worked so hard that RLJ told them they needed to pay me and invited me out to dinner with her, her boyfriend, and the producer and directors. Worked for Robert Altman on Secret Honor for free. Got free coffee.
Worked a night on Hannah and Her Sisters, staying up all night (midnight to 6am) making sure nobody parked on 67th Street between CPW and Bway. Made $40.
Amy Alkon at May 5, 2012 12:48 PM
Maybe there could be "fee interns", people who would pay businesses for the opportunity to work at the business and learn some areas of production. They might then take their knowledge and find jobs at other businesses who were too small to operate a fee intern program, or they could continue at the business where they trained. After mastering some areas of production, they might pay to learn other areas, or simply work at a reduced wage until they gained some experience in those other areas.
Sorry, I forgot for a moment that this would be heartless capitalism, charging a fee to inexperienced people who might pay and still not learn an area well enough to be productive. It would violate many laws designed to protect unskilled people from being robbed by profit-making organizations.
Our current system is much better. People called "students" pay fees to organizations which usually don't produce anything from the student's work. They learn things, which may or may not make them employable, from altruistic individuals called "teachers" who communicate the beautiful, ideal parts of things, rather than the grubby details of producing something. The students then graduate to lives of high wages and immediate productivity in their society.
- -
Yes, sarcastic. Why shouldn't people be able to make the arrangements that they wish? At least the interns can quit with whatever experience they get. Colleges refuse to grant any credit (no partial degrees) unless the student serves and pays for four years, a type of credential servitude.
If young adults were realistic, they wouldn't try to "break into" highly competitive industries by being unpaid assistants. They have seen and believed too many movies.
Andrew_M_Garland at May 5, 2012 1:03 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/05/05/scummy_business.html#comment-3176214">comment from Andrew_M_GarlandWhy shouldn't people be able to make the arrangements that they wish?
I'm in agreement with you there.
And the interns are already paying fees. For internships to be legal, they have to get college credit for them -- college credit that they pay for.
Amy Alkon at May 5, 2012 1:14 PM
The problem are those internships which are advertised as one thing, but are, in fact, glorified gopher positions. The intern signs up thinking they will do something related to their field of interest. By the time the figure out that they've been had, they have a no-win situation; they keep doing nonsense work for free or get a negative reference (in some cases the internships are connected back to a university and failure could result in a failing grade.)
I'm happy to say that where I work we have a lot of paid interns who work in exactly the field they signed up for. (One point being that you don't pay someone $12 an hour to be a software tester and have then fetch coffee, but if someone is free, who the hell cares what you have them do?)
Joe at May 5, 2012 1:42 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/05/05/scummy_business.html#comment-3176278">comment from JoeJoe is right.
A certain amount of scut work is to be expected at an internship, but if you've only got somebody doing scut work and you aren't teaching them and you aren't paying them, it's pretty exploitative.
Amy Alkon at May 5, 2012 2:16 PM
This is a modern and first-world problem. When my older siblings went to work in central Florida, the first week was unpaid so that the boss could see what they were worth. They went on to be very successful.
Radwaste at May 5, 2012 6:50 PM
Sigh. We are talking about fully grown adults whining about the deal they themselves made, eyes wide open. if you think someone VERY successful is going to take you under their wing and teach you everything they know just because you answer some phones for them, well, you've just learned a very valuable life lesson.
momof4 at May 5, 2012 7:28 PM
Often these companies and groups that use interns are also the ones pushing for higher minimum wage laws and living wage laws, which the then get around by not paying anything to an intern.
Joe J at May 5, 2012 7:43 PM
"Often these companies and groups that use interns are also the ones pushing for higher minimum wage laws and living wage laws, which the then get around by not paying anything to an intern."
What?
Who does this?
I suggest that most technical jobs actually have no room whatsoever for untrained people - the sort for which minimum wage is expected - and so any support they might express would be irrelevent.
Radwaste at May 5, 2012 8:26 PM
Interns who complain are the Occupiers of tomorrow.
I say if your intern starts mouthing off, you should pepperspray 'em good and hard and give them a taste of their future.
Ungrateful punks...
(If you're not being paid and you're not learning what you came to learn, why are you there? Because the wrinkly old man with the sports car said you have pretty hair and that's a nice blouse?)
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 5, 2012 8:27 PM
(BTW that pepper spray thing is only for the unpaid kind)
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 5, 2012 8:44 PM
"(If you're not being paid and you're not learning what you came to learn, why are you there? Because the wrinkly old man with the sports car said you have pretty hair and that's a nice blouse?)"
No, because you can't get the degree that you've paid for and worked your ass off to get unless you do an internship. So they have you over a barrel.
I know this first hand because I recently returned to school to get a degree and now have to russle up an unpaid internship to get my degree. So what if I've been in the workforce for 30 years, and I have a full time job. According to my school, I need the 'experience'.
JoJo at May 6, 2012 9:05 AM
> According to my school, I need the 'experience'.
Were you deceived about the challenge of making a place for yourself in your newly-chosen industry? Were you told this season of unpaid work wouldn't be required?
In many fields (especially in important medical ones), and internship is required and famously difficult. What in your background has convinced you that this should not be required in your case?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 6, 2012 3:15 PM
Look, here's the message to everyone who says college is doing the wrong things to prepare them for the marketplace: If you can see that this is true, then go do the thing you know you need to do. Whether you have a degree or not, you're going to have to that that someday.
Too many Occupiers talk as if going to college meant never having to figure out what you're supposed to do for other people... But EVERYONE has to do that.
Seriously, Jojo-- If don't need the internship, don't do it. I interned for a summer an hour away from college, then worked there for three years for less money than I made in a college job. It was the poorest time of my life, but it was also the stupidest... The marketplace knew to the dime what an hour of my time was worth. Then the boss moved, and I followed him a year later, and we've both been doing great ever since.
Today I'm a fabulously wealthy middle-aged man, awash in fulfillment and drunk with opportunity. Houses, women, elegance, art, travel, flattery, trinkets... All these things flow into my life because I know where I belong.
Do you know where you belong?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 6, 2012 7:53 PM
I don't see how this cannot be a violation of the minimum wage laws.
MarkD at May 7, 2012 6:00 AM
Anyone still reading?
See this.
Crid at May 8, 2012 10:19 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/05/05/scummy_business.html#comment-3180313">comment from CridOn deadline, needing nap, but I'll read later!
Amy Alkon at May 8, 2012 1:41 PM
Crid, if I don't do the internship I won't be awarded the degree. I have no choice. Especially since these days you can't get hired as a secretary without a degree.
Yes, I think it's ridiculous that in order to graduate with any type of business degree you have to put in 120 hours as an unpaid office gofer. The students have already put in 120 credit hours, why do they have to get an unpaid entry level job in order to qualify for a paid entry level job?
To compare that to the necessity of a medical student serving an internship at a hospital is absurd.
JoJo at May 9, 2012 8:27 AM
My internship at a financial services company last summer between my junior and senior years paid $22/hour, plus a substantial signing bonus. Almost everyone I know with business, tech, or engineering internships made at least $20/hour--the highest I heard was $35. It's the so-called fun and glamorous jobs that don't pay--magazines, journalism, PR, filmmaking, etc--because there's always a steady stream of kids willing to take them, most of whom are bankrolled by parents to the extent that they can get away with working for free. If the market value of your labor is zero, then that might be a wakeup call that you should think about a new major. But good luck on the famous filmmaker thing.
Shannon at May 9, 2012 9:13 AM
> I don't do the internship I won't be awarded
> the degree. I have no choice.
You're making me read between the lines here, but I think what you're saying is that this is not a surprise for you. You always knew that this would be expected of you.
Furthermore, you also knew:
Amirite?
So, like, WTF? Are we going to ask us to be upset that you had to do those things, too?
> why do they have to get an unpaid entry level
> job in order to qualify for a paid entry
> level job?
It's not that I don't know why not, it's that I don't care why not. If that's not the course of learning by which you want to achieve that education, don't take it.
I think Shannon understands:
> It's the so-called fun and glamorous jobs that
> don't pay--magazines, journalism, PR,
> filmmaking, etc--because there's always a
> steady stream of kids willing to take them,
> most of whom are bankrolled by parents
For the last twenty years or so, financial services has been the largest sector of our nation's economy. It crashed a few years ago... Perhaps you heard something about it. No one can pretend those industries are creating the value they claimed to create a generation earlier.
So it's very much like Hollywood: Sweet young things drop off the bus from Kansas on their 19th birthday and think they're going to become Natalie Portman. But as it turns out, the economy expects them to put some time in as a waitress, or on the casting couch. Surprise, right?
> But good luck on the famous filmmaker thing.
See also, bond trader.
Especially, ESPECIALLY for people in financial services, we expect our champions to see the world as it is, so that we don't have to worry to much about how they get their needs met.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 9, 2012 6:16 PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/in-defense-of-unpaid-internships/257000/
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at May 10, 2012 12:52 PM
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