Hypocrisy Is Free
Good piece by Dan Akst in the LA Times about internships. Way back when, he couldn't get one -- he needed the money he made from being a doorman. Akst writes on the LA Times op-ed page:
The reality is that unpaid internships are a great way of giving the children of affluence a leg up in life. If they really do help young people get permanent jobs in desirable fields, then the current internship system has the effect, however unintended, of reserving this advantage mainly for well-to-do families -- families that happen to be disproportionately white. (Unpaid internships are No.105 on blogger Christian Lander's hilarious list of "stuff white people like.")Yet unpaid internships seem to be especially prevalent in show business, journalism, the arts and at nonprofits, most of which are hotbeds of liberal ideals. Denizens of this world, I daresay, would mostly defend state and federal labor laws (to say nothing of labor unions) as a crucial bulwark for the protection of workers against exploitation by vastly more powerful employers.
But unpaid interns don't fall under such protection. They do not get minimum wage, or enjoy legal safeguards against discrimination, sexual harassment or wrongful termination. And they do not pay Social Security or Medicare taxes to support the safety net so many of their employers cherish. Unpaid interns at nonprofits qualify as volunteers, but hiring people without pay at a business isn't even legal unless the arrangement meets federal standards requiring that the employer "derives no immediate advantage" from the arrangement. In other words, it's supposed to be pure altruism.
...In fact, unpaid internships have become such a staple of privilege that some families pay thousands of dollars to for-profit placement firms to land a spot for their kids, something lower-income families can't possibly afford. The practice of requiring interns to pay for college credit -- which some employers hope will keep them from running afoul of labor laws -- only adds to the inequity by raising the price of admission. Interns, particularly in Washington, may find themselves saddled with additional expenses for travel and housing.
At the end, he adds:
If you're a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, perhaps you can justify hiring unpaid interns as precisely the kind of activity between consenting adults that the government shouldn't meddle with.
I am a libertarian and anti-regulation, but do we really need to be regulated to behave well? While all these big businesses have kids doing scut work for free (or making them or their parents pay tuition and/or their parents pay big fees at charity auctions for internships), if you work for me, Amy, the middle-class newspaper columnist, you'll get paid. It's just the fair way to do business.
In TV at least, these internships are never sold as more than a way to meet people who do the work you want to do, and to learn how to operate copiers and coffeepots. Worrying specifically about interns who want assignment in DC is lunacy: These former high school class presidents are vipers-in-training anyway. Fuck 'em.
You know, congress routinely exempts itself from our nations labor laws... It's not that the intern thing isn't a pisser, I'm just saying, there's better things to fuss over.
PS — I, personally, know an attractive woman who served as college intern in the White House in '95-'96.
That's right.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at June 16, 2010 12:09 AM
Wow, Crid. Rubbing...elbows with the big names.
NumberSix at June 16, 2010 12:36 AM
"but do we really need to be regulated to behave well"
Answer: Yes.
Are many regulations stupid and unnecessary? Yes as well. Just don't think that the kindness and gentleness of human nature is enough to keep people and companies from doing horrible, stupid and brutal things.
Karen at June 16, 2010 4:51 AM
perhaps you can justify hiring unpaid interns as precisely the kind of activity between consenting adults that the government shouldn't meddle with.
I think he has that right. If it wasn't worthwhile to the interns, they wouldn't be running after the jobs.
kishke at June 16, 2010 5:53 AM
I note that the unpaid internships are prevalent in the industries where who you know is a lot more important than what you know. I've been in engineering for 30 years and I've never heard of an unpaid internship in this industry. Even college student co-ops are paid minimum wage at least. If I may be so bold, the huge rise in the who-you-know industries in the last some years explains a lot of our country's problems.
Cousin Dave at June 16, 2010 6:59 AM
I hired 2 interns this week - sort of! My father and I have a hobby car shop. And one of our homemade autos, an electric car, is having issues we do not know how to fix. Luckily in town is an electrical engineering college that has a somewhat famous electric car racing team. Perfect! With some help from a brother in law, my father and I were able to get in contact the University racing group. Two students from the team agreed to work on the car.
When we first talked to the students both seemed similar to many of that age, idealists. Both did not to be paid. It would be a fun project the two said, would give them experience, and help some one out. My father and I did not want to be charity though and brought up compensation several times. Be sure to let us know how to pay you we would say.
Well, last night was the first night to work on the car. The guts of the electric system were viewed, and a plan for addressing the problems formed. As we were all leaving, the head student spoke up. The two of them changed their minds, they wanted to be paid $20 a hour! This is how much interns made at the University he added.
We agreed, of course. Both young men seem competent. I have confident the car's problems will be fixed. I kind of wish the idealists had remained though! Oh well, at least the two will be motivated to fix the car.
Soul at June 16, 2010 8:50 AM
A wage is only an easily observable transfer during employment, among other transfers and unstated benefits. So, measuring wages is inexact and possibly misleading.
Colleges place students in unpaid internships as part of work-study programs. The companies pay nothing, and students even pay the school for the opportunity. Clearly the students are receiving more than nothing in this process. Part of their compensation is the knowledge and experience they get at the company.
Absent a minimum wage law, people might work for "nothing" directly for an employer. Of course, they are receiving training of value greater than or equal to the wage they could receive at some other company. They would be implicitly paying the company for that training, without a college as the middleman.
So, life is complex, dependent on individual preferences and situations, and very hard to measure. It is arrogant to step into the business relations between people (absent force or fraud) and tell them that they can't make the arrangement they want. Instead, parts of the arrangement have to suit some ideological requirement.
Is it unfair to give internships to the people who can pay a school, or survive without an income? That is like saying it is unfair to pay anyone to receive knowledge and experience.
Liberals say "I can measure your cash wage, so I am going to place restrictions on that wage, so that I can assure myself that your are either getting a 'fair' deal (as I see it, in the abstract) or no deal at all." That is unreasonable and throws the least productive people (teenagers or low ability) out of work.
Minimum wage legislation did not arise from a noble effort to help the poor. Senator and future President John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts spoke at a Senate hearing for the minimum wage: "Having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor [hundreds of thousands of black workers] depresses wages outside of that group, the wages of the white worker who has to compete."
Minimum Wage Prosperity: Using the Minimum Wage to Hamper Your Rivals
Andrew_M_Garland at June 16, 2010 12:27 PM
My wife and I worked for a division of a large, international company. They had what was called a "summer help" program which supplied work during the summer for qualified kids.
So, what did 'qualified' mean? Mommy or daddy have important jobs in the company.
No matter how good students, only once in all the years I worked there did ONE son or daughter of a factory worker get a minute work under the program.
One time they had a big move, and for a week or so they gave manual labor jobs to kids of the factory workers. And, it was only a handful of them. While the 'rich kiddies' lounged around the offices.
For those of you who wish to label corporations as individual proprietorships, with all the libertarian issues of freedom of this and freedom of that, it might be good idea to study further. Corporations exist only under laws which provide for a totally artificial entity, exempt from many of the things that are involved with individual businesses.
Having received special protections, the big one being limited personal risk, the corporations immediately want the same freedoms of proprietorships.
So, it is hard for me to feel sorry for corporations which do not like any government interference, though they only exist because of government interference in historical business practices.
irlandes at June 16, 2010 6:45 PM
I worked unpaid internships while I was in college. I wouldn't say my parents were wealthy (more working class who were savers and managed to live a middle-class lifestyle), but I had the good fortune of being able to live at home while I did an internship and worked a part-time job. I also paid for the chance in the form of tuition to the college. It ended up being a good deal for me. With a couple of internships, I was able to shave a whole semester off my time in college and save myself a semester's tuition.
MonicaP at June 17, 2010 12:03 PM
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