Juxtapositions

[dsrtao]

I note that fivethrityeight.com recently put out an advertisement for an unpaid intern. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/fivethirtyeight-seeking-nyc-based.html

They also announced a deal with the New York Times.

Here's what the NYTimes has to say about unpaid internships:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html

money quote: Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

The deal is that they will publish his work, as I understand it.

They are not hiring him, or buying him, or making his staff their staff.

[dsrtao]

I didn't say it was the NYT's lapse.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Understood.

But it's not necessarily a lapse at all, is it?

[dsrtao]

I think it is, actually. 538 finds themselves in need of some help. Either they can afford it at the prevailing wage for grad student equivalents, or they can't. If they can't, they can either afford it at minimum wage and the promise of fame and a byline, or they can't afford minimum wage. And if they can't afford minimum wage after the deal with the Times, they're really hosed.

Asking for free labor on a commercial proposition stinks. It stinks so much that it's illegal, except under specific conditions that I think are pretty fair.

The key provision, IMHO, is that a trainee/intern must not displace a regular employee. The things described in this want ad are pretty clearly things that one would normally hire an employee to do.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

The legal standing of free interns is under scrutiny/debate and is or will be creating some lawsuits to test this. That plus the thing where some companies are getting money from the gov't for training people without paying said people...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

For the sake of a Devil's Advocate question - perhaps the unpaid people are being compensated in non-monetary ways of their choosing?

I'm not saying I approve, and goodness knows this economy is putting people in the ultimately shitty bargaining position of "Have nothing, Need everything"....

The only good arguments I've seen against the practice, is that if the unpaid position is tony enough, it gives a big advantage to the financially well-off: who can work for nothing more easily.

FYI, I liked "The Pursuit of Happyness". Your mileage may vary on that movie.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I am perhaps not as strongly invested in this as this comment indicates, but it does seem like 'free' is the wrong pay rate.

The good argument against that I've seen is that if you don't pay people a wage, and don't give them benefits, but they work anyway, then they don't have money and don't have benefits and when something goes wrong society ends up paying for it. Not to mention the ethics of getting nothing for giving something.

If enough internships are unpaid, it no longer becomes "volunteer". For example, I have a friend working 70+ hours a week for no pay, because he is an architecture intern, and that's just how it is in architecture. What's to prevent this from happening in more fields? Then we're into indentured servitude.

[dsrtao]

That's a pernicious evil there. We've had several summer interns at my company, and all of them have been paid -- I think on a monthly basis a little less than a full time junior technical hire.

[evilnicola.livejournal.com]

I am just finishing up an internship in teaching for my elementary ed masters. Not only was it unpaid, but I, in fact paid $15,000 to my college for the privilege to work for free. The way my program works, even though I have my degree in hand, I still have to teach, without pay, through the end of the school year.

This is becoming pretty standard in the world of education. Some places still give a small stipend, but fewer and fewer.