Author: Ella Fornari
According to an annual report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 55 percent of the class of 2012 said that they interned while in college. About half of these internship experiences were unpaid. These statistics reflect the general acceptance of unpaid internships by both students and employers. The mere existence and cultural acceptance of the unpaid internship threatens future careers of all students, both those who participate in unpaid internships and those who do not.
The United States Department of Labor (USDOL) currently has six criteria to define legal unpaid internships in the private sector. These state that the internship “includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer,” “is for the benefit of the intern,” that the intern “does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff,” “is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship,” “the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern” and that “the employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.”
As for public sector internships, there is no cut and dry policy to define what is legal and what is not. Based on the notion that such internships are volunteer or community service-based, the USDOL says public sector or non-profit unpaid internships are “generally permissible,” as long as there is no anticipation of compensation.
Most of these make enough sense, but what internship is there where the employer “derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern?”
Although the criteria set by the USDOL apply to all within the United States, extra laws concerning unpaid internships exist at the state level. In California, there are five additional criteria defining what constitutes a legal unpaid internship. These extra criteria are mainly based on ensuring that internship opportunities are at the educational benefit of the intern. As opposed to the national criteria set by the DOL, California’s legislation makes it illegal to hire an intern to build Ikea office furniture. The discrepancies in what constitutes legal unpaid jobs at the state level only highlight the injustice around the issue of unpaid internships.
Accessibility to these programs is also problematic. All unpaid internships automatically discourage people who can not afford to work for free from experiences that may be potentially influential to their success. The rampant acceptance of unpaid internships contradicts the reality that most students face. It should not be assumed that college students, a group crippled with an average debt of about $20,000, can afford to work unpaid. To even further problematize matters, it seems the only way to get paid work is to have references from unpaid work. For students of lower socioeconomic status, the societal acceptance of unpaid internships only serves to further this economic disadvantage.
Internships, paid or unpaid, are useful both as resumé builders and as valuable learning experiences. There is only one thing that could take the place of an internship on a resumé; a part-time entry level position in a student’s desired field. But these positions are rare, as companies have more monetary motivation to hire unpaid interns. As it is also hard to find paid internships, students are left to ponder over the fact that those who have any internships on their resumé, paid or unpaid, are still more likely to get a job post-graduation than students who do not do internships.
However, the distinction of an internship as a learning experience or as a resumé builder is integral to the actual worth of a given internship. The internship as a resumé-builder attitude is especially dangerous because it allows companies to take advantage of all the students who need experience on their resumés. Implicit in the unpaid internship is this mutual understanding between the intern and employer that the work will be paid for in its appearance on the intern’s resumé. From this perspective, the ability to say you have interned at a company is the compensation. This is insane. Knowing that the intern can say that they have had experience, no matter how useful, should not legally validate using interns as unpaid labor.
Until the emphasis is placed back onto the internship experience rather than the end goal of a resumé bullet point (or LinkedIn request), students who participate in unpaid work are only furthering the legality and acceptance of unpaid internships. That being said, students will continue participating in unpaid internships regardless of legality because there are few to no other options for them to gain experience in their field. It is to the benefit of everyone except the exploitative company to make unpaid internships a thing of the past.
Ella Fornari is a sophomore Media Arts and Culture Major. She can be reached at fornari@oxy.edu or on Twitter at @WklyEFornari.
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