Friday, October 4, 2013

Interns Resist Working Free

1.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/interns-resist-working-free.html?ref=education&_r=0

2. Category of Issue: Paid Internships

3. Level of Issue: National

4. This article concerns individuals and companies who are seeking an internship with the issues of the amount of hours worked with no pay. 

5. This article affects individuals by companies using them for free work and over working them to the point where it affects their health. A policy is being looked at to implement a law where all internships are paid. 

6. I found this article very interesting because I am currently going through the job search and just last summer did an internship. While I was looking for internships the financial factor was something I didn't even look into. I happened to get lucky with a paid internships but there were several other interns I worked with that had done previous internships that they didn't get paid. This is something that has been an issue for a while. Months ago talk started about making it illegal for un-paid  internships because companies were hiring "interns" for months at a time, not paying them, and then just re-hiring new interns after for free labor. Something that caught my eye in this article though was that a lot of the companies they talked about were very presitigious high end companies like Vogue and on movie sets. It has gotten so extreme that one girl even died after working for 72 straight hours with no sleep. I think that for individuals attempting to get internships need to have the right to get paid and have it be an educational experience for them as well. 

1 comment:

  1. This article does hit home in a way because this past summer I was in the market of looking for internships and while I would have loved to do one with a major designer like Tory Burch or someone like that, most of those "big time" internships were unpaid and I could not financially make that happen. Not only that but in fashion especially, internships like those are typically in New York City and working for free all summer in one of the most expensive cities in the United States was not even remotely an option for me. I do feel like big companies take advantage of the fact that they can find free labor because internships like those are extremely popular and very hard to attain so they know there are enough people that will do those jobs for free even if that means working them to death (in some cases). If a company is going to offer an unpaid internship and people are willing to work for free for the fact of having the experience, then I do believe there needs to be some sort of mandates set in place so companies don't take advantage and work their employees to the extreme. Whether that be a certain amount of hours each week, I'm not sure but causing illness and even death to an individual because you worked them so much is a bit extreme in my opinion. In conclusion, I do not see anything wrong with having unpaid internships just as long as mandates are set in place. If people are willing to work for free just for the experience and the fact that it will look good on their resume, than a company would be ridiculous to not take advantage of that labor as long as it is done morally.

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