Archive for the 'Campaigns' Category

Save BBC Blast

Journalist Laura Snapes has written a great article on her blog about why BBC Blast, a paid work experience scheme, should be saved from the corporations cost-cutting axe.

It gives opportunities to young people right across the country to make their first steps in journalism… and no doubt played a founding role in landing Laura her dream job at NME.

This is what she has to say about her experience:

In May 2005 I was appointed BBC Cornwall’s Blast Reporter, which entailed spending the summer running my own section of the BBC Cornwall website. I interviewed bands, jewellery designers and the inventor of the first biodegradable surfboard, took photos of the Eden Sessions and played at being a real journalist for the summer. The same scheme went on in the majority of the BBC’s local newsrooms. With our sections being primarily arts-based and aimed at fellow teenagers, our duty as reporters was to file at least one article and diary entry per week in exchange for rigorous BBC training in internet content management systems, professional recording equipment, and safety procedures.

And this on the real impact of the BBC decision:

… the people who will miss Blast – in particular its work experience placements and free event and workshop tours – are a group chronically underserved by commercial media, which is in complete antithesis to the BBC’s justification for proposing various closures on account of intruding on the competition. That group includes young people in geographically remote areas, away from the London-centric media world – regions like Cornwall, where there are very few other opportunities for teenagers to get experience in the limited local press that exists here. It includes kids whose parents/aunties/godfathers aren’t industry highflyers, able to wangle their progeny work experience placements on account of the family name; kids who wouldn’t make it to Oxbridge – still renowned for giving applicants a leg-up into the Beeb – but who nonetheless have incredible skills to offer. Blast is open to kids from any social background, making them feel comfortable in a very middle class industry, and the application process is the same as any fair, equal opportunities job application – proving that you’re worthy of the job because of your enthusiasm and achievements.

Why would the BBC be cutting BLAST at a time when job opportunities for young people are so limited and the current internship culture so often benefits those with money or geographically based in London? Also why did 6 Music get so much attention and this didn’t! Read the full article here. And if you tweet (we really should more.. then join the twitter campaign here).

Labour leadership candidates pledge to support interns

The campaign group Intern Aware have taken advantage of the Labour
leadership battle to get the candidates to commit to enforcing
national minimum wage for interns. They are asking all contenders to
sign this pledge:

If I am elected leader of the Labour Party I will campaign for Labour’s Minimum Wage Act to be fully enforced so that employers must pay their interns what they are due.

So far a rather dapper looking Andy Burnham has signed it, and the Milibands have agreed to as well. No news on Ed Balls… and Diane Abbott would be a suprise because we have heard the number of unpaid interns she has could reach double figures! One spoke to us recently to say she worked unpaid for a year and a half before being given a paid role. Real social justice there Diane, you hypocrite.

On the campaign, I think it’s a great idea to use this attempted renewal of the Labour Party to get interns on the agenda. With more young people graduating in a tough economic climate, it’s time politicians enforced the national minimum wage laws they themselves brought in. Intern Aware need to be congratulated for taking this to the top.

£2.50 an hour for working as an intern?… you must be joking!

My reaction to the recent proposals saying interns should be paid a ‘training wage’ of 2.50 an hour was shock and disbelief. In fact, it was to whisper “bullshit” under my breath several times. A reader has written in with their thoughts: 

This week has been a hot one for internships featured in the media. Not only have Allen&Overy released some interesting findings on the inaccessibility of internships, but the CIPD has come out with an idea for a ‘training wage’ for interns, suggesting that this will enable more employers to pay interns.

This is a rate of £2.50 an hour for anyone working as an intern – the same as anyone working as an apprentice. According to the CIPD it is a ‘good solution’, because if all businesses were urged to pay full NMW to an intern, ’30-40 per cent of opportunities would disappear’.

Well let them, I say.

If business can’t host an intern, can’t pay a (very) reasonable wage and can’t see why this isn’t wrong, the ‘opportunity’ becomes another form of exploitation. The CIPD’s proposed solution, a halfway-house between nothing at all and NMW, is insulting to graduates coming out of university having just invested the best part of £25,000 in building their skills and abilities.

The parallel with apprenticeships is also slightly deceptive. Apprentices embark on a well-laid out course of work and study, with controls over the type of work they can do, and how much time they should spend at work. If interns had these sorts of safety nets, and a prescribed course of learning on the job, the ‘training wage’ might be more appropriate as it would include a package of well-thought-out areas in which the employer would be expected to give them some training.

I also have to take issue with the way in which this ‘training wage’ is presented as some sort of solution to the horrendous lack of social mobility in internships. Take London as an example. Paying young people NMW is still around £2 per hour less than the London Living Wage. So how do we expect an intern to live off half of that, in addition to perhaps having to move to and find a flat in London, unless they are supported by well-off parents or have family already in the area.

The reality of living on NMW in a city like London is stark – much starker than the impact paying it has on an organisation. The CIPD seems not to have thought through the economic realities for the young person, whilst offering concessions to organisations left, right and centre.

Many businesses complain that they are not able to pay interns. My response to that would be to find a new business model. If a profit-making organisation is relying on unpaid workers, that is illegal. The simple message is: if you can’t afford to have interns, don’t offer an internship. Because it’s not an opportunity – it’s exploitation.

Various ways to have your say

NUMBER 1: IPSA- Parliamentary Reform

IPSA have invited the public to comment on their ‘Amendments to the MPs’ Expenses Scheme Rules’. Have a look at this document, in particular these questions:

Q2. How should MPs be able to claim for the payment of travel and lunch expense to interns who are not ‘workers’ and do not have contracts of employment?

How may MPs operate safely within the exemptions provided from paying minimum pay rates within the legislation? 

 Email your answers to: schemeconsultation(at)parliamentarystandards.org.uk by the 7th July.

NUMBER 2: Low Pay Commission

Get in touch with us via email if you would like to talk to the Low Pay Commission about your experiences as an intern paid less than the minimum wage. You would need to be free from 3.30pm to 4.30pm on Wednesday 7th July and be able to travel to Tottenham Court Road in London. 

OK there are many many other ways you can have your say but two is enough for today…

The murky Internship Alliance

You might be hearing a little more about something called the ‘Internship Alliance’ over coming weeks and months. They are a newly created pressure group of vested interests and public affairs companies who want to lead discussions with the government about the role internships play in the job market. We, and a few others, have some concerns.

They have styled themselves as being ‘friends of the intern’, but to quote an anonymous intern who alerted us to this story:

Its motivations seem dodgy to say the least. It seems more like a grand plan to make money for some of these organisations by lobbying Government under the guise of making internships better.

Our anonymous intern went on:

One of the organisations involved is Luther Pendragon who, it has been discovered, takes on unpaid interns. This is genuinely quite shocking. I have found three adverts for unpaid internships with Luther Pendragon from the past few months: here, here and here

Luther Pendron will be running a full-scale press campaign for the companies involved – and we have recently discovered that some of these companies pay a fee to Luther to be associated with the alliance.

Our anonymous Intern describes another member of the Alliance – Inspiring Interns – who we have written critically of in the past. They make a profit out of the intern industry – getting a fee for arranging an unpaid internship, and then charging the company if the intern is given a paid job! They also boast of having 10+ unpaid interns themselves. It’s a staggering business model, that uses interns like serfs.

We do not believe they have interns’ rights at heart – and I do not want them speaking for me in the national press.

Someone from Inspiring recently wrote this to try and convince companies to sign up to its scheme: 

The answer for many businesses may well be hiring an intern. Interns represent very effective, but inexpensive, labour.

We look forward to being surprised by the Interns Alliance. Anything that ends the current intern culture is undoubtedly a good thing. But we do not think the Alliance is best placed to do this.

Intern Aware is involved, who really do care about getting minimum wage for interns, but as ex-member Tanya from Graduate Fog wrote, she had to spend the Alliance meeting fighting for interns rights. That should be the uniting factors behind an intern pressure group not something to debate! 

Tanya left because she didn’t like the morals or the motivations of the companies involved, and as the anonymous intern who originally emailed us said:

I’d seriously consider how it looks for you to be associated with this Internships Alliance group, they seem like they are in it for the wrong reasons.

Beware any press coverage that comes from them over the summer. 

NB: Other groups involved, according to a comment on the Graduate Fog website include: WEXO, STEP, Give A Grad A Go, The Student Room, Wikijob, Rate My Placement, Enternships, Student Beans, AIESEC, Brave New Talent and Business In The Community.

Interns! Know your rights!

The TUC (trades union congress) has developed a handy website that spells out your rights as an intern. If you’re not sure whether you’re allowed sick leave or holidays as an intern, then click here. If you’re feeling exploited and over worked then click here. If you’re just a bit confused about the legality of the whole thing then click here.

Fancy getting in touch?

Does anyone feel they’ve been exploited through a recent work experience/internship? If so, BBC News is keen to hear about it. All info will be treated in total confidence. They are particularly interested in young people who’ve ended up doing unpaid work outside the world of media and politics.

If anyone wants to get in touch then please drop us a short email and we’ll pass the details on.

Debate about Internships in the Media

You can now check out BECTU’s debate about internships and unpaid work over at their YouTube channel. Part One below.

Breaking News: +++ Low Pay Commission Reports on Unpaid Internships +++

The evidence we received on unpaid work experience indicates that there is systematic abuse of interns, with a growing number of people undertaking ‘work’ but excluded from the minimum wage.

It is becoming increasingly commonplace in certain sectors, particularly the media, entertainment industry and in politics, for employers to demand a period of unpaid work experience as a means of getting into the industry. The Government’s Fair Access to the Professions report highlighted the issue of unpaid internships and how they serve to limit career choices to those who can afford to work unpaid and those who live near London.

We further encourage BIS as part of this work to engage directly with the sectors in which lengthy unpaid internships have become the norm. We invite BIS to present its proposed strategy to us by the summer.

The Low Pay Commission Report can be read here.

More to follow…

Shooting yourself in the foot?

An Event on Film and Television Internships

Date: Thursday 18th March
Time: 7:00pm
Location: The University of London Union, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY (nearest tube stations: Goodge Street & Russell Square)

In the wake of the recent London Dreams case, which retrospectively awarded an unpaid intern the National Minimum Wage for the hours she worked on a feature film, there has been much debate within the industry about the effect this decision will have. Does the verdict represent the long-overdue protection desperately needed by the industry’s most vulnerable workers, or the death of creativity and collaboration which often provides a stepping stone for those who are new to the industry? Should it be viewed as a victory or a disaster..? 

Continue reading ‘Shooting yourself in the foot?’

Internocracy is launching the Interns’ Campaign for Change!

Internocracy – a super organisation that develops bespoke internships for a variety of organisations – is launching a new campaign. They’ve also been nominated for an award and they need your vote by midnight tonight…this is what they have to say:

As part of the Interns’ Campaign for Change, we’re putting together our Interns’ Manifesto, crowdsourced with our Interns’ Advisory Board. Click here if you want to make your views heard, choose the main ideas we should include, or suggest your own.



We’ve been nominated for a Shell LiveWIRE award and if we win, we will hold a live event discussing the problems interns and employers face, and look at what can be changed. We will also Twitter launch our Interns’ Manifesto. Go here to see our video and vote for Internocracy – voting closes tonight at midnight!

Arts internships: chance of a lifetime or cut-price labour?

A great article in the Guardian this morning referencing the Arts Groups recent report on unpaid internships.

A young acquaintance of mine recently got her first paid job in theatre. She left university two and a half years ago and, since then, has worked part-time in a bar, while also undertaking a series of unpaid or expenses-only work experience placements and internships. Six, to be exact. Now approaching her mid-twenties, she has just got her first salaried employment in the arts. She counts herself lucky, even though it is only a part-time job. She knows people who have been working unpaid in theatres and companies even longer.

Unpaid work has become the accepted route into the creative professions. The Arts Council’s jobs website is awash with such unpaid opportunities, and there are theatres and companies who have become over-reliant on this free graduate labour and couldn’t run without it. Effectively it has become institutionalised.

Well done Lyn Gardner and well done the Arts Group.

Next Page »


Interns Anonymous

We want this website to be a forum for interns to share their experiences and discuss the ethics of unpaid employment. Most importantly, we want this site to be a place where YOU can tell us your story.

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Interns Anonymous accept no responsibility for the contents of the blog, comments or any other content on this site that is posted or provided by third parties. This website is designed to act as a forum for interns to share experiences and opinions about their work, therefore, we will not censor opinions we do not agree with. The opinions stated in blog contributions do not represent those of Interns Anonymous. We will refrain from mentioning organisations and individuals by name. We disclaim all liability for such content to the fullest extent permitted by law. If you have any queries please email us.