‘While I count myself lucky to have been able to benefit from the inspiring work experience I had, policy wonks are immersed in debate about whether unpaid interns are in fact being exploited. To explore that claim, I spoke to one of the 450 unpaid interns who work in parliament: she said she had gained a lot and didn’t feel exploited at all.’

Oh wow, you spoke to one intern? And she didn’t feel exploited? Thank God for that, now we can be sure that no other interns anywhere in the world feel or are exploited. Obviously I don’t want to be associated with the ‘policy wonks’ (by the way Julia is Acting Director of the think-tank Demos, which is there to do what exactly? Policy wonk.) – but I would like to draw Ms Margo’s attention to the views of the more-than-one-intern who have emailed us and taken our surveys in the past two years. The following are a selection of quotes from our inexperienced, crop top wearing and, let’s be honest, moronic interns:

‘I feel the internship system in the UK is hardly human anymore’

‘I am now cold towards politics as a career’

‘it should be made illegal’

‘the company I worked for were making people redundant and stuffing interns into their positions’

‘I took the internship on the understanding that I would get a job but three months in it is clear that neither me nor the three interns I work with are going to be employed’

‘I learnt new skills but 5 months without pay and 2 months unemployed have made life pretty difficult’

‘this was a sad waste of time’

‘this is the worst thing I have done in my life! I work a 60 hour week, I am petrified of my boss who calls me lazy but I love parliament and I don’t want to quit in case it makes me look bad’

‘it was an utter waste of time’

‘I am sick of this shit’

OK you get the picture.

This isn’t to say that some internships don’t provide skills and don’t allow people to settle into a good work ethic but it saddens me to see unpaid work supported so whole heartedly by someone who should be able to see that economically, socially and even- dare I say it- morally, asking or expecting or allowing people to work for free is wrong.

Turning down the violin soundtrack and ignoring the yelps of bitter, resentful interns- from a practical standpoint work that doesn’t pay can only ever be a stopgap, it solves a problem in the short term, a bit like getting the Dutch kid who used his hand to stem a leak in a dyke to stand there forever instead of getting help. The kid’s arm would get tired and eventually Holland would be in a worse situation.

Let’s look at one of the main problems that internships are supposed to solve:

How do we solve youth unemployment in this country?

Encourage growth, more jobs.

I know I know it’s not as simple as that (maybe it is) but internships DO NOT get people jobs- they, in the words of a particularly witty intern, ‘prove that you’re not in prison’. Jobs get people jobs. Our survey of 249 interns found that 82% of them did not get a job in the organization they interned with. Frankly, we all know what the problem is- there are not enough jobs- we need to look at this issue straight in the eye, like Crocodile Dundee would look at a raging buffalo. Graduates are not getting as many jobs as they should because there are not enough jobs, NOT because they are particularly stupid, under-experienced or crop-top wearing.

You thought I was going to shut up now but it turns out I’m not. Here is another great bit from Julia’s article:

‘The best way to ruin opportunities for thousands of graduates would be to insist that internships are paid. Employers would simply offer fewer placements if they had to pay — they already invest a fair amount of staff time in them. Worse, paying interns would pollute the whole process and ultimately lead to internships being conflated with entry-level jobs, thus excluding exactly the kind of fresh graduates who benefit most from the opportunities. Who would pay a useless graduate when you can hire a recession-hit 25-year-old? I once worked in an organisation that paid its interns. As a result, we recruited through a formal process and took only those with prior experience.’

 Re-e-wind:

‘Paying interns would pollute the whole process and ultimately lead to internships being conflated with entry level jobs’. But wait! Hold up! The trouble is, internships are already being conflated with entry-level jobs. So now they’re entry-level jobs without pay. I don’t normally approve of using one person’s experience as evidence of a general trend but what the hell, if Julia does it, so can I: ‘the company I worked for were making people redundant and stuffing interns into their positions’- said one of the interns who took our survey. 

And now my to address my particular bugbear, slagging off shitty graduates who can’t even make a bloody coffee for god’s sake:

Who would pay a useless graduate when you can hire a recession-hit 25-year-old?

Perhaps a company which, as well as not expecting a 25 year old with commensurate experience to take an entry-level job, would also like to invest in its employees, build up their skills base and create a competent, non-resentful workforce. I guess this is about principles and maybe a little bit about old-school Cadbury’s style corporate paternalism. 

Graduates may be depressingly eager to submit to whatever crap the government and the winds of fate throw at them (top up fees, more top up fees, internships, house prices higher than the moon) but they are not useless. Funnily enough, several paid interns we have talked to report a far better learning experience and a far more positive outcome for both them and the employer. Employers have also noticed an improvement in the quality of their intern’s work when they pay them: this is partly for obvious reasons (money grabbing graduates are only happy, effective workers when they can buy booze and drugs) and partly because employers care about money, so if they are spending it, they will make sure they teach the intern what they need to know, give the intern clear tasks or projects and help the intern throughout this process.

I once worked in an organisation that paid its interns. As a result, we recruited through a formal process and took only those with prior experience.

The experience conundrum is a difficult one but to pretend that it doesn’t apply to internships as well as jobs is madness. Let me take a look at w4mp, artsjobs, charity jobs and see if I can find an internship that demands experience. Oh look! I found two that specifically demand experience, here and here. The second organisation would like ‘someone with experience and/or a good understanding of the legal business, preferably with a law degree, interested in improving their understanding about the global legal community and to develop relationships in the industry’. And you can safely bet money that the huge demand for internships mean that despite a lack of explicit demand for experience, you will need experience to stick out from the crowd, unless of course your boyfriend’s mate works for a national newspaper.

‘The 2010 “non-graduate talent pool” (made up of 50% of the youth population) is, of course, extremely unlikely to find any work experience at all. But the government offers basic skills training to help them find rubbish jobs stacking boxes, so that’s okay.’

I am not one to stick up for government policy so why change the habit of a lifetime: patently two wrongs do not make a right. Unemployed school-leavers are facing the same conditions as the rest of us- this doesn’t mean I support the promotion of unpaid internships for graduates. Once again I am going to be incredibly demanding- jobs for all of us! All of us! We all want jobs and we want them now!

Now, I don’t pretend to be Miss Popularity but at least I know more people than Ms Margo who has never met anyone who cannot afford to work for nothing:

‘I have yet to meet a graduate who genuinely cannot afford to work for nothing: sleep on a friend’s floor and work in a bar in the evening, for goodness’ sake.’

In 5 seconds I can think of at least 5 people I know very well who wouldn’t have been able to afford an internship for more than a month, and I am not sure whether my parents (in my case, London based) would have been up for 5 of my friends sleeping on the sofa, for goodness’ sake! (By the way if you put a quaint expression of exasperation at the end of the sentence, people are more likely to suck it up and believe what you say) Also can I just ask why pubs should constantly be supporting graduates through their career search?

Thousands of graduates do this without complaint. As for non-graduates and those from poorer families, these are excluded not by cost but by the snobbery of employers.

Finally something I semi-agree with. But I can assure you that people are excluded from internships as a result of their cost and not living in London, as well as by the  snobbery of employers. The existence of one excluding factor does not preclude the existence of the other. Mind blowing, I know.

‘While debate rages on over whether unpaid interns are exploited or lucky, there is no question as to whether employers benefit: our economy is now secretly running on intern power. What we actually need to do is to increase the number of internships being offered, rather than make companies pay.’

If the economy is indeed secretly running on intern power (well it’s not such a secret in the case of Demos- the think-tank which Julia is currently directing) then what does that say about our society? That we value our young people so poorly we demand that they work for free, something that is anathema to most sane people; that whilst praying for the economy to grow, we are actively stunting it by restricting ‘thousands’ to a pittance that they will then spend on…Sainsbury’s basics beans? Just what is the point of increasing the number of internships when all that would lead to is graduates having to step up the number of internships they did to stand out? By increasing the expectation of unpaid work, all you do is discourage paid work, which is- let’s not forget- one of the pillars of a successful economy.

What do you think? Have I gone crazy or is Julia Margo crazy? (Judge for yourself- when we have sorted out rights and posted the article- Sunday Times needs a subscription and we don’t want to make them mad).

“InternStar connects quality interns to internship opportunities in small- and medium-sized British businesses with exclusive access to some of the most ambitious and talented university candidates, young graduates and postgraduates.”

How much of this work is unpaid?

I bet that InternStar will also be connecting a raft of poor unemployed twenty-something’s with small businesses desperate to shelve £20,000 off the cost of a basic administrator – who see a 3 month unpaid intern as a viable alternative in tough economic times.

It goes on:

“InternStar is an innovative approach to recruiting:

• We offer qualified, motivated personnel at a fraction of the cost of a full-time employee.

• We are a better alternative to direct recruitment – mitigate your risk by trying out candidates first.

• We help companies bypass hiring freezes, so that your projects are properly staffed.”

By “innovative” do you mean illegal and an abuse of basic minimum wage laws? A burglar doesn’t have an innovative way of making money – he cheats the system.

Next:

“Hiring an intern now helps your company to meet immediate operational needs, save on the cost and lost opportunity of bad recruitment decisions, and tap into talent from among the next generation of achievers to stay ahead of the competition.”

And abuse a generation of graduates, saddled with university debts – unable to pay their way in an economy fucked by people like you. F-u-c-k you.

I’m getting increasingly furious about the ill-informed and misguided belief in internships as a holy grail of employment prospects. While internships may be a necessary requirement for permanent employment, they do not guarantee it. In my experience, internships are a mere tool of exploitation that benefit only one party – the employer. Moreover, not only do internships not necessarily lead to permanent employment, they are also far from easy to get. I have had enough of people of my parents’ generation advising young people to simply do an internship to increase their job prospects. In today’s fierce graduate job market, an internship is almost as valuable as a paid job and my personal experience has been that many internships have around 300 applicants per post.

I am a graduate who has found myself trapped in and consistently let down by the world of internships. Since graduating I have done everything in my power to get a career in the third sector. But despite my first class degree, my award for academic excellence, my Msc from a top university (all down to incredibly hard work) and my three internships in the third sector I still find myself two and a half years down the line working in a shop for not much more than minimum wage. Moreover, I’m finding myself forced to borrow money from my retired parents to pay back my £35K student loan while spending all my time off applying for jobs and yet more internships, only to be informed that I still don’t have enough work experience. I am constantly told by organisations using interns that either a large proportion of their paid staff are former interns or that all their interns have gone on to amazing paid jobs in the sector. However, I find it very unlikely that I am an exceptional case and I suspect that this represents a wider systemic problem.

It is beyond me how the government, with the full support of not only the public, private and third sector but also the media, can actively encourage the current trend of an increase in internships for young people. Through some bizarre loophole in the employment law, a worker who is paid below the minimum wage would be advised to make an appointment with the Citizens Advice Bureau whereas a graduate doing an entirely unpaid internship is supposed to feel privileged. Of course all internships are “voluntary”, which seems to imply that I have absolutely no right to complain about my situation. I have even been told by someone who works for a voluntary sector organisation that interns cannot be forced to do anything they would not want to do, and as an intern one has the right to say “no” – that sounds like an incredibly generous and fair system. As an intern, though, there is only the minor issue of needing a reference, meaning that one is unlikely to say “no” to mundane tasks such as stuffing envelopes or doing photocopying. Of course I have gained some valuable experience and knowledge throughout my internships but I feel that, all too often, my time was used in a way that made me feel exploited. Furthermore, my positive experiences could have been achieved in a paid capacity. After all, there was a time when one could learn on the job whereas nowadays employers seem to demand experience that can only be achieved through unpaid internships.

When is the truth about internships going to be made public? The reality of internships is that it is a system whereby not only “poor” charities but also multinational companies can get away with exploiting graduates with a bleak future and get free labour through loose promises of future job prospects when the reality is that the graduate job market is saturated and even some of the best graduates will remain unemployed, whether they have done an internship or not.

Yours Sincerely,

Interned

 That is what I am in fact doing now. I am an intern. This is my first, second…hold on…seventh internship. I’ve had some great experiences. I worked at a newspaper for two weeks, had an article published on their front cover. That was a wonderful internship. One of my best achievements in the workplace without a doubt.

Not so recently, I worked for a pressure group as a campaigns intern. I was involved in the co-ordination of a national event, the Convention on Modern Liberty. I wrote blog articles, reviewed books and did research. A useful and interesting experience.

I worked in Parliament for a conservative MP. I did clerical work all week. Filed cabinets, did photocopying…somehow, I found it fascinating. Because it was a week in Parliament, the people I worked with were great. They made me feel welcome, were friendly and I made some useful contacts.

But then, there is a flip side. I won’t mention the people I currently intern for, but I am bored. The people are nice, but not as friendly. They don’t give me interesting tasks to do. What will I say I have achieved? Nothing. I haven’t achieved a thing. This has been a dull month.

Internships can be absolutely vital, and certainly have a place in society but there are problems with them. It is entirely pointless to have someone come in for two weeks if it will have no useful benefit. That is, if someone goes into a workplace and they have nothing for them to do aside from filing and photocopying, then what is the point? What skills can you learn from that? You haven’t done any productive work for them, they haven’t had any need for any work to be done. So who benefits exactly?

Oh yeah, the references argument. Well…actually. If company A has an intern for two weeks at a time, throughout the year, that is 26 interns a year. If company A happens to be a TV company, and there are say, hundreds of TV companies, you could reasonably expect there to be thousands of interns a year being employed in this industry. Will those interns all stand a significant chance of getting somewhere as the result of the internship? No. The market has become saturated, the numbers taking internships renders their contact useless, as about 3000 others have similar references. The relevance of this has become diluted.

Then there is the money issue. There are people who can afford to do internships week upon week upon week, because they have rich parents or have had committed to saving up a substantial amount. They can spend the entire summer doing this. I couldn’t, though I am able to afford to do shorter-term internships. Some can’t afford to do internships because they need to earn more money than I did.

This demonstrates the benefits and pitfalls of the internship. I believe there is a sensible solution to this problem. I believe a company should not be allowed to simply have interns every week. I believe if a company needs interns that frequently, then they should hire a full time member of staff, rather than taking the ‘cheap’ way out by exploiting our need for experience. A company should only be allowed to employ interns for say, two or three months a year.

Second, the amount this government spends on education is half that of its health budget and a third of its work and pensions budget. The public sector wage bill stands at about £150 billion each year. I think you see where I’m going…whilst the government is happy doling out pay rises to MPs and vastly increasing the numbers of unproductive civil servants and paying for the health treatment of those who aren’t even UK citizens, what help is there for the hard working, enterprising intern? Rather than fork out shedloads of money for people who simply ‘don’t want to work’, I’d like to see a shift in the budget to take away maybe a few million (which is peanuts in terms of their almost 10 figure budget) for those of us who are working hard for a future without pay. Companies could apply for government grants for interns, and pay us reasonable hourly wages. I worked at a pressure group and they didn’t pay interns as they couldn’t afford it – there was nothing immoral in what they were doing, so it would be unfair to ask them to take on the burden of an intern’s salary.

At the end of the day, if you totted up what interns added to the economy and what benefits cheats and those with lazy-itis take away from the economy, I think it is justifiable to give us some of their money. It would also allow the poor to do these internships, and would be a great investment in Britain’s future. And it would also encourage some of those recently laid off to spend a few weeks earning money in a sector they’d never previously considered. This could be an innovative and cost effective solution not just for young interns and the poor, but the government and country as a whole.