[jreeve]

"... unpaid internships are huge drivers of inequality."

I believe that they can be, but as someone who actually had an unpaid intern (and who eventually got said intern a job at the company where we were working), let me make a case that they do not have to be exploitative.

I personally enjoy teaching, and have taught at two different universities. In addition to simply being a rewarding thing to do, it is a good way to get even better at whatever you are teaching.

So when I was the production manager in charge of making a bunch of marketing sites for small insurance agencies, I called up one of the local universities. They were quite happy (after some conversations with their faculty) to send me a student who was getting ready to graduate and who was interested in creating content for the web.

I didn't expect the intern to get any actual work done, just to kind of try and work through some of the projects that we were doing. The work that I was giving him was pretty much the same work that the paid staff were getting, and although we actually did end up using elements of his designs he was much slower and had a much smaller skill set than someone I would actually hire.

However, after a semester of working with us, his markup, scripting, and associated skills were a lot better. In addition to his own efforts, I spent time structuring his work assignments in ways that built from one topic to the next, and was available to critique his work in ways that he found useful.

So, this relationship was mutually beneficial: he is more skilled than he was, has at least some work experience to put down (other than food service), he received course credit (IIRC), and got a picture of what the inside of that kind of agency looks like.

For our part, we got a very small amount of marginal work, and for my personal part I improved my own scripting and CSS skills, in addition to simply enjoying working with folks who are learning.

Now, if we were just trying to fill a minimally skilled position with someone who was an employee and skim by calling them an "intern" instead of "an exploited worker", that would be different.

But I believe it is possible (though perhaps not likely) that unpaid, non-exploitative internship relationships can exist.

[j_baker]

Ok, so you didn't exploit that worker. Congratulations.

But what about the other kid who may or may not have been more qualified than the kid you hired, but couldn't afford to work for free?

[sliverstorm]

This is not a useful argument. If we consider the unpaid internship in question a learning experience, and we compare a kid who can afford to work for free and a kid who cannot, all we conclude is "the kid who has more free time, gets in more learning". Is this a radical, unethical situation? I don't think so.

Besides, if we assume the work produced by the intern is of negligible to zero value, and we still decide to force companies to pay for such interns, in the current work environment they will simply stop offering them. This seems like a net loss to me.

[j_baker]

Wait, what are you saying? Employment should be predicated on the employer giving the employee an adequate monetary reward in exchange for an adequate monetary reward for the employee? And if either side isn't getting their adequate monetary reward, the job shouldn't exist? This is a radical concept!

Seriously though, perhaps I'm just cynical, but I seriously doubt that such internships won't be offered. Companies get monetary gain from interns, otherwise they wouldn't spend any time and effort on them (even if not money). I think the simpler answer is that companies are just cheap. I mean, experience is great and all, but if money is being made off of a person's labor, then they deserve my cut. How large that cut should be is up for negotiation, but that they deserve a cut shouldn't be.

[sliverstorm]

I agree individuals ought to get a cut if they benefit the company, but what if that benefit is only worth $2/hr?

[teamonkey]

Hire them part-time.

[jreeve]

Well, what about the folks who also couldn't afford to go to the school that the guy was going to?

I mean, ultimately, the big obvious problem of capitalism is that the upkeep of labor is pushed onto the laborer... almost to the point where (to a very small extent) it could be possible that forcing labor to pay for its upkeep while exploiting it for profit is a defining characteristic of capitalism.

While I find it to be an interesting discussion, unless you want to decry systematic problems, you're really not going far enough with your "what about".

And we don't have to do everything within that system, do we? I mean, isn't direct action a good response to large, systematic problems?

"Wait, what are you saying? Employment should be predicated on the employer giving the employee an adequate monetary reward in exchange for an adequate monetary reward for the employee? And if either side isn't getting their adequate monetary reward, the job shouldn't exist? This is a radical concept!"

No, my point is that an internship is not a"job", interns shouldn't be treated like "employees", and that I was trading, based on my experience as a both a teacher and an expert in the content area for a personal reward of getting to teach for a bit.

When internships are equivocal with jobs, they are exploitative. I agree with you and the linked article on that.

What is not exploitative is when there is an actual exchange of, say, useful information and pedagogy in a system where you can't learn techniques without making stuff, especially in a way that privileged the growth of both a specific person and a larger workforce.

[j_baker]

Sorry, what are you saying? Capitalism is an imperfect system, therefore we should stop trying to make it better? I mean, of course capitalism has systemic problems. And many of those are the result of an education system that rewards those who are already well off. I think banning unpaid internships would go a long way towards making capitalism a better system.

[jreeve]

Fair enough.

But I am not saying that we shouldn't make it better (though if it would ceases to function in favor of some yet unnamed better thing, I will be much happier than if it were merely "better").

However, once you want to talk about freedom in the labor market, it should be pretty clear that there is none at all: what about me? Through no fault of my own, I can't afford to commute into a city, so I occasionally lose work and make less than I otherwise would.

But since we really can't do much about these systematic issues on an individual level, I can respect your stance towards banning unpaid internships outright: seems like an okay idea to me.

I am not saying that we should make reforms.

I am saying that it's possible to modify how capitalism operates by means other than banning practices, that is, by improving what people are doing with unpaid internships by 1) not treating them as labor in any sense and 2) not making their exchange about money.

Or if you prefer, why internships at all: why not abolish the whole concept of underpaid, low skilled labor and -only- hire "employees" at a real rate while working on helping them gain newer and better skill sets?

[eli_gottlieb]

Yes, an internship is a job. You work for an employer. That makes it a job. Pay the hell up.

[PKop]

How is arguing that "free" is too low any different than arguing "X" dollars is too low and should be more? If the marginal product of the interns labor is more than what is offered, then competing companies will bid up the wage rate until it equals the MPL. How is this a special case that is immune to the effects of supply/demand?

[eli_gottlieb]

Unfortunately, that "law" has failed to play out in real life. Also, why is the company hiring if the net benefit to them from the intern's labor is nothing?

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/114/31740564320cb174fabflz1...

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42041000/gif/_42041256...

http://www.realitysandwich.com/fantasy_finance

http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2004/el20...

[bkmartin]

I think that one of the key points here is that he did get "something". He got course credit. The college felt that the work he was doing in industry was worth "something" towards his education (which it most certainly was). So he paid for course credit, did the "classwork" (internship), and got the credit he earned. If he had not gotten any course credit and was simply doing it for the experience, I'm not liking that situation. Surely, almost ANYTHING, people do for your business is worth minimum wage.

[hnhg]

Sounds much like an unpaid apprentice.