About Those Unpaid Internships

[Joanne98]

TAP talks with Dalton Conley about a Department of Labor crackdown on the intern racket.

Rebecca Delaney | July 16, 2010 | web only


The Department of Labor recently ignited debate when it reminded employers of those pesky minimum-wage laws. The move suggested the government is no longer keen on tolerating companies that don't pay their interns and compensate them instead with college credit. It turns out that there's a pretty narrow legal window in which interns don't have to be paid, and a fair number of employers who now offer unpaid gigs probably can't shimmy through it. After years of the "unpaid internship" bullet point finding its way onto more and more college students' resumés, the Labor Department crackdown has spurred a number of questions.

To help shed light on some broader issues behind these concerns, TAP talked to Dalton Conley, a Center for American Progress scholar and dean of social sciences at New York University. He has written about wealth and poverty, social mobility, and social class.

If unpaid internships are a real problem, why has it taken so long for the issue to blow up?

I think it has to do with the cycle of the economy. When the economy's booming, and everybody's got work if they want it anyway, then the fact that some rich kids want to work for free to get ahead isn't seen as a big deal. But when it is, rightly or wrongly, perceived as "these privileged kids are taking away labor-market opportunities from people who really need jobs," when there's high unemployment, I think it becomes more of a mainstream concern.

So it's not just that kids who've landed unpaid internships have done pretty well for themselves and have no reason to complain; it's more that the displaced workers have reason for concern?

I don't really think many workers are being displaced, but I think that's the perception. And I agree, actually, with what you said, also related to the economy. Students who are graduates who've had an unpaid internship or internships have an expectation with their unpaid work, their "slave labor," so to speak. The way they see it, it should lead to a real job, and maybe that was commonly the case during the boom time when labor was short. But now, and I don't think anyone has statistics on this, there's less likely to be a job at the end of the rainbow. It might engender bitterness among the interns themselves.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=about_those_unpaid_internships

[MountainLaurel]

1. Just heard an interview with the author

On NPR, I think. The author made a lot of good points.