I am having trouble understanding the difference between a volunteer and an unpaid intern. Probably the interns have a more structured schedule, make more commitment, and generally behave more like employees.
But is there a moral difference between a hard-working, committed volunteer and an unpaid intern?
Advocates of minimum wage have the awkward task of explaining why volunteering is good but unpaid internships are bad.
- Unpaid interns, often students, are an island unto themselves. Unlike volunteers, who set their own schedules and enjoy unlimited coffee and appreciation, interns compete for the prestige of working in demanding jobs without pay.
The hot beverage distinction is flimsy, flippant, and undoubtably false.
On hours, volunteers do not enjoy unlimited flexibility and interns none. But it's probably fair to say an internship is a more structured, committed form of volunteerism. To me, the important feature is that both workers can change their hours to zero -- quit -- as soon as a better opportunity comes along.
So why are unpaid internships wrong? Is it because the organization exploits the worker by enjoying the benefits of labor without providing anything in return? Or is it because internships provide valuable experience and connections, but poor workers cannot afford to work without salary?
- There is a racial divide between students wealthy enough to participate in internship programs and those who lack the financial reserves to do so.
Got it: unpaid internships provide valuable experience and networking opportunities, and wealthier applicants with more qualifications enjoy an advantage when competing for them. Just like paid jobs.
You understand neither volunteer status nor unpaid internships.
An unpaid internship is a position of some authority that resides within the hierarchy of the corporate structure. Internships have always been on the career path to greater responsibility. An intern is assumed to have the necessary specialized skills to perform an aspect of the job and the internship is seen as a low-pressure environment to refine one's specialized skills in order to improve their value. It's only since 2008 that the former (low) paid internships have become unpaid internships; as with low-paid internships, the unpaid internship comes with the implicit guarantee that any paid position for which the intern is qualified will be offered to the intern first and foremost.
A volunteer position is a position of no authority in which the volunteer is assumed to have a specialized skillset outside of the primary goal of the volunteer position. No career advancement is offered or implied and the volunteer labor of the intern is presumed to be secondary or tertiary to the principle labors and responsibilities of the volunteer. Further, the volunteer offers her services out of altruism, not self-interest; there is no quid pro quo assumed between the volunteer and the organization she volunteers for.
Call up your local political party. Tell them you want to volunteer. They'll sit you at a phone and have you make calls. Or instead, tell them you want an internship. They might ask for a resume. If they like it, they might bring you in for an interview. They might have you compete for your unpaid position amongst other unpaid, qualified candidates. Should you get the job, you'll be in charge of the very same phone bank, getting the exact same money. But at the end of the campaign, your performance as a political operative will have either endeared or alienated people you are working for. Meanwhile, the volunteers will go back to their day jobs.
Interns can be fired. Interns can be held responsible. Interns are subject to (some) labor laws. Interns are judged as employees, albeit cheap ones. Volunteers? Volunteers answer phones and canvass neighborhoods.
Got a buddy. He's now an executive at Disney. I'm not. The difference?
He could afford to spend three years as an unpaid intern.
Thank you for the comprehensive overview. Clearly the intern has a more serious and responsible role.
No question that having wealth is advantageous when competing for jobs or anything else. Providing salary to interns would encourage less affluent applicants, but it would also make the positions more attractive to everyone, increasing competition.
The article gives the impression that it is wrong to not pay interns. Perhaps this is largely a perception of hypocrisy among candidates who talk a lot about how others should pay workers.
- Providing salary to interns would encourage less affluent applicants, but it would also make the positions more attractive to everyone, increasing competition.
You have this exactly backwards. The social trend being protested is "removing salary from interns would discourage less affluent applicants, but it would also make the positions more clearly intended for the social elite." Give the phrase "rise in unpaid internships" a google. Then do an image search on "unpaid internship graph." The simple fact is that paid internships are extraordinarily rare these days whereas previously they were common. It's also a fact that the positions being held by the unpaid were formerly held by the paid. Within my own industry, I've worked with unpaid editors, unpaid script supervisors, unpaid dialog editors... I've never worked with an unpaid PA, though, 'cuz nobody does your scutwork for free.
Kathleen Kennedy is worth looking up. Pay careful attention to this passage:
- During the production of 1941 (1979), while working for screenwriter John Milius, Kennedy came to the attention of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg hired Kennedy as his secretary, but both she and he reported that she was a terrible typist who was kept on only because of her good production ideas.
Not mentioned in there is the fact that she spent several months hanging out in front of the office, begging for work every day. Nor the fact that eventually they let her in to make coffee. Nor the fact that she didn't get paid well into the production of Raiders. Not to diminish Kathleen Kennedy's skills in any way, but the fact of the matter is, if she hadn't hung out with no income for months, she never would have become Kathleen Kennedy.
Success is being in the right place at the right time. The way things used to work, you could earn a pittance so that you could spend a long time at the right place. The way things work now, youth are led to believe that hanging out in the right place is reward enough for spending an impossibly long time there. My buddy? Well, for starters, he comes from old money. And his wife worked, so there was that. But three years of 80 hour weeks (for free) nearly destroyed his marriage, resurrected a drug addiction and annihilated his health. Meanwhile, that's six man-years of income out of the labor pool.
It is wrong to not pay interns. When a job that is typically remunerated is offered to someone in exchange for prestige and the promise of advancement, taxes aren't paid. Livings aren't supported. And opportunities for equally (or better) qualified individuals who do not have the luxury of a rich uncle or forbearing parents dissolve in the wake of employee abuse.
This is how gilded ages start.
Thanks for the background and reading suggestions. I have Middle East 101 queued up next.
Working for an extended time without salary to gain skills with some hope of long-term gainful employment is not a brand new idea, but things are certainly different in our times.
And I'm a big fan of apprenticeships. I'm Union - there are still classifications with journeyman attached to them. But implicit in the apprentice-master relationship is on-the-JOB training - in other words, you are recognized as having less skill than the master, you are accorded less responsibility than the master, and you receive wages commensurate with your abilities.
But those wages aren't zero.
Apprenticeships are a way to make a living while you learn a trade. The entire core of this kerfuffle is that the whole "make a living" portion of the program has been externalized. Apprenticeship is gone. Mentorship is gone. What's left is youth predation - because all the promises of advancement rarely materialize.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/NACE_Internships_Jobs_2013.JPG
In the old days, the apprentice would pay a fee to the master, and "In theory no wage had to be paid to an apprentice since the technical training was provided in return for the labour given. However, it was usual to pay small sums to apprentices, sometimes with which to buy, or instead of, new clothes."
Labor is a complex arena, and I am no expert, so I appreciate your insights. I find that the binary categorization of such a variety of interactions as "paid/unpaid" with "unpaid=bad" is an overly simplistic way of rendering judgment.
NACE, the source of the data behind that chart, repudiated the conclusions made in the article, describing it as "misapplication" of their survey results.
In the old days the apprentice also got room and board. "Wage" meant something else.
I grabbed that graph off the Internet flippantly. However, considering the data it was drawn from, those are interns that were also earning college credit. I have friends that have burned through six of those peeps. This is the sort of economy that allows a couple of Youtube producers with truly marginal earnings access to a student pool that pays over $20k a year in tuition... for free. As an education it's definitely beneficial and as interns they're damn handy but there is a value proposition in there in place of wages. The unpaid internships highlighted in the article would not be covered under this arrangement.
- Advocates of minimum wage have the awkward task of explaining why volunteering is good but unpaid internships are bad.
No, actually they don't.
Volunteering and unpaid internships have nothing at all to do with the minimum wage, although I can see why you'd like to think so (since you disapprove of the concept). IF unpaid internships are legal, then they are (obviously) not affected by a minimum wage. Volunteering (also obviously) has nothing to do with a minimum wage.
You've successfully hijacked a discussion about internships, in order to talk about what you want to talk about.
I don't know the difference between volunteering and unpaid internships, so - no.
What I do believe is that businesses will (if they can) circumvent worker-rights legislation (including minimum wage laws) under either of these monikers, and when they do, THAT is morally questionable.
Worker-rights legislation, like minimum wage, is meant to protect the most vulnerable workers. Professionals like doctors and engineers don't need such protection.
Without legal protection, businesses would take advantage of the most vulnerable workers, like children, disabled people, agricultural workers sweating in the fields, or restaurant workers.
Yet these people can all legally be paid less than minimum wage in the United States. Similar exceptions apply in New Zealand.
David Bonior sponsored the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2002, and later opened a restaurant, paying his 50 or so employees $2.36 an hour.
The law recognizes that people with few skills or other disadvantages cannot afford to be priced out of the job market and makes exceptions for them. But not all of them.
Last July, the U.S. unemployment rate for people aged 16 and up was 5.3%. For black people aged 16-24, the rate was 20.7%. Are we helping them by making their labor more expensive to employers?
I think you're right, this is the subject I want to talk about. Thank you for your feedback, and for any other ideas you might like to share.
I disagree with your first statement - one need not be 'vulnerable' to be entitled to worker's rights.
My stance on minimum wage differs from yours, I suspect, and can be summed up quite simply - if you (as an employer) can't afford to pay the legal minimum wage, then you have a problem with your business model. You do society no favours by enabling slave wages simply because it allows more jobs to be available.
I am curious to understand your point of view, but it doesn't seem that you are curious to understand mine. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does seem like an opportunity for each of us to learn about a different perspective.
Perhaps you do not find it strange that disabled people are not covered by minimum wage. Or perhaps you think the law is wrong and they should be covered. I think they would be harmed by minimum wage, and am curious to know if you think differently.
Having given it some thought, I do think it's unjust to exempt minimum wage due to disability. Let's assume a person's disability makes him 50% productive. He shouldn't be paid half because of that - he deserves a day's wages for a day's work. It's also not fair to expect an employer to bear the cost; in this case the ideal would be a State subsidy to the employer, matching wages at 50% each. This seems to me a good, fair, and valid use of tax dollars.
Fairness is an elusive goal. People who work half time (perhaps because it is their second job) might find it unfair that the disabled person receives twice as much pay for the same amount of work.
Young people are also exempted from the minimum wage. As inexperienced workers, they can't produce the same value for an employer as older, more experienced workers.
In 2013, New Zealand recognized that minimum wage was locking young, inexperienced people out of the job market, and therefore implemented a "starting-out wage" of 80% of the adult minimum wage, saying
- The starting out wage is part of a range of measures that support more young people entering the workforce (and gaining the education and training they need for work). It will influence the demand for young people by employers, and therefore encourage them to create more jobs.
For young people who can produce at least 80% of the value of adult minimum wage workers, the law no longer prevents them from entering the job market and gaining experience.
Since 2013, the numbers are improving, but over 20% of young people seeking work remain unemployed.
Working at a low-paying job ("slave wage" is meaningless) is worse than what many people do for income. But it may be better than any alternative that some people have.
You do society no favors by banning others from voluntarily acting on opportunities simply because you would refuse them.
Your first paragraph makes no sense. The two do the same amount of work (labour), what is different is the amount of output / productivity. As to the rest, all I can say is that if your only goal is maximum employment numbers, then minimum wage makes sense. That is not the only consideration.
I don't see a lot of point in continuing this; we both know and understand the other's positions, we just don't agree.
- The two do the same amount of work
It depends on what you mean by work: effort, or value created. Productivity usually refers to value created, and many workers produce value by tapping on keyboards. Employers are concerned with value created, and switch to machines that produce the same value created when human labor is more expensive.
- we both know and understand the other's positions
I believe I can express your position in a way you would agree with, but I am not sure you could do the same.
But I don't insist on continuing. Perhaps someone else could explain why I believe minimum wage is more harmful than helpful and, if they disagree, why I am wrong.
That's twice now you've groundlessly accused me of not understanding you. I think we're done here.
I wasn't aware of the disability exemption for NZ, and I don't know the details yet, but I do find it strange. On the face of it, it seems unjust but perhaps there is a valid reason for it.
- Got it: unpaid internships provide valuable experience and networking opportunities, and wealthier applicants with more qualifications enjoy an advantage when competing for them. Just like paid jobs.
Well that's the problem. If jobs are expecting you to come in with internship experience, that obviously favors the folks who can afford to take 3+ months work with no income (the wealthy) versus those who have to balance their internship and their 1+ paying jobs (usually outside the field of expertise the internship would supply).
- Or is it because internships provide valuable experience and connections, but poor workers cannot afford to work without salary?
Bingo
So we agree: wealth brings advantages that make it easier to get into working relationships with others.
The same is true of volunteering; poorer people can't easily afford to volunteer.
I see no meaningful difference between the concept of volunteering, which is universally praised, and the unpaid internship, which is widely condemned.
I think it's a semantics issue. Volunteering to me implies things like community engagement, religious organization involvement, etc. It also implies...being voluntary. But businesses don't offer volunteer opportunities; they offer internships and these are usually considered a prerequisite for a job despite requiring the same amount of work as a job (but for no pay). Volunteering isn't necessary to break into an industry, but internships can be.
- I think it's a semantics issue.
Perhaps. When you say "businesses don't offer volunteer opportunities" I don't think you mean force is involved (i.e. it's not "voluntary"). I think you mean it's not a religious or community-engagement context. That's clear.
We can say there are a variety of opportunities to work without salary: picking up trash, serving food in a shelter, teaching English in a church, calling voters, answering phones, filing paperwork. People take these opportunities for a variety of reasons.
Knowing how to read isn't necessary to pick up trash, but it is to file paperwork. Knowing how to speak English isn't necessary to serve food, but it is to teach English.
I still don't see any moral distinction. If we didn't know which opportunities were called "volunteer" and which were "internship," how would we tell them apart?
Not force exactly but coercion certainly. It's the implication that you MUST take a period of no pay in order to maybe get pay in the future.
I don't think people are going out and picking up trash or serving in a shelter in order to get a corporate position; it's usually for the reward of doing a good thing in and of itself. I think calling voters, answering phones, and filing paperwork all constitute employable work. I think volunteering is something you do for the benefit of the community while interning is for the benefit of a company which is where the moral distinction might come into play.
- Not force exactly but coercion certainly.
Expressing the requirements you have of workers before you offer them salary is no more coercive than having requirements of flavor before you offer money for coffee. Starbucks is not forced to provide Pumpkin Spice if you are only willing to buy Pumpkin Spice. The only coercion I see is coming from people who aim to force organizations to pay for labor.
- interning is for the benefit of a company
The article says that interns are often students. What is a student?
A student is a person who works in a structured environment, with a fixed schedule, for an extended period. A student receives no salary.
Do advocates of minimum wage condemn this arrangement? Of course not. Sensible people support financial aid, to make it easier for disadvantaged people who can't afford to work without salary to become students.
What are the benefits that a business receives from an intern? Answered phone calls, filed paperwork, cases researched, facts checked. All in support of the real goal: to make more money for the business.
When I said the student receives no salary, I left out a detail of the working arrangement. Students pay for the opportunity to work hard in school. The university benefits more immediately and directly than any business. Any other business, I should say.
There's nothing wrong with that.