The unpaid internship model has been a controversial topic in the past few years, and as a student at the largest cooperative university in the world — just north of 20,000 coop students apparently — I felt as though I should weigh in on the topic.
In my mind, there are many reasons out there why someone would take an unpaid internship. If you can’t find a paid internship, and you need the experience to stay competitive with the growing experience market, then that seems like a good justification for doing so. At the University of Waterloo, students often struggle to find their first coop job. This often due to a lack of experience, a small number of available openings for first year students, and a genuine lack of need for (relatively) under-skilled employees. But if one student gets a coop job in their first term, and no one else does, economics tells us that they have a competitive advantage.
If one student gets a job, the rest must as well to stay competitive.
And herein lies the predicament.
If I get an internship, paid, full employee benefits, whatever — and you also get an internship, unpaid, no benefits, nadda — then by our credentials, on paper, we are probably comparable. But there are some serious discrepancies here.
The three reasons a company won’t want to pay their interns, from a business perspective:
They cannot afford to pay another employee, especially a student.
They do not value the work that the student will be doing high enough to pay them at all.
They do not want to commit to the requirements of legally having an employee, especially an untrained student.
There is some hidden meaning under each of these.
Number 1: if a company is not able to pay an employee, do you really want to work for that company? The primary focus and purpose of a company, despite what anyone tells you, is to make money. If a company makes money, they can pay employees, who in turn work for the company in exchange for money. This is how the cycle works. If a company is not making money, it is not a successful company. Period. This excludes not-for-profits and charity organizations, for which I think this definition still applies, but there is more room for exceptions.
From the business standpoint, getting free work is another way for SOME people at the company to make money without giving the intern their share. If the company cannot pay you because they do not have the money to do so, then having another employee does NOT help that. If the intern coming in is the magical trigger that turns things around and causes the company to be profitable again, then the company is lying to itself. Not only do they have unpaid employees, but now they admit to making profit as a company and NOT sharing it with all of the workers.
I’m not saying that a company must share everything evenly, or even in some distributed manner, with all its employees. If you own the company and want to take a 50% share, then heck, you can do that — so long as you can still pay your employees with the other part.
Before you work at an unpaid internship, ask anyone if they feel like hiring 5 people and only paying 4 of them seems fair. There are lots of ways companies justify this, but then again, fairness really isn’t fair anymore, is it?
Number 2: If a company refuses to pay an intern for their work, there is a good chance that the work the intern is completing is not deemed as valuable enough as to be worth adequate payment.
Hiring someone to do your bitch work is never a good thing. I won’t get into why I think this is ethically, professionally, and morally wrong, but I am going to hope that you can guess I don’t like it. But more so, if, as an intern, someone is willing to hire you but not pay you for your work, there is a good chance it is because you are filing papers, photocopying something, or drafting documents that take a lot of time but little effort. Ask yourself: could a 10th-grade student do this? Could a 9th-grade student? Could someone with no education whatsoever do this?
That isn’t to say that any job is above you, but it is to say that the point of an internship is to gain valuable experience towards a certain career or field. Doctors have to do years of residence — essentially, a very long internship — before they are certified as doctors. This is invaluable experience, and really breaks them into the position of being a medical professional. This is where doctors take the academic training and combine it with real-world scenarios. If I had the choice, I would take a doctor with real-world training over academic training in almost any situation.
However, this is to say that if your goals are to be an engineer, or a designer, or a scientist, or a health profession, or whatever you dream to be, if your internship isn’t going to pay you, do you think they are going to fully embrace you as an employee and trust you with responsibility? Probably not. Do you think you are going to get challenging projects and mission critical assignments? Nope, definitely not.
Number 3: This is where things get gruesome.
One doesn’t have to go very far down the internet rabbit hole to find examples of interns being taken advantage of.
Try this, this, this, this or this.
Some choice quotes in here:
Young German worked until 6am for three consecutive days before collapse at home in east London
Adam’s death marks the third death of a student engaged in work-integrated learning in the last 10 months in Ontario
Currently, students engaged in unpaid work-integrated learning programs are not covered under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) or the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA)
So there you go.
It breaks my heart to see things like this. Youth inexplicably manipulated in order to achieve further profit. Disgusting.
But the technical details are perhaps more terrifying.
In Ontario, where I live and study, you are only recognized as an employee under the Occupational Health and Safety Act or the Employment Standards Act, 2000, if you are paid, or under certain conditions, most often of which are not covered with unpaid internships.
This means that an employer does not legally have to follow health and safety guidelines unless they are paying you.
So not only are you working for free, but you are also putting your life at risk.
And with the number of students who have been killed in the workplace rising every year, there is no reason for anyone to put themselves at that kind of risk. You’re better to be without an internship experience, than to have that experience be your last.
I must admit that my school, the University of Waterloo, has released a statement, found here, about unpaid internships. To summarize, they are approved on a case-by-case basis, and are usually in volunteer, not-for-profit, charity, or humanitarian sectors, only because they ACTUALLY do not have the money to pay people. And they need the help. And I think that is wrong, but that’s another discussion all together.
So I’m going to make a short list of internships I feel are acceptable to work in unpaid:
Charitable organizations for whom paying you would result in not being able to carry out their mission to a significant extent. For example, the American Cancer Society doesn’t count — they have LOTS of money — but The Working Center in Kitchener, ON might.
Not-for-profits where the ability of the organization to provide aid is dependent on both their current income and having additional staff. This would justify not paying people, because otherwise, the entire project fails.
Some (not all) international internships where transportation, room and board, food, and some external expenses are covered in exchange for work. This is the same as them paying you and you paying your bills.
Start-up work where payment is in the form of equity. This is another form of payment.
Small academic projects for companies, such as sponsored Master’s work or research in a particular area. If a research wishes to develop a topic for a specific segment of research, and requires company
And that’s about it.
So now that I have quite extensively laid this out, maybe the better question is: why do we have unpaid internships at all?
Competition. Lowering employment rates for students. Increasing constraints on companies forcing tighter margins.
Lots of reasons.
But I think the real problem breaks down to 3 subgroups of people:
Employers
Students
Mediators
Employers must take responsibility for this trend as they are the ones doing the hiring. If you can’t afford to pay a student what they are worth, then don’t hire a student. Plain and simple. If your business cannot operate without them being there to supplement your workload, then you run a crappy business. End of discussion.
Employers, inevitably, are responsible for the safety and well-being of all their employees. Part of that “well-being” clause means being able to pay them. And care for their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. If we know anything from the Social Determinants of Health (more on that later), it is that having enough money to pay for the basic amenities drastically improves people’s health. And as an employer, I feel that is their responsibility when it comes to their employees.
More importantly, perhaps, is that legally we have minimum wage restrictions for this very reason, and in many parts of the world, unpaid internships are illegal.
Students must also take responsibility for this trend as they are the ones agreeing to work. If one student agrees to an unpaid internship, then it becomes acceptable. We, as student, as employees, as human beings in a first-world country (or otherwise), should set a precedence and agree that this is not acceptable. France has banned unpaid internships. The UK views it as illegal. Why should it be different here?
As a student, you have rights, and one of them is refusing unsafe work. Not being paid often means not being covered by any health and safety body, and that falls within the range of unsafe work, which you are legally allowed to refuse. If an employer offers to pay you less than minimum wage, that is also illegal (under most situations). Reporting these to proper authorities is performing due dilligence and ensuring that everyone has a safe internship experience.
Most importantly, as students, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. Higher education should mean higher expectations, and higher expectations should mean higher responsibilities, and subsequently higher wages. That isn’t to say we should be nit-picky on how much we get paid, but we should drawn the line at being paid. After that, you’re on your own — but there are standards set for a very good reason.
Lastly, the mediators are also responsible. Mediators are the group of people or organizations that act between employers and employees, between companies and interns. If you get your internship through a university program, they are the mediators. By being a student in that program, you are putting your trust in the mediator to find, criticize, evaluate, and (hopefully) secure employment with a company. Mediators can be job search organizations, online groups, universities, specific programs, or something entirely different. Mediators must act as a buffer for those who can’t speak for themselves. Often, students have the last say in whether or not they will take a job. However, sometimes, they don’t.
At Waterloo if you get matched with a job and then don’t take it, it is viewed as an academic offense, comparable to cheating or stealing from a fellow student. For those students aiming higher than simply achieving a degree (by the very nature of being in a coop program I think this is safe to say this counts as all of them), this can be devastating. Failing a work term, getting an academic offense, or being forced into a job that you hate, is a difficult decision for any student. A wrong choice could ruin your academic, and in all likelihood, professional career. That is, indeed, a tough choice to make.
It is up to the mediators to do exactly that: mediate. As students, when we enroll in a program that involves a mediator like a university, we give them the power to represent our voices. That individual power, multiplied by a lot of students, equals significant leverage. Leverage to enforce policies facing employers, as well as policies facing students. The mediator has the power to ensure that employers and students do not take advantage of one another. If an employer hires a student and drops out of the search for an intern as they feel they have secured a capable candidate, and then the intern decides they do not want the job, that is a problem. If an employer hires a student and does not pay them adequately, or forces them to do work that is below their skill level, that is a problem.
This is where mediators are important. They create and enforce the rules to keep both sides honest. They are the referees. They are the ones responsible for overall well-being of both sides, and they have a large responsibility.
If either side does not like the way the mediators are mediating, it is ultimately their choice to leave, but as part of backing a mediator involves playing by their rules.
But it is up to us (us being all three groups) to ensure their rules are well-placed.
So the three pieces of action to take away from this:
As a student, don’t support unpaid internships. Whether it is for you, your friends, your enemies, or someone you don’t even know, unpaid internships hurts everyone. It goes against the reason we have minimum wages, and only truly benefits employers, particularly those who do not deserve to be benefited. Exceptions are listed above, otherwise, get paid for what you do. It’s that simple.
Refuse unpaid work. That is your right. It is unfair, unjust, likely illegal, and most importantly, unsafe.
Please protect yourself.
As an employer, don’t request unpaid internships. Everyone benefits from being paid, and if you can’t afford to hire a student for a decent wage, then don’t hire a student. Plain and simple. Students are people too, and in most cases, you were a student once too. Remember how hard it is? Don’t make it any more difficult. Be fair, and pay people what they are worth. I’m certain they will reward you for it.
As a mediator, use your power to enforce the rules that benefit both sides. Studies show that when people are paid properly, they are happier, healthier, and better workers. Ensuring students get paid, employers reap the proper benefits of interns, and everyone wins, is truly your job. Take responsibility with this, as you have an important position, and are empowered by both sides. Be kind, but be firm. Take care in what you do.
Overall, the internship system has been around for thousands of years, tracing back to ancient labours and Medieval apprenticeships, and is as relevant today as it was then. It is one of the best ways to gain experience in the “real world”, and is something I swear by.
But we must be careful that, like all great things, it is not abused.