“The new precedent clarifies how employers can meet six criteria that the FLSA says make it okay to use young people as workers without pay. “If you’re going to not pay you’re interns, it’s a pretty high bar,” Turner said. The law states that unpaid internships must benefit the worker, not the employer, and should be a part of a formal training program, without replacing a paid employee’s job.”

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/06/black-swan-intern-ruling/66168/

After undertaking an unpaid internship, a friend has now found a job, however as an administrative assistant, which gives him a lot less responsibility, variation in the role and skills development. He said ‘It’s like taking a step back, but at least it’s paid.’

How is it that interns are taking on more responsibility than paid positions?

After my personal experience as an unpaid intern, I am now feeling disillusioned. Even though I had the best team and manager, and have taken on some fantastic projects, I did find myself at times feeling worthless and exploited – especially as at points I was running the show myself! I now have some good skills and have developed professionally, but due to lack of capacity, there was a distinct absence of structure and training.

Although I can afford it, I have now decided that I will not apply for an unpaid internship again out of principle. I have realised I am part of the problem, and by accepting unpaid internship I am adhering to the inequality that the system creates. NGO’s should not have unpaid interns as part of their business model – ‘equality’, ‘diversity’ are core values in most NGO’s. Paying interns would be one step towards actually practising these values.

As a last note, I am currently applying to NGO internships in Brussels, the Netherlands and other EU countries, because, at least for the one’s i’ve seen, there is more chance of being paid a living wage.

So from a fairness, diversity but also a quality perspective surely paying interns is the right choice.

Your blog post is a good start but it ignores some fundamental things:

First on your pro-unpaid-intern-arguments:

– Are they really educating/training people? Or just using them as cheap labour? As Sara pointed out: many internship programmes actually fail to train! A proper contract, regulations on what work an intern is supposed to do and transparency are needed!

– Interestingly, research in the US has shown that unpaid internships very seldomly lead to a job, while paid internships are a push up the career ledder (http://www.epi.org/blog/unpaid-internships-scourge-labor-market/#)

– There are not enough jobs in the charity sector and entry level positions are becoming structurally erased – replaced by unpaid internships. So what is the point of offering more internship places which do not train and do not lead to a job? We do not need quantity but quality! Pay your interns, train them and help them to find a job!

Secondly, on the point of diversity: yes you are right much more needs to be done for diversity than just paying interns. But we cannot justify this boundry by others (eg, skyrocketing tution fees)! Stopping unpaid internships is a step towards diversity we can do now.

Lastly: Yes Ross Bailey is right there is an alternative to unpaid internships and this is called distribution. If Oxfam turely believes in its own principles it should implement a graded pay cut. Oxfams director earns over 100.000 annually! Is this justified while making interns work for free?

In my organization we typically get quite diverse applicants, most of whom really need to earn the money to supplement their grants etc.

Also interesting to note that these days the elite applicants who can self-fund are increasingly likely to be Indian or Latin American – so you can have an intern programme that is culturally and ethnically diverse but still highly elite.

In the internships mentioned above, the NGO staff were too stretched to provide sufficient training and feedback to keep me engaged. So, I spent a substantial amount of time surfing the internet or doing research that was not utilized. In addition, because these internships were short-term, there was no one there to follow through on my deliverables or recommendations after the internship ended.

So, while I value my experiences because they were well aligned with my graduate curriculum and professional aspirations, I’m not confident that my investment or the investment of the organization contributed to furthering their mission.

As an alternative, it would be interesting to explore the possibility of internships being more focused on job shadowing and observation, so that students/interns can build their skill set while not drawing too heavily on limited organizational/staff resources.