Fuck you Harper's Bazaar and Hearst. You should be ashamed!

[lonestarnot]

Corporate bastards. Not paying interns, something for nothing, just take shit. Who would fall for that crap anyway. Who would give away their labor for free, unless they were doing it for someone in need?

[Cleita]

1. When did this whole unpaid internship crap start happening anyway?

Back in my day, people in those kind of jobs were called trainees, and by law they had to be paid at least minimum wage during their training period, after which they would become a paid employee at the wage level a particular job called for.

[lonestarnot]

2. As soon as corporate bastards figured they could get away with it.

I remember two different kinds of internships which wasn't that long ago, paid and unpaid. When I learned of this back then, I thought who the fuck would do an unpaid internfuckingship. How stupid!

[pitohui]

3. there are 7 billion people in the world now

yeah, in my day, the 70s, people were paid, but now there are literally billions of people on the planet AND we have global ability to move around, so if you don't want to work for free, there are plenty of other people who will take your place

i worked as a writer, notice the past tense, since i have been displaced by the millions of scabs and jerks who are willing to work for nothing

how do these scabs live? are they ALL rich kids living off daddyfare? in the case of writers, maybe they are, magazine pay just kept getting worse and worse and hasn't been worth my time for years

[lonestarnot]

5. Beats the hell out of me. Deprivation of both the education and dough with which to eat. Richie

Rich kids, could be. We need to eat them for lunch.

[The Genealogist]

31. I know a few people who write for money

They do it to supplement income, after work, on weekends or other times when they are off work. Sort of piecemeal, like a cottage industry. The way they describe it, this is the way much writing happens now. The pay is lousy, but their jobs pay lousy too, and they need every cent they get. Anecdotal, of course, but perhaps it gives some insight.

[spinbaby]

37. I make my living as a writer...

...in one of the few ways a writer can work at a living wage. I'm a corporate writer.

About ten years ago, I talked to a man who had written science fiction in the "golden age." He said that in the 1950s he sold a story to Playboy. He and his wife went out to dinner to celebrate and lived on that money for a month. In the 1990s, he sold another story to Playboy. It paid for one nice dinner out.

[Lint Head]

4. The music business and television business has done it forever. It used to be called slavery.

[lonestarnot]

6. Somebody is liking the TV box or maestro too much. Those used to be called groupies.

[Honeycombe8]

7. Congressional interns aren't paid, either. Many law school student internships aren't paid.

Interns are usually people who don't have skills and aren't that useful, really, in the operation of a business. The interns need to get some experience, so the entity offering an internship will offer it to help prepare skilled people in teh industry, AND will provide some sort of training and guidance.

Once an intern gets a little experience under his belt, he will find it easier to find a paid position, and will be more competitive with others competing for a position who have no experience.

Providing training and guidance to an intern actually costs the entity money in time taken away from production.

I worked with a high school intern once. It really was a hassle and not worth the effort. She had to be told literally everything. She knew nothing about the simplest of tasks. But when she left, she knew a thing or two to put on a job application. Unfortunately, she decided to marry some guy right out of high school & start having babies.

[lonestarnot]

10. Oh bullshit! Don't have skills! They have enough fucking skills for some free bullshit labor to

donate now don't they. What bullshit.

[Honeycombe8]

12. If they had skills for the job, they wouldn't need to "intern." nt

[lonestarnot]

14. Any fucking skill, putting paper clips into a box requires time, time is money. Pay for the fucking

labor! Don't freeload it off the god damned dummy!

[Honeycombe8]

17. You know, you'll make a better argument when you learn that four letter words aren't very effective.

If you read all the columns and the best blogs, you'll find the people making the best points never lose control and just shout and cuss, even though I'm sure they feel like it sometimes.

Interns at magazines learn that sort of thing.

[lonestarnot]

20. They suit me just fucking fine thank you. Thanks but no thanks. Manipulate someone else on the

board that is more pliable.

[Honeycombe8]

24. I just stated my opinion. You sure do get upset when someone doesn't think just the way you do.

It happens. People can disagree on matters. I've worked with interns. A true intern is almost worthless. That's why they're interns. It helps the intern to get training and guidance and a leg up on getting a paid job. If a company is finding it profitable to have interns, I'd say those workers are not true interns, but people with some training who couldn't find a paid job in the field.

[lonestarnot]

28. Oh so now interns are worthless? Where the fuck do people like you come from and then expect me to

fall into your stupid line?

[magical thyme]

36. seems to me she learned something else from her unpaid internship

"she decided to marry some guy right out of high school & start having babies." The only unpaid labor worth doing is a labor of love. The rest is bs.

There's a difference between giving a high school kid with no real life experience an internship and a college graduate who has proven some smarts, skills and tenacity an internship.

And many office internships consist of photocopying, filing, and the sort of thing a monkey can learn.

[belcffub]

8. lot of it is Academic policy....

If you want college credit for the internship the State school I work for requires it be unpaid...

our department has interns occasionally... both paid and unpaid... Both types of intern seemed genuinely happy for the experience gained and the job opportunities the opened up as a result.

[lonestarnot]

11. What is that some private shit school or is it now being required in public university? If so,

could be illegal.

[belcffub]

34. uummm no

largest public university system in the country...

which if you re-read my rather short post you would have known it was a state school...

[lonestarnot]

38. Ugh no. You said state school that you "work for." "Working for" and attending as a student are

two different things to me.

[alcibiades_mystery]

35. I'd like to see that policy in writing

Quite frankly, I don't believe it exists. It is quite likely illegal to condition college credit for internships based on whether they are paid or unpaid, so I really don't believe the school has that policy. It's also deeply stupid, since many legitimate internships are paid with a rather nice stipend.

There are specific rules relating to unpaid internships that are enforced by the Department of Labor (in fact, these rules apply to any internship that can be construed to pay less than minimum wage on average). That these regulations went unheeded during Republican administrations is no surprise; the Obama Department of Labor IS cracking down on it, leaving in-house counsel for universities all over the country scrambling for cover. That's a fact. The five factor test from the DoL is back, and everybody's running around trying to get their internship programs into compliance.

I suspect that you are confusing one of the elements of the five factor test with paid/unpaid. Students cannot get internship credit for doing their own job at their current workplace. There has to be a "firewall" between paid work independent of the internship, and internship work strictly speaking. But this doesn't mean that students can't get credit for an internship in their current workplace if such a firewall is established (i.e., a student who works as a secretary at Morgan Stanley can also participate in a Morgan Stanley internship program, just so long as whatever she does for that internship is strictly separated from her secretarial work and work hours, and is ideally supe4rvised by another manager). But this is federal labor law, not a policy of any given state university system.

[Honeycombe8]

9. I read up on this. It sounds like they weren't really interns.

Some of the tasks the gal who is suing was doing included supervising other interns and other high level things. That's unusual, I think, for an intern to do. It sounds like they called her an intern, but she really was more of a lower level valid worker.

In my senior year in high school I worked through an office worker training program, where I'd work in an office half a day. I was clearly an intern. I didn't know how to do much of anything. I don't recall if I got paid.

[lonestarnot]

13. Well if you don't recall as to whether or not you received payment, then it would appear that you

didn't need the money. Who sponsored your education?

[Honeycombe8]

19. I was a kid with no money. So if I got paid, it was so nominal as to be not important. I lived at

home, so didn't have rent. I was a teen in high school. I also worked in a burger joint, where I did get paid wages.

I had a public education, so the government sponsored my education, if you want to call it that.

[lonestarnot]

25. No. The government requires repayment of their student loans. They cannot be written off in bk.

And I worked 3 jobs and went to highschool. Never once did I ever WORK for FREE. Not at any of those jobs or ever unless it was in the soup kitchen or old folks home.

[nessa]

15. Student teachers? also unpaid.

nt

[lonestarnot]

16. Shouldn't happen! Not ever!

[Enrique]

18. Good way to keep journalism overrepresented by the elites

who else can afford to work for free right out of college?

[lonestarnot]

21. Excefuckinlent point! Excellent!

Another way to keep pulling the strings.

[RainDog]

22. Unpaid internships are another class war barrier

and a way for all sorts of companies to exploit people's labor for free - in exchange for making "contacts" and connecting with others in a field.

[lonestarnot]

26. Bootlicker bidness. That's how they do it.

[RainDog]

33. it's the way the world works

like it or not.

people favor those they know. if your parents can afford to pay for you to work FOR FREE for a company or school or other entity, then it helps your career.

...which is why it's a class barrier for those without this sort of support.

[spanone]

23. in the music business, interns get credits for classes they are taking...

[lonestarnot]

27. So how much is the class actually costing then? How many hours of work and how many credits earned?

[crunch60]

29. I got 4 college credits for about 250 hours work, and I worked very hard. It was a

great learning experience for me, because it made me realize that this was an organization I did not want to be involved with. But my time there was well spent and
I received a very good grade from the people I worked with.

[lonestarnot]

30. So around $937.50 per credit hour. So if you want to share, how did you pay for college?

[crunch60]

32. I started college when

I was 52 years old, and I had money saved from working all my life. I continued to work part time while attending school.

[lonestarnot]

39. Very commendable and admirable!