Labour council needles Watson on unpaid campaign ‘internships’

Jim Watson says he changed the name of his previously described “internship” program after the Ottawa and District Labour Council called him out for using unpaid workers on his re-election campaign.

The labour council didn’t like that the mayoral incumbent advertised an application opportunity for unpaid interns to work on his campaign. Hiring unpaid interns would violate the province’s Employment Standards Act, the labour council pointed out on Wednesday.

Watson is looking for people 17 to 24 years old who want experience working on a political campaign. The posting on Watson’s campaign website says the work is on a volunteer basis.

Still, the labour council took issue with Watson characterizing the program as an internship.

“While we understand fully the importance of volunteers during an election, that’s not what this is,” labour council president Sean McKenny said in a news release.

“At a time when the province of Ontario and the federal government have both acknowledged widespread abuse of unpaid internships here we have the mayor of the City of Ottawa in seeking reelection seemingly taking advantage of that abuse, including free help on the backs of young people.”

Watson, who has some paid workers on his re-election campaign, said he simply changed the name of the volunteer program.

“We asked our campaign lawyer and they suggested we call it a voluntary leadership program, so we’ll just change the name,” Watson said. “Every campaign runs on volunteers. We thought it would be great to have a lot of young people involved and we called it an internship, but I’m quite happy to change the name and I think the labour council understands almost every campaign runs on volunteers. We couldn’t afford to pay volunteers, so I’m happy they brought it to my attention.”