Internships: The good and bad

Opinion: Rob Stock looks at unease around unpaid work experience and shares a personal insight.

Unpaid internships are on the rise, but there’s a strong argument for a government crackdown on them, and for parents to refuse to fund them.

A report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) late last year made some pretty grim reading.

Unpaid internships are marketed by companies as a way young people can build job skills and improve their chances of getting a real job.

But among the ILO’s concerning findings was that there had been a massive rise in internships.

That could, of course, be an indication that the world’s businesses have become more socially responsible, and have decided to do more to help young people starting out in their careers, but I doubt it.

Any time there is a big shift in economic practice, it’s driven by money. Free labour is very profitable labour. ‘‘It seems clear that internships have become common in developed countries,’’ the ILO said.

‘‘A 2013 survey of people aged 18–35 in 27 EU countries found that 46 per cent overall had undertaken at least one paid or unpaid traineeship, though the figure was well over 70 per cent in some countries.

‘‘A 2016 Australian survey revealed that nearly 60 per cent of those aged 18–29 had undertaken at least one type of unpaid work experience in the past five years.’’

Despite the ‘‘great deal of positive literature’’ about internships, there was also a substantial body of research that identified potential problems.

The four problems the ILO identified were:

1. Tales are rife of internships that do not provide any real education or training, or that require productive work without adequate supervision or preparation.

2. There is a dearth of reliable evidence that internships lead to better job prospects.

3. Poor people can’t afford to do internships, as their families can’t fund them.

4. The availability of interns as a source of cheap labour creates a disincentive for companies to pay for work.

Unpaid internships involve someone else footing the bill, which generally means the parents.

When internships are part of a tertiary course, and are genuinely about education, and not providing free labour for an employer, I am all for them.

As the Labour Inspectorate advises (though I couldn’t find any cases where it has investigated abuses), employers offering internships should be careful to ‘‘avoid getting an economic benefit from the work done by the volunteer’’, and ‘‘avoid having the volunteer do work which is integral to the business, such as work that an employee would ordinarily do’’.

It seems to me that there’s been a strange kind of pretence in New Zealand, though, that if an employer calls unpaid work ‘‘internship’’ it is somehow legal, if the ‘‘intern’’ agrees. Not so. The Employment Relations Act is clear that the true nature of an employment arrangement is what matters, not the agreed description.

So this brings us back to parents. Should parents fund internships by providing free accommodation and living expenses, or expect only paid work from their offspring?

It’s a tricky call, but for me, if work is worth doing, it’s worth payment.

I would say if an internship does not pass a parental ‘‘sniff test’’, then discourage it, and refuse to fund it.

I’ll share a personal story to show features of a good internship.

My first hands-on journalist experience was at a local English newspaper. I was studying, and called up the editor to ask to be able to get work experience during my holidays. I called him because my sister (an insurance underwriter) had a house a mile from the paper’s office, and she’d agreed to let me stay.

The editor welcomed me over several holidays, and when my course ended, gave me my first reporting job. The paper, part of a wider group, required newbies like me to do a two-year in-work apprenticeship to properly train me, for which I did not have to pay.

But even during the six weeks spread over two holidays I did before being hired, the editor insisted on paying my expenses, which were low, but which I had not asked to be funded.

The features of this mini, selfgenerated internship were all clearly in my benefit. It was for a short time-frame. It led to a real prospect of work. It blooded me as a reporter. It did not leave me outof-pocket.