Interns fighting to get paid

workers, freelancers and various groups of part-time, temporary or guest workers.

For example, two students at New York University recently created a petition demanding that the university stop advertising unpaid internships on campus; more than a thousand people signed in a matter of days.

With the Obama administrationpushingtoincreasethe minimum wage, some activists are focusing on what they see as government hypocrisy. Washington is a hub for overworked, unpaid interns, the White House and Congress included. What good is a minimum-wage increase when so many people work and make no wages at all?

“There are lots of people who care about this issue; there’s a lot of anger about this issue. We want to build a movement,” said Mikey Franklin, co-founder of the new Fair Pay Campaign, who plans to hire professional organizers to galvanize interns in hubs like New York and Los Angeles. He hopes for support from organized labor, whose leaders, he said, are waking up to the issue’s mobilizing potential.

And Intern Labor Rights, a New York-based group formed out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, is forming a coalition with like-minded groups in Canada, Britain, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Austria. In all of those countries, campaigns to make internships fairer are also underway.

Training, mentoring, experience and opportunity are vital for interns, which is precisely why many are willing to work longer, harder and for lower wages.