[A-List] Elitist Slavery

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Internships Exploit as They Exclude

by Ted Rall (August 10 2004)

In college, it is said, you learn the most about life outside of class.
Working to pay my tuition gave me a first-rate education in the American
class structure.

Every student who attends a given university meets its standards for
grades and test scores, but they fall into categories with distinctly
different opportunities for success: the rich and the poor. When a rich
kid finds himself with a few extra hours to kill, he can volunteer in
his community, crusade for a political cause, or test the limits of his
drinking capacity. If he's ambitious, he can pick up valuable business
contacts and work experience as an intern.

Students from poor families, on the other hand, can't afford to work for
free. They choose jobs based on pay and hours. I drove a taxi and drove
a forklift, unionized gigs that did little for my resume but kept the
bursar at bay. A classmate I dated (we'll call her "Karen") shared my
goal of breaking into journalism. Because her parents were loaded, she
accepted an unpaid internship at The New York Times. "The work is beside
the point", Karen said. "I make copies and run out to get sandwiches.
But I get the chance to suck up to editors." It worked. The paper hired
her as a reporter straight out of college, minus the typically required
journalism degree.

Mark Oldman, coauthor of "The Internship Bible" and cofounder of the
career counseling company Vault, Inc, says that for college graduates,
internships are now a prerequisite for a shot at a good entry-level job.
About eighty percent of all graduating seniors, he says, have worked 
as an intern - most of them unpaid. And the National Association of
Colleges and Employers estimates that 38 percent of interns eventually
get hired full-time. "It used to be that internships used to be a useful
enhancement to one's resume", observes Oldman. "Now it's universally
perceived as an essential stepping stone to career success".

In a reflection of the topsy-turvy truism that those who can afford 
to pay the most get everything for free, the best-off corporate and
government employers hire the most elite slave laborers. "The more
glamorous an internship, the less likely it is paid", Oldman says.
Students from privileged backgrounds, who already enjoy the advantages
of wealth and well-connected parents, can afford to take unpaid
internships working class kids can't, further enhancing their chances
after an already formidable head start in life. ABC News correspondent
Cokie Roberts spoke out about the problem at a meeting of Congressional
interns, none of whom get paid. "By setting up unpaid internship
programs, it seems to me that without completely recognizing it, 
it sets up a system where you are making it ever more difficult for
people who don't have economic advantages to catch up", she said.

Not only does the unpaid internship system create an economic litmus
test that excludes working class students from opportunities to make
valuable connections, it exploits those who seem to benefit from it.
Labor Department rules governing internships prohibit employers from
using interns to do work that would normally be performed by paid
employees, but it belies common sense to believe that such practices
aren't routine. Labor lawyer John Richard Carrigan believes that illegal
internships are an open secret: "You can't [legally] bring an intern in
and have him do photocopying and an endless number of menial tasks that
an enthusiastic gopher would perform". Yet, he says, it's common
practice.

Publishing houses use unpaid interns to edit manuscripts and make
photocopies; those tasks would have to be undertaken by a paid worker 
if a 20-year-old gofer wasn't available. Many radio stations and music
companies rely on armies of unpaid workers - er, interns. Theoretically,
unpaid internships are equivalent to class at a vocational school. But
in reality, the government does nothing to ensure that employers treat
interns differently than temps.

The bottom line is simple: a hard day's work deserves a fair day's pay.
Unpaid internships drag down wages for everyone. And they force young
men and women to choose between being used or getting left out. One
hundred forty years have passed since the Emancipation Proclamation
outlawed forcing human beings to work for nothing. Congress should 
close the slave labor loophole.

What happened to my friend Karen? She quit her prestigious job at the
Times after about a year. "It was a depressing place to work", she
explained as she prepared an application for medical school. I wonder
how she would have felt about the $6-an-hour telemarketing job I held 
at the time.

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/

Please also see:

"Crucial Unpaid Internships Increasingly Separate the Haves 
From the Have-Nots" by Jennifer Lee, New York Times (August 10 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/politics/10interns.html?ex=1093128160&ei=1&en=a49f0f17a4f05c30


Bill Totten     http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/