Internal Struggles
By Emma.
I have been very torn about the current debates around unpaid internships. It’s one I have had with myself on numerous occasions. Because I have been an unpaid intern and I have hired them. I know the value that internship brought to me, and the hardship I had to suffer to do it (and I am under no illusions that though I did suffer hardship, I was lucky enough to be able to just about manage, no one in my circumstances living outside of London and no one with dependents could have done what I did). I also know that the organisations at which we had interns were funded such that they could not have done what they did without them. These were small, badly funded organisations that scraped by, but did exceptional work, of which our interns were a massive part. I have never forgotten the part they played in the work we did, and I tried hard to make sure that they all know that.
In the end I had to find a balance. I needed the work the interns could give me, and I wanted to give the right people a start at their careers.
I had to set criteria that made the work as fair as possible. I was insistent that internship lasted a strict length of time to allow as many as possible to get the opportunity and experience over a manageable period of three months. I also recruited through CVs and covering letters. Like all good recruiters I had criteria, and one of them was to ask myself “How much will this mean to them?”. If I thought an internship would actually be a proper step on the ladder as opposed to a routine course I was more likely to take them on. I also insisted that all internships be part time so they could fund their giving us their time through part time work.
None of this was ideal. My hands are not clean on this issue. But there are struggling charities and small political organisations doing great work out there, and a lot of that work is being done by young, enthusiastic volunteers. What happens when those organisations can’t pay then is not yet clear. There are also organisations for whom paying their interns will barely touch the sides. Sadly those organisations who can least afford the free help are often those who most need and deserve it.
I don’t know the answer to this. I want to open up politics to all who have a desire and an aptitude. But I don’t think simply stopping free internships does that. This debate is important and it’s a start, but we mustn’t kid ourselves that these quick fixes are the answer.
Tags: unpaid internships
Friday, April 8th 2011 at 11:17
I was at Demos for 3 months, and in that time I worked with 11 other interns, with no fewer than 6 there at any one time. They only employed a total of 15 staff, so the vast majority of interns are never going to get a paid job at Demos. In fact, out of the 11, none of them ended up getting a paid job.
I moved to London for the internship with the naive notion that 3 month internship = job offer at the end. None of my fellow interns were so naive. They were, in the majority, well off Londoners who had already done one or two internships before coming to Demos. The problem isn’t internships per se, it’s the necessity of serial internships, having to do a whole range of free work in politics, just to make your CV look good.
How can a kid off a council estate in say Sheffield or Hull even contemplate trying to enter a world like this?
Monday, April 18th 2011 at 12:07
The example given in the post is a difficult case. There are more easy cases, such as Demos (and many other think tanks) where the organisations could survive quite easily without interns – they’d just have to host a few more Accenture-sponsored seminars with paperclips ministers.
I was an intern at a think tank and never believed for a second that I was being used as anything more than convenient free casual labour. It was a total racket.