The view from the streets: working for nothing

I completely agree – what started off as a relatively harmless way to gain work experience and an insight into your future career has turned into an exploitative system which forces a great deal of intelligent young people to work for free in order to get the career that they want. I have several friends who have spent months practically in poverty or working multiple jobs in order to support themselves through internships. I really can’t imagine another sector of society which would tolerate this kind of unpaid labour, but unfortunately the internship system has become so widespread that many young people (myself included) feel like there is no other path towards an interesting career. The most frustrating thing is that, since many people cannot afford to work for free (particularly after forking out for university degrees which should have led easily into well-paid jobs), the internship system encourages elitism, and will ultimately result in a situation where high-powered or desirable positions are held solely by the wealthy. I really think the only solution is some sort of legislation – it’s unrealistic to expect profit-driven companies to begin paying interns when they could be asking them to work for free.

I agree with the guy who says graduates, who work for nothing and get nothing in return, not even a good experience, are victims of their own stupidity. However, I also think that internships exploit free talent - this generation of graduates expect very little and are getting very little. It is shocking that still it is only those who have parents with money who can choose the careers they want to get into - this shows that our economy is failing miserably, lurching from one useless response to the crisis to the another, whilst not doing anything much to actually create more jobs!

That’s the frustrating thing about some internships. The main reason for doing them is to gain experience after studying and going for your desired future career job. I believe that if you're expected to work for little or no money, then you should be expected to give little or no hours. It’s unfair to be interning full time with no possibility of a job at the end of it and it’s even worse when you turn up for an internship expecting to be given serious tasks to do, but you basically end up being an executive coffee maker…

Why is that if you have rich parents, you can choose the industry and career you want for yourself? It’s more than unfair, it’s a telling reflection of an economy that is just not working for everyone. The previous Labour government’s response to unemployment brought on by the recession was a range of pretty useless initiatives: push young people back into education, employment and training as well as ‘high quality’ internships for graduates who have been out of work for more than six months. Neither internships nor education are a solution for a lack of jobs. The solution, surely is to demand and create more jobs!

Most students expexct to get a job once they finish University, however today most employers require graduates to have some sort of experience in the working world. But with limited number of paid internships available, many graduates opt for unpaid internships, where many young people are exploited, sometimes doing jobs that people would previously have been paid for.

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), interns should be paid a minimum training wage of £2.50 an hour. Furthermore, the CIPD suggested that “unpaid internships act as a barrier to social mobility, as students and graduates from less well-off backgrounds may be put off applying”. As such, a ‘training wage’ would improve social mobility by easing access to professional vocations for young people who cannot afford to work for free.

This is exactly what we need somebody who ask us the interns how we feel about working for free. And mostly, it is simply not affordable for us but we have to do this to collect work experiences.