LONDON â€" Companies accused of using unpaid interns to do full-time work are facing investigation by Britain’s tax authorities to determine whether they are breaking the country’s minimum wage law.
Intern Aware, a group that campaigns for the rights of interns, welcomed on Friday a decision by Jo Swinson, the employment minister, to hand over the group’s list of 100 alleged offenders to the tax collector.
In a letter to the group, Ms. Swinson said the list would be treated as intelligence to identify employers who were breaking the rules.
The London-based group represents one of a number of campaigns that have sprung up around the world to expose abuse of the growing phenomenon of unpaid internships.
“The movement is growing in various places around the world, including the United States, France, Canada and Australia,†Gus Baker, the organization’s co-director, told Rendezvous.
As full-time work becomes scarcer for young people in Europe and elsewhere, a growing number face the prospect of working for nothing in the hope that their unpaid internships will turn into paid employment. Indeed, it has become a defining characteristic of this generation, wrote Teddy Wayne in The New York Times last month.
“The notion of the traditional entry-level job is disappearing,†Ross Perlin, the author of “Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy,†told Teddy.
Steven Greenhouse, the doyen of labor reporters in the U.S., wrote last year on the American experience:
“While unpaid postcollege internships have long existed in the film and nonprofit worlds, they have recently spread to fashion houses, book and magazine publishers, marketing companies, public relations firms, art galleries, talent agencies â€" even to some law firms.â€
Mr. Baker of Intern Aware said there is a growing culture of unpaid internships in Britain and elsewhere that campaigners say is leaving young people eager to get into the job market open to exploitation. He said 100,000 people were working without pay in Britain alone.
Legitimate internship programs are designed to give would-be employees supervised workplace experience, sometimes with the prospect of future employment.
Even in those cases, fair wage activists are concerned that unpaid internships offer a potential advantage to those from more affluent families with the resources to fund them, excluding poorer applicants from the best job opportunities.
The companies that are on the list that is going to the tax man are accused of hiring interns to do work that would otherwise have to be paid for, contrary to the law.
In Britain, many of those working for no pay may be legally entitled to receive the minimum wage, which is on a sliding scale according to age, rising to £6.19, or $9.50, an hour for workers over 21.
A spokesman for the British government’s department of business said, “Internships can be a valuable way of helping young people get into work and realize their ambitions.â€
But he reminded employers that if interns were regarded as workers under minimum wage legislation they were entitled to be paid. He said that any complaints about exploitation would be fast-tracked to the tax authorities.
However, as Steve Greenhouse noted in his article on the U.S. situation, unpaid interns are loath to file complaints for fear of jeopardizing future job prospects.
The British activists have not revealed which companies are on their target list.
However, Britain’s Independent newspaper just highlighted one unpaid job on offer at Reading F.C., an English premier league soccer club.
It noted that the club, owned by a wealthy Russian businessman, paid its top players the equivalent of $2.3 million a year, while an advertised one-year internship for a “performance analyst†offered neither salary nor expenses.
Are unpaid internships an inevitable part of the 21st century labor market Or are some companies exploiting vulnerable job-seekers to get something for nothing Tell us what you think. And let us know of your personal experiences.
