16/08/2010 In praise of the government’s appointment of Alan Milburn
It was last summer that the unjust effects of internships first received serious political and media attention. In July 2009, the former Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn published a major report looking into the factors preventing social mobility. Amongst the areas Unleashing Aspiration considered were schools, universities, recruitment and internships. This was the first major examination of the issue and it received a lot of press. Milburn’s Report demonstrated the true extent of the problem, and prompted us to set up Intern Aware.
So we are encouraged by the news that Alan Milburn has been appointed by the government to lead a taskforce aimed at improving social mobility. We hope that he will use the position to develop informed and far-reaching policy on fairer access to the professions. But he must go beyond the limited proposals in the Milburn Report and demand the proper enforcement of the employment law for interns. With proper government regulation, there is the possibility that internships could play a positive role in the labour market.
29/07/2010 PRESS RELEASE: All Labour Leadership Contenders Back Fairer Internships
Intern Aware announces today that all five candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party have signed up to back a fair deal for interns. The candidates have pledged to campaign to end the situation in which many interns are denied rights as short-term workers, including being paid the minimum wage.
Unpaid internships are becoming more common and their social effects are getting worse in post-recession Britain. With an average of seventy applicants for every graduate job, potential employees who have interned are placed at a crucial advantage. However, because of the high costs associated with living and working in cities like London, people without significant financial support are unable to apply for these positions. This has the effect of entrenching inequality. Issues around social mobility have become important in the Labour leadership campaign and the success of Intern Aware’s campaign should only increase their prominence.
Welcoming this announcement, Co-Director of Intern Aware, Ben Lyons, said:
“It can cost up to £500 to intern for two weeks in London. In this time of high graduate unemployment we risk a lost generation of people who cannot afford to work for free. Too often, internships simply amount to graduates doing the same work their elder siblings would have received a salary for as an entry-level job. Unpaid internships are not just unjust; many of them could be illegal. Employment law confers rights on employees based on their conditions of work, not the label attached to their work by their employer. Anyone who contributes to an organisation is entitled to be paid.
“Whoever is the next leader of the opposition, we can expect Labour to campaign for fairer internships. We have reached a milestone in creating an internship system which encourages, rather than hinders, social mobility.”
Notes
- The wording of the pledge is “I pledge that if I am elected leader of the Labour Party I will campaign for Labour’s Minimum Wage Act to be fully enforced so that employers must pay their interns what they are due.”
- There is no legal definition of an intern, with the word assuming common usage in the last decade. The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 states that people can be “workers”, “voluntary workers” or “volunteers”. Genuine volunteers do not need to be paid. Voluntary workers’ employment status is defined by the condition of work, not how the employer wishes to describe it. For example, if a company wished to advertise a 45 hour a week job as an unpaid internship, under employment law they would still need to pay. In 2009 an Employment Tribunal ruled that a formerly unpaid intern was entitled to lost wages as a worker. For more information on interns and employment law, please contact mdykes@tuc.org.uk or see the TUC’s website on interns’ rights: http://www.rightsforinterns.org.uk
- Intern Aware is a pressure group founded in 2009. The campaign started as a Facebook group, “Interns Must Be Paid The Minimum Wage”, but now has many university branches and the support of several major unions.
- Images of Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, David Miliband and Ed Miliband signing the pledge can be found at our website. For higher resolution images, please contactgus@internaware.org
- Labour’s backing for intern rights follows the findings of recent research, such as Alan Milburn’s report, Unleashing Aspiration, suggesting that unpaid internships are a major and growing cause of inequality. The £500 figure mentioned above is found in the report: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/227102/fair-access.pdf
- Intern Aware’s Labour Leadership campaign is supported by the National Union of Students, Labour Students and the broadcasting and entertainment union, BECTU.
- For more information, please see http://internaware.org and follow us on Twitter @internaware.org
27/07/2010 Ed Balls MP posts video of support and Diane Abbott MP tweets us her support
Brilliant to have Ed Balls’ support- complete with video of him and former intern Richard Hincks. Definitely worth a watch!
In other news Diane Abbott MP tweeted us earlier with this:
That makes it 5/5!
26/07/2010. David Miliband MP Signs Intern Aware Pledge.
David Miliband joined his brother a few hours later and signed Intern Aware’s leadership pledge. David’s team were quick to point out that they have no unpaid interns and agreed with us about the importance of the issue. Good stuff!
26/07/2010. Ed Miliband MP Signs Intern Aware Pledge.
Ed Miliband signed Intern Aware’s campaign pledge today in his central London office. Ed was really receptive to the idea of fully enforcing the minimum wage and said he wanted to emphasise how important fair access to internships is for social mobility. As I was leaving his office, one of his top staffers told me that he had previously done 5 unpaid internships back to back!
David Miliband has agreed to sign our pledge later today. No word yet from Diane Abbott or Ed Balls.
20/07/2010. Andy Burnham MP Signs Intern Aware Pledge.
We’re really happy to announce that Andy Burnham MP has become the first of the Labour Leadership candidates to sign Intern Aware’s pledge card. We met him yesterday in his office in Westminster and he seemed really positive about raising the profile of the issue of internships. Ed and David Miliband have both also agreed to sign. There is no word as of yet from Diane Abbott and Ed Balls.
28/06/2010. A training wage for interns? A good start, but not good enough.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has published a report calling for interns to be paid a “training wage” of £2.50 an hour. At Intern Aware we welcome recognition of the contributions interns make to their employers, but reject the idea that they should be treated as second class employees.
The report, Internships: to pay or not to pay?, finds that 37% of internships are currently unpaid and agrees that many interns have a right to the national minimum wage.
In response TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said “Although this proposal is well-meaning, in practice it would represent a significant watering-down of the current rights for most interns. The vast majority already have the right to be paid the minimum wage in full, and the problem has been in getting employers to face up to their responsibilities. What is really needed is simply better awareness and enforcement of the existing law.” We agree entirely.
Interns often sit at the same desks and do the same tasks as full time employees. Why should their rights be any different?
It’s great that more people are talking about internships and solutions are being discussed. The CIPD report is comprehensive and provides a good background to the issue. However, £2.50 an hour is simply not enough to live on in London. Creating a “training rate” would not solve the problem of unfair and inequitable access to internships. Intern Aware therefore will remain fully committed to the enforcement of the national minimum wage for interns. It’s only fair.
15/06/2010. NUS leads the way, paying its interns the Living Wage.
The National Union of Students (NUS) were one of the first organisations to support Intern Aware, and we were really pleased to see the example they’ve set by paying their interns the London Living Wage. Many organisations in the non-for-profit sector claim that they are unable to afford to pay anything to their intern workers. The NUS recognised that its a necessity for an organisation which argues for social justice to pay its workers.
NUS President Aaron Porter told us:
“Internships, placements and work experience provide vital first-hand opportunities for thousands of students in the world of work but it is unacceptable for employers to use interns simply as a means to cut costs through cheap labour.”
These opportunities need to be fair and accessible to all, not just those with the right connections or those able to work for free because of privileged financial circumstances.
“As part of NUS’ drive to work with others to campaign for a better deal for interns we are proud to support the Intern Aware campaign, and also to announce that NUS will now ensure that all interns working at NUS will receive payment in line with the London Living Wage.”
07/06/2010. Think-tank, the IPPR, calls for an end to unpaid internships
We were really pleased to hear that the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has criticised the practice of unpaid internships as “unfair”. The IPPR are a model provider of internships in that sector, and one of the few think-tanks who pay the minimum wage to their interns.
Kayte Lawton, from the IPPR, gets the problem bang on:
We have a culture where lots of sectors are relying on unpaid work and that is just not fair, both for those who have to do the work and those who do not get the opportunities…
It is encouraging that the government minister David Willetts has commented on the damage unpaid internships do to social mobility and that he has promised to look into revising government guidelines. We will keep the pressure up and await progress!
09/04/2010.Obama moves to end unpaid internships-British politicians must follow his lead.
Intern Aware welcomes the move by the Obama administration to end the exploitation of unpaid internships and calls on British politicians to recognise the issue in their manifestos.
The U.S. department of Labor announced this week that it would be cracking down on unpaid internships and calling for the minimum wage to be paid to interns. Nancy J. Leppink, acting director of the Department of Labor’s wage and hour division has said: ‘‘If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law.”
In the UK pressure is mounting for similar action to be taken to combat the growing trend of employers asking interns to work for free. The Low Pay Commission reported in March that “growing evidence of abuse” exists with a “growing number of people undertaking ‘work’ but excluded from the minimum wage.” Findings by Skillset in March showed that 44% of media workers did unpaid work to get into their industry, with similar exploitation seen in many other different sectors of employment.
Co-Director of the campaign, Ben Lyons, commented:
“Intern Aware has had support of MPs from all parties. British politicians love to compare their campaign strategies or economic policies to Barack Obama’s: now they have a real chance to follow American leadership. We call on British parties to join Obama in pledging to wipe out unpaid internships in their election manifestos.
“Currently interns are being treated as employees, without their rights or even pay. We risk a ghost generation of journalists, documentary producers and fashion designers. There are tens of thousands of people with the talent to become leaders in these fields. However, their chances of success are limited because they can’t afford to work for free.
“The Reading employment tribunal ruled in November 2009 that expenses-only internships are illegal. Any employer that fails to pay its interns is in breach of law.”
29/03/2010.Very disappointing ruling from MPs expenses watchdog
Way back in October 2009 the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), looking for solutions to the expenses scandal, supported the Speaker John Bercow’s statement that the minimum wage should apply to parliamentary interns. Yet in their final proposals, released today, they abandoned the simple notion that work should be paid.
Today’s ruling will be very bad news for young people who want to contribute to political life and who can’t afford to work for free. Headline measures about an end to first class travel for MPs are all well and good but do they really change parliament? If IPSA had had the guts to support real change today, we’d be looking at a very different House of Commons in 20 years time.
Our press release is below:
PRESS RELEASE: FOR PUBLICATION
29.03.2010
INTERN AWARE VOICES DISAPPOINTMENT AT IPSA RULING
Intern Aware is deeply disappointed by today’s ruling by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) which backtracks on their proposal to make the payment of interns mandatory. We are also worried that with the reduced staffing budget of the new scheme taken into account, unpaid labour will become an even greater problem in Parliament.
We note that IPSA is out of step with the changing political climate. Last October, the Speaker, John Bercow, acknowledged that if interns were doing regular work and regular hours, then minimum-wage legislation should apply.The Reading employment tribunal ruled in November 2009 that expenses-only internships are illegal. Intern Aware will be writing to all new Members of Parliament reminding them that they may be in breach of the law if they do not pay their interns.
Co-Director of the campaign, Ben Lyons, commented:
“The IPSA ruling is deeply disappointing. These reforms were supposed to be about cleaning up our politics, but they will have the effect of making our political class even more unrepresentative.
“Internships are an often crucial first step on the ladder in modern politics. Our politicians spend a lot of time talking about the importance of having a representative parliament. This will not be achieved if the only people who are able to enter politics have to work for free.
“Currently interns are being treated as employees, without their rights or, crucially, their wages. We risk a ghost generation of political leaders. Our democracy will be severely weakened if only those who can afford to work for free can gain the necessary experience for to enter public life.
“The report by former Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn, Fair Access to the Professions, found that the living costs associated with interning in London for two weeks amounts to £500. Over a standard three month internship, that amounts the cost of a term at private school. The current system entrenches inequality.”
Ends
07/03/2010.The BBC reports that unpaid internships are ‘breaking minimum wage law’… but how many interns do they refuse to pay?
It’s great to see that the BBC are picking up the issue of unfair internships, highlighted by The Donal MacIntyre Show on Sunday. A really interesting discussion was had, with important questions being asked about organisations dependency on interns and the legal position of internships.
However the program did leave us at Intern Aware wondering how many unpaid interns does the BBC ‘employ’? A quick search of the organisations website seems to show hundreds of placements (here), but no mention of pay.
We thought we’d ask them:
Dear BBC,
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 we appreciate an answer to the following question.
Of the 101 internships commencing on May 10th 2010 as advertised on jobs.bbc.co.uk, how many placements are paid and how many unpaid?
As you reported on Sunday 7th of March, there is a growing consensus that unpaid internships may be illegal. We would therefore be grateful for clarification of your policy regarding remuneration for interns and those on work experience placements.
With regards,
Gus Baker
Co-Director, Intern Aware.
We await their reply!
All Labour Leadership Contenders Back Fairer Internships
