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GRADUATES: Many find that interning is the only way to get much needed experience

No!
Eva Baker

TWENTY YEARS ago, the idea of working for free would have seemed absurd, and rightly so. For centuries, society has been based around the philosophy that you are financially rewarded for your labour, and with those financial rewards you are able to provide yourself with housing, food and your basic needs.

Now, amidst a climate of economic recession, with an overqualified army of graduates waiting in the wings, and a working world that is becoming more elitist by the day, interning is becoming the norm. Now, in exchange for our labour and our precious time, we often get nothing.

Interning, it seems, has become a sure-fire way to penetrate even the most respected and hard-to-access institutions. In a way, it’s understandable that bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young employees would want to prove their enthusiasm and dedication by sacrificing their time for free, but the simple fact is many young people in Britain just can’t afford to.

Interning is fine if your parents can support you financially, aware that you’ll reap the rewards in the long run. But what about those of us who can’t rely on the bank of mum and dad?

As the more privileged in society are more likely to be able to afford to work for free, they are also more likely to gain entry into the best institutions and companies, and hence the whole system winds up only letting in those from the upper and middle classes. Inequality prevails, diversity decreases, and many less well-off young people are left out in the cold.

A big part of growing up and going out into the world of work is the notion of independence: independence to choose what kind of environment you want to work in, independence to be reliant on yourself financially, and independence to learn to stand on your own two feet.

The prevalence of interning in today’s world of work is flipping notions of independence and personal development on their heads, and we now depend on a) our parents for financial support to get us through the warped system and b) our potential employers to acknowledge our contribution, and reward it with real paid work at some undisclosed point in the future.

The idea of interning not only restricts access to employment along the lines of class and financial background, it also strips us of basic workers’ rights, like sick pay and the right to join a union. Not to mention what it does for your personal motivation and morale. Slogging your guts out week after week for any employer who may or may not actually hire you at some point, with only the prospect of an ever-increasing overdraft to look forward to is not what young people should expect from working life.
 
YES!
Latisha Ma

IT IS, without a doubt, an unwritten rule/expectation that young people need to work for free if they want to get anywhere in our society. Experience is now vital where degrees have churned out far too many graduates for far too few jobs.

University simply does not equip young people with enough skills to walk straight into a job. It is all very well being able to write an essay, but most employers need more than that.

Unpaid work can be seen as both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because if the placement trains the individual they can gain invaluable practical skills and experience, and bad because the young person is not being paid a wage for their work. And if they are not from a comfortable background they will be unable to work for free and gain the vital experience that is now so needed.

Interns have begun to take employers to court over unpaid work, because many companies do not realise that they are breaking National Minimum Wage laws.

Yes, young people are expected to gain this much needed experience for free (or possibly even pay to gain this experience), because employers know that young people are ready and willing to do so!

The recession has meant that those who were already in work have had to lower their standards and revert back to entry-level jobs, meaning that the level of experience required for very basic positions has been raised beyond many fresh graduates’ reach. Employers can evidently afford to raise the bar and employ people for free as so many people are desperate to gain experience. It’s the classic catch 22.

*THE 'HEAD TO HEAD''COLUMN IS BY THE LONDON 360 REPORTERS
To find out more about what our reporters are up to go to www.communitychannel.org/london360
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