We believe any work should be compensated for, period. The value of work done by students and young graduates at the beginning of their careers is nothing below that of most people in the labor market, and deserves more recognition. We can address current exploitative practices by drafting a law to ban unpaid internships without exception. Another way to go is incentivize payment through funding organizations: we would crowdsource a blacklist-database of organisations that exploit interns. In applying for funding or tenders there is an obligatory check of the database, and if orgs have a bad record they are automatically given lower status in the process. Allies in implementing these would be primarily youth organizations, because fighting for youth rights is in alignment with their goals.
UK against unpaid internships
Hey! A good colleague of mine just told me about this example of campaigning against unpaid internships.
https://www.facebook.com/internawareuk
Do you know any examples from other countries other than this one from UK?
Wow there!
Last night I had a long conversation about university fees, here in the Eu , and in the US. the conversation started because of an exceptionally difficult position a friend’s mother and brother have been put in in the US. The mother had to cosign for the student loan of her son as he was under 18 and now,mwith pressure on the son to pay, and on the mother to make payments she cannot afford, the son is thinking pf joining the military to have his debt forgiven.
Of course this creates a horrible situation for his mother as she now fears that her son will lose his life and that this will have been her fault somehow. Its insane for a country to put this kind of pressure on families.
In any case we went on to talk about how free education online might meet with official accredation by invention of a method of peer accredation where graduates and post graduates collectively mark papers based on online free online educational services as part of an initiative to provide support for students in these kinds of situations. Service to the comminity can come in mny forms other than risking ones life in someone else’s war.
And so we came to the issue of internships through this channel. In our conversation we suggested two things, first is that government legislate to create funds for supported internships which can be accessed only by companies who (by themselves or with external participation) provide solid internship programs that give a comprehensive foundation to young professionals in any given field.
Second was that peer marking services and other internships offer decreases on student debt.
These two working together can be crafted into a mechanism that creates positive value for society…which is diametrically opposed to the stress that is currently generated by the situation.
In the first instance ‘support’ should be basic living costs, nutrition, accomodation, and connectivity…that way the work done is self initiated and this means, as tests have shown time and again, more creatively intelligent contributions.
So, in short, rather than outright ban anything, lets revise it and make it work for everyone.