3 ms·

What are unpaid internships if not unpaid volunteer labor?

• biddlesby 7y ago
  A quick Google suggests some difference in the US, in law if not practice. In particular that the internship experience is for the benefit of the intern and the company derives no immediate benefit from the intern's activities (and may even be impeded by them)
• Spooky23 7y ago
  A: Big compliance issues! Most employers that I’ve work with that utilize unpaid interns do so through a college to ensure a linkage to the interns development. Outside of that, it’s cheaper to pay minimum wage than to deal with the overhead of making sure your managers follow the rules.
• alistairSH 7y ago
  There are specific criteria that should be met for an internship to be offered without payment. Generally, an unpaid internship must be purely educational, not displace employees, employer does not derive profit from the intern, and there is no expectation of a job offer at the end. At my employer, interns are effectively additional staff for the duration of their employment, so they are paid market wages. The main difference between their position and that of a junior employee is hourly wages vs salaried.
  • C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Massively Massively Abused by a lot of industries like Media (the trades especially) and Fashion.