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In every employee relationship there is: a) a wage cost to the employer b) a non-wage cost (supervision, office space, communication overhead) etc. c) a bene

In every employee relationship there is: a) a wage cost to the employer b) a non-wage cost (supervision, office space, communication overhead) etc. c) a benefit the worker provides to the company Note that in general the benefit c) starts off low for an entry-level worker and grows over time with work. If c) is equal to or less than b), then the employer cannot afford to pay that worker a wage. By creating a minimum wage or banning unpaid work, you are simply banning an employment contract in the situation where c) is less than b) plus the minimum wage. Sure in some cases employers may suckering kids via a bait in switch. But in a lot of real cases, the internship or apprenticeship is a path upwards. By making it illegal, you are cutting people off. You have not made the kid any better off or engaged in charity. You have simply made a voluntary contract, that for whatever reason this kid thought was better than all his other options illegal. This kid will now simply have to choose a less preferred option. I used to work at a non-profit helping to find jobs for the homeless. A lot of the people off the streets simply would not be able to produce $7 an hour worth of value to an employer. Perhaps though, they could produce $2 an hour. But that is illegal, so the pathway into the workplace is barred for these people.

ismarc 17y ago
I agree with all your points. However, the laws are there to protect the "desperate" and to enforce a minimum worth of an employee. In many situations, unpaid internships provide a cost to the employer. The trade-off is that any exceptional interns can become full time employees, already having had most of the training, resulting in a lower initial cost to employment (training, etc.). Even for full-time positions, straight from college hires are not ready to directly contribute. There's a window of time (depending on the job itself) that the college graduate, even having completed an internship, will not be able to meaningfully contribute. Most people who have just completed an internship at the company has this time drastically reduced (I'm not going to give made up statistics, but I've seen it reduce the time by 8 months). Now, the laws for unpaid internships are actually protecting the interns from non-internships. Based on the description in the blog, what they wanted as an army of people to compile a bunch of information without any direct supervision. This provides no benefit to the interns. They get the benefit of being immersed in corporate culture, but they are not receiving any relevant training or exposure to the field they would supposedly be interning for. This is exactly what the law is to protect against. If I'm a software development firm and get 15 unpaid interns to load servers into a moving van to change data centers, and all they do every day is load the van and unload it, they are directly providing benefit to the company with nothing in return, except they know that DL585's are heavy. Now, if they were part of the transition process, involved with the documenting and preparing for migration of the data center, document each step, what moves when and how, then the cabling/racking and bringup of machines at the new data center, they have suddenly learned some invaluable skills that are not taught in school. The point in the law is to defend against these situations by guaranteeing recompense for the student, whether it's invaluable skills (by guaranteeing they won't be used as free labor), class credit (helps towards degree), or a paycheck.
- apotheon 17y ago
  Internships can also teach someone who has never worked in a given industry before how a given company manages its operations. This not only provides a minimal "experience" benefit, and possibly a foot in the door for getting hired on at that employer as a regular employee, but also knowledge of how the business is run. In some cases, this might help inform an entrepreneurial effort so that a new competitor may arise under the former intern's direction -- a competitor that doesn't make the same mistakes the company offering internships made. . . . but none of that matters, because someone might be stupid enough to tenaciously hold on to an internship long after it has ceased being beneficial to the intern, thus resulting in that person being "exploited".

ismarc 17y ago

I agree with all your points. However, the laws are there to protect the "desperate" and to enforce a minimum worth of an employee. In many situations, unpaid internships provide a cost to the employer. The trade-off is that any exceptional interns can become full time employees, already having had most of the training, resulting in a lower initial cost to employment (training, etc.). Even for full-time positions, straight from college hires are not ready to directly contribute. There's a window of time (depending on the job itself) that the college graduate, even having completed an internship, will not be able to meaningfully contribute. Most people who have just completed an internship at the company has this time drastically reduced (I'm not going to give made up statistics, but I've seen it reduce the time by 8 months). Now, the laws for unpaid internships are actually protecting the interns from non-internships. Based on the description in the blog, what they wanted as an army of people to compile a bunch of information without any direct supervision. This provides no benefit to the interns. They get the benefit of being immersed in corporate culture, but they are not receiving any relevant training or exposure to the field they would supposedly be interning for. This is exactly what the law is to protect against. If I'm a software development firm and get 15 unpaid interns to load servers into a moving van to change data centers, and all they do every day is load the van and unload it, they are directly providing benefit to the company with nothing in return, except they know that DL585's are heavy. Now, if they were part of the transition process, involved with the documenting and preparing for migration of the data center, document each step, what moves when and how, then the cabling/racking and bringup of machines at the new data center, they have suddenly learned some invaluable skills that are not taught in school. The point in the law is to defend against these situations by guaranteeing recompense for the student, whether it's invaluable skills (by guaranteeing they won't be used as free labor), class credit (helps towards degree), or a paycheck.

apotheon 17y ago
Internships can also teach someone who has never worked in a given industry before how a given company manages its operations. This not only provides a minimal "experience" benefit, and possibly a foot in the door for getting hired on at that employer as a regular employee, but also knowledge of how the business is run. In some cases, this might help inform an entrepreneurial effort so that a new competitor may arise under the former intern's direction -- a competitor that doesn't make the same mistakes the company offering internships made. . . . but none of that matters, because someone might be stupid enough to tenaciously hold on to an internship long after it has ceased being beneficial to the intern, thus resulting in that person being "exploited".