Unpaid internships represent one of the biggest changes to employment since the start of the economic downturn, undermining the principle of decent work in three ways. First, unpaid interns usually do real work, undermining the minimum wage and potentially supplanting paid staff. Research for Intern Aware by YouGov showed that 82 per cent of businesses using unpaid interns found they perform valuable tasks. This could represent a major breach of employment law, where interns are actually fulfilling the duties of ‘workers’.
Second, unpaid internships act as a barrier to prevent young people from normal backgrounds from getting into work. However bright or hardworking they are, few young people can afford to work for months on end without pay in London. The potential loss of talent is alarming. Polling shows that three-quarters (74 per cent) of adults do not believe that someone from a background like theirs would be able to do an unpaid internship. Two-fifths (43 per cent) of young people say that an unpaid internship represents a ‘significant barrier’ to getting into work.
This leads to the third problem. Because unpaid internships make recruitment a test of parental wealth rather than individual merit, they make it harder to create a successful, high skills economy. There is a great deal of concern from employer groups in industries where unpaid internships are most rife that the practice is bad for business, pricing out the next generation of employees. The PRCA, which represents the PR industry, is running a campaign with PR Week to end unpaid internships, while the Royal Institute of British Architects is so concerned that it expels members that use unpaid interns.
Campaigning for fairer internships at Intern Aware, we speak to lots of young people who have grown up with unpaid internships, and are angry about them. But it is particularly striking to speak to older people. My grandma can not understand why it is that my generation is expected to work for free for the chance to be considered for a job. It sounds Victorian to her.
Unpaid internships are still a new phenomenon and they can be tackled with relative ease. Momentum is growing for a four-week limit to unpaid internships. The Sutton Trust and Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission support the fact that this would end the practice of socially exclusive, long-term unpaid internships. But businesses would also welcome the clarity of a legal ‘red line’ on internships: YouGov found that two-thirds of them would back the limit, and only one in 10 would oppose it.
Years of campaigning from members of parliament like Hazel Blears and Labour’s youth movement have paid off, and the party appears to take action. Tackling unpaid internships would be a rare policy – one that would create a more just and socially mobile country but does not cost the Treasury a penny. And it is an idea that unites trade unions and businesses.
Any argument about decent work needs to focus on how people get into jobs in the first place. Creating a fair system of internships is a crucial place to start.
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Ben Lyons is co-director of Intern Aware
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