I write this blog with a totally biased viewpoint, due to the fact that I am currently interning for this cornerstone of the political think-tank industry. Due to this I apologise for the semi auto-biographical aspects of this piece before hand. I further add that in the writing of this piece I WISH TO THANK PROGRESS FOR THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY IN WORKING FOR THEM!
But I feel I have to voice my concerns for my fellow unpaid workers across the political sector and many others that use unpaid interns in the running of their organisations. Unlike myself, many of my fellow brethren do not even get paid expenses for what they contribute and are part of the unseen exploitation of many of our new graduates.
I welcome therefore the Government’s proposals to offer graduates like myself paid three month internships, and six months for people from the poorest families. However, some did not see it this way, Chris Grayling, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, described the idea as; "This is all about Gordon Brown fighting class wars." I know students are known for indulging in marxism, but I don’t think the battleship Potemkin has docked on the Thames recently.
For those of you who are unaware the basic principle of an internship is that the individual is offering free unpaid work for the opportunity to gain work experience within their chosen sector. This process, of interning for companies/organizations, is becoming gradually the norm for the increasing amounts of young graduates entering the work place for the first time.
Although this a great opportunity, it is also a sacrifice. An intern is offering not only his free time but also his personal income to contribute to these organizations. This sacrifice is greater depending on the economic background of the intern, with average graduate dept currently around £17,500 per student, and working for free even around a part-time job is extremely costly.
Furthermore, it is also sometimes too great a sacrifice for some to offer. I am of course speaking of those graduates who cannot afford to move to London from their homes up and down the rest of the country. I worked alongside one intern who was older than myself and who had to work for two years before he could afford the move down to the bright lights of London town to take up the opportunity as an intern.
But the crux of the problem is that the vast amount of graduate jobs for the specific sector I wish to work within (just like many others) are based in London. Therefore one has to work for free in the most expensive part of this country without an income or with a limited one. In effect I, like many others in my situation, have been forced to become an unpaid labourer in order to enter the workplace. I know friends who have slept on other friends couches and bunked the tube in order to be able to intern. I know of one individual who rekindled an old relationship in order to crash at her west London address to make it to work, needless to say he now is employed in advertising.
In other sectors the situation can be just as depressing. A ‘runner’ within the film and television industry, is required to become the unpaid skivvy performing all manner of mundane tasks in order, according to one website offering positions, to gain “entry-level experience”. In other aspects of the media industry, such as journalism, interns can be employed for months on end with no pay or promise of a job at the end of it. A recent survey by the NUJ found that: “42.7 per cent were told a placement could lead to a permanent paid job, only 24.1 per cent of those were taken on.”
The move by the government to increase the amount of internships available is commendable and as I doubt many interns will actually have much say on the matter due to the fact that we cannot offer certain members of the House of Lords money to lobby on our behalf the bloggosphere is where this should begin.
Therefore the first thing I call for in order to reform the internship process is that internship places funded by government money are tied to guarantees of future employment. Otherwise in a downturn we will just see organizations using this facility as a means of procuring cheap highly skilled labour.
I welcome my fellow interns in all sectors to comment and add suggestions…