We have seen unpaid internships and we have seen companies that alienate poor people with the interns that they wish to take on. Now we have what may be a natural extension, companies that require interns to pay for their internship.
Etsio is a web based agency in the business of matching graduates with companies. These are graduates who are prepared to pay for the benefit of having an internship. Let there be no mistake, this is not about work shadowing and paying to watch others work but paying to work. Etsio make this clear. Not only does the company get paid to take on the intern, but, as Etsio informs its clients, “you get an extra pair of hands: someone who can do jobs for you.”
Looking at some of these paid internships, we can see the following examples:
Adevia Health, a small recruitment consultant charging interns £200 a day to work. But as they advertise, such interns are taken on with “a view to them going on the payroll in three months.” One wonders what the starting salaries are of these candidates after they have spent £13,000 to work for three months. And what happens if they are deemed not worthy for a job? One also wonders if charging interns to work in their own office is the recruitment consultants’ most lucrative fee income.
Looking for a Saturday job? How about paying £65 a day to paint people’s nails.
One could even pay £100 a day “to get stuck-in with the day to day work” at a recording studio.
Then there is a graphic design agency that “urgently requires” interns to work on website development. The candidates must “have at least 2 years of a relevant degree under their belt, or the equivalent experience in a live client environment. They will have good experience with HTML/XHTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySql, building table-less web pages from approved PSD files.” The company claims, “Ideally our interns would be required for a bare minimum of 2 weeks in order for us both to get the most out of the experience, but we usually have placements run for between 2 – 6 months.” Those candidates who fit the stringent requirements must also be prepared to pay £65 for each day they work.
The BBC report:
Ben Lyons, co-director of Intern Aware, a campaign for fair access to internships, said: “We campaign hard against unpaid internships because they exclude the vast majority of young people who cannot afford to work for free.
“There is something even more perverse about expecting young people to have to pay to work.
“Etsio is shutting the door in the face of hard-working and talented young people who have played by the rules but need a salary to support themselves….
“The government’s own lawyers have warned work without pay is often illegal and HMRC should be investigating companies which offer unpaid and paid-for internships.”
I can do little but concur.
Hat Tip: Patrick Osgood
