Speak to any young person trying to get a foot on the career ladder (particularly in media, the arts and fashion) and they’re likely to have some sort of Devil Wears Prada-esque anecdote from an unpaid internship. In many industries, the unpaid internship is a universally-acknowledged rite of passage. It relies on a tacit, mutually-beneficial and largely unquestioned agreement between employer and intern: one receives an eager, submissive worker who will do all the jobs no one else wants to do for next-to-nothing (or in many cases, actually nothing), while the other gets that all-important CV padding necessary to progress to actual paid work.
Of course, what an unpaid internship really denotes is the exploitation of labour. Exploitation of the privileged few who can afford to work for free, perhaps, but exploitation nonetheless.
And the problem is a colossal one. According to the Sutton Trust, of the 10,000 graduates who begin an internship after leaving University, a fifth are unpaid.
After pledging last year in its Taylor review of modern working practices, to ‘stamp out’ these ‘exploitative unpaid internships’, it looks like the government might actually be doing something to tackle the issue. Business Minister Andrew Griffiths reported that ‘over the last three months, government enforcement teams have been targeting employers advertising for unpaid interns, reminding them of the law and the consequences of breaking it’. HMRC has sent over 500 letters to companies reminding them that interns classified as workers must be paid minimum wage, while the government has promised a review of the existing law and policy regarding unpaid internships.
When the problem is so deep-rooted in the culture of these industries, however, one can’t help but feel that angry reminders and warning letters aren’t going to cut it. Although the current law states that interns who are classed as workers should be paid at least the National Minimum Wage (meaning that the many established, reputable companies who employ unpaid interns are in flagrant breach of the law), the government has admitted that, last year no prosecutions were actually made.
In industries in which progression tends to be based on the assimilation of work experience and contacts, it is unsurprising that graduates are hesitant to call out the internships on which, in the current system, their futures are dependent. Speaking to *The Debrief about her three-month unpaid internship at a fashion PR firm, Rebecca explained that although she felt ‘exploited’ by her role, which largely consisted of organising mail and stock, making countless cups of tea and running administrative errands, she would never have considered reporting the firm. 'I obviously complained about how badly I was treated to family and friends, but I’d never actually do anything about it because I wouldn’t want to piss off the company. In fashion PR, and fashion more generally, it’s just kind of accepted that these internships are something you have to do'. And for Rebecca, doing her time paid off, since her internship led to the paid position she now holds within the company.
It seems the dependency works both ways, however. Speaking about her unpaid internship at a well-known magazine, Charlotte* described interns as fulfilling an essential, if unglamorous, role within the company: 'we label and track all the mail sent out by the magazine, transcribe all the interviews conducted by journalists, book taxis, call in items for photoshoots, that kind of thing. It’s boring work but it’s very important. It’s difficult to see how they’d manage without us'. She spoke of a constantly rotating stream of interns on short two or three placements, fulfilling these administrative tasks: 'the old interns train up the new ones, so there’s very little work on their part'. For industries struggling more and more to make a profit, it’s a savvy business model, but one that definitely doesn’t live up to fair employment standards.
Considering how ingrained and effective unpaid internships have become in some industries, it’s difficult to see how the government’s new measures will be enough to combat the problem. It also seems unfair to put the onus on vulnerable interns to call out their employers, and naïve to expect individual companies to make changes when their competitors continue to benefit from unpaid interns without being penalised. Real change will require serious reform of these industries from the inside out, and will probably take some time.
For now, it’s important that we keep the conversation open about unpaid internships, which have remained an unspoken and unquestioned reality of our early working lives for far too long.
*Names have been changed
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.