"Only four weeks into my internship, they promised they would keep me on full-time, only to find out on my last day, I got the sack"-Liam Howard
IS YOUR JOB EXPLOITING YOU?
If you are considering doing an internship or maybe you are undertaking one as we speak, you may question how well companies treat their interns. Do they consider them as an employee?
Internships, unpaid work and jobs paying below the minimum wage have become hot topics of conversation within the past year.
The modern day term for slave labour maybe? The word "internship" has appeared to be a crafty escape route for employers trying to get away with paying their staff cheaply or just using their services for profit.
Recently, Subway has claimed to be hiring apprentices under the name 'sandwich artists'. The job requires making sandwiches, serving customers and manning the tills, just like a regular Subway employee. But instead, they receive an 'Intimate Level Apprenticeship' along with £3.50 an hour. Yes, that's right, three pounds fifty.
Currently, according to Gov.uk statistics, the national minimum wage for an apprentice is £3.50 for those under nineteen or in their first year of an apprenticeship. So, Subway is not doing anything illegal here, depending on whether they are hiring people within these two categories. Despite this, if their apprentice is carrying out the same roles as a regular member of staff, you would think they should get the standard pay being £5.60.
Internships legally last for up to 12 months, so perhaps this is why Subway requested an 'apprenticeship' title, knowing they need staff for 14 months. Either way, it is extraordinary how this gets by.
Pret A Manger is yet another example and have received a backlash of complaints in response to their proposal for hiring teenagers for 'work experience' and providing them food in exchange for money. This is a common gesture among internships, employers offering services such as a place to sleep or food, rather than money. However, I don't reckon there will be a queue of teenagers standing outside Pret with CV's eager for their unpaid summer jobs.
A Pret representative said in an interview with The Telegraph, that their aim was to promote work experience to young Brits, but with the majority of the company's workers being European, the backlash of Brexit has hit them. Left them desperate to find more staff at low costs.
While an uproar bombarded the sandwich company over social media eventually forcing them to offer paid work experience, fashion and media internships continue to go unpaid or underpaid. Oh, but that's okay because...?
The popular job hunters website for aspiring creative workers, Fashionworkie.com, advertises hundreds of internships and work placements every day.
Dr Bridget Coner, senior lecturer of culture, media and creative Industries at Kings College London who is currently building research into the cultural politics of the work economy said:
"There's increasing research evidence that is showing us that many industries, especially cultural industries are hugely inequitable and if internships or forms of work experiences that you need to do be in these industries require 'free labour’, I think this is a key mechanism by which these industries remain unequal."
This data illustrates the compensation 325 internships advertised on the from the website provide showing the majority of work experience provides an allowance or expenses which can involve food and paid travel. Over 80 internships were paid and 44 were unpaid without providing an allowance or expenses.
The amount that they are paid, what allowances are provided and why 44 companies choose not provide either are questions which arise from this.
According to an article by Propublica.com , the Department of Labour state an unpaid internship is acceptable if: it is similar to training, it benefits the intern, the intern doesn’t displace paid employees, the employer doesn’t benefit from work the intern is doing, and the intern isn’t promised a job at the end.
"It is unfair that internships and work experience are unpaid.They are an essential 'way in' or access route. But only certain people can afford to undertake unpaid internships because they cost, it costs of travel, subsistence etc. as well as time."-Dr Coner
Liam's Story
Arriving every day in the office on time, smartly dressed, completing the pile of work handed to him which involved running the companies social media and online digital sales. He managed to lift their social media reach by gaining over 3,000 followers.
After graduating from The Univerisity of Birmingham with an English and History degree, Liam struggled to find a full-time job and still does.
The lead guitarist for the upcoming band, Black Parady, applied to Premier Estates Wine's' ten-week e-commerce internship in which his role provided social media support for the company and attended events for them to promote them.
This one paid well, £7.75 an hour, equaling £320 a week.
"I earned my monthly rent in just a week, it was great."
Liam found the internship on his university careers network. After the company made a big loss of money from their marketing campaign with Saatchi they made a partnership through Santander with The University of Birmingham to try and recruit English, history and politics graduates, those with top writing skills and Liam fit the brief.
"After being taken on, I was the first one to be offered a full-time position for after my internship ended, so I thought great I can try and set about somewhere more local to live because the pay there was really good I had enough to stand on my own two feet, but it was a long commute."
Hesitantly Liam constantly was checking up with his line manager and boss whether he should put the deposit for the house down, to be certain he would get the position.
"The response I got was cool, that's fine, you're definitely being kept on. So I put my deposit down, paid my first instalment of rent, moved all my stuff into the new house."
After all that, at his appraisal, Liam was told he "wasn't putting enough effort and commitment into the job".
Bottles of mulled wine and prosecco's flew out of the door, but as soon as Liam returned back from the Christmas period, he was randomly sacked, without any explanation.
Contractually his internship allowed him 10 days holiday, but yet he was told taking six and a half days off was too much.
"Unfortunately my Grandad passed away and I had four days off for bereavement. I also had an issue with my dog in that they found a tumour on his stomach and he had internal bleeding so I had to have half a day off for that."
"I also had two other days off as I had gigs with my band, which I explained in the interview stage. So I got told at my appraisal that I had too much time off cause I had these six and a half days off and I thought that was absolutely outrageous."
"When I got let go, I also got let go with three other people on the same day and out of the interns there's currently only two people left."
So much money was pumped into advertisements leading up to the festive period which required the extra staff, that when it reached the new year, sales plummeted and there was no need to pay for extra staff. So in essence Premier Estates Wine, cleverly hired more staff for their busy period, tricked them into thinking they would be permanent and then dropped them when they were not needed. A selfish system.
"There were too many overheads that, the bosses weren't even doing much work often I saw my line manager just scrolling through Facebook, it was the interns who were doing the majority of the work for them."
However, this experience hasn't stopped Liam for applying to more internships in the future and instead made him more aware of the exploitive behaviour which he will now be aware of in the future, rather than blindly following like a dog on a lead.
"When I got let go it just reminded me, you've gotten over your head a bit here, you've put this money into this house and gone and put the deposit down. Yeah, they've lied to you but they never gave me a full-time contract."
"I am to blame for not having the foresight to realise, actually I'm still an intern and anything they say is pretty disposable. If I was going to do an internship again I think I would see it for what it was and that would be a temporary thing to gain a bit of money and experience and not take it as a full-time job."
Morgan's Story
"I would say we were exploited in a way"
Morgan Bomy worked as an intern at Absolute Interpreting and Translation Ltd in Birmingham for four months in order to complete the second year of her degree.
Her role entailed carrying out a lot of translations into and from her native language for public and private clients, answering the phones, dealing with organisational problems and writing articles and press releases. She didn't get paid a penny.
Morgan said:
"Other interns and I were working full time and carrying out translations that professional translators should have been doing, but we were doing them so that my employer wouldn't have to pay us. He would also be quite rude to us when something was wrong even though we were unqualified unpaid interns. I would say we were exploited in a way."
"Most of the work I was doing was not interesting to me. The reality did not quite match the description of the internship."
However, Morgan did not let it have a negative impact on future internships, in fact, she reapplied for one soon after.
"This bad experience with an internship won't prevent me from doing others. I will soon start another internship and I am really looking forward to it."
Bad experience is a good experience. Morgan became more aware of looking out for exploitation within a workplace and preventing it in the future. Ask questions before starting the job to find out what your role entailed. Then when you start the job, match the reality to what was proposed to evaluate how well you are being treated.
Is the gig economy the way forward?
When we find issues with exploitation in a workplace, it usually stems from inflexibility and unfair agreements within contracts or issues with overhead staff.
As we have just seen, companies are making use of the demand for work experience and internships and throwing contracts out of the window.
Deliveroo and Uber are both companies belonging to the gig economy, a recently increasing discussion as they pay staff a set rate per 'hit', whether it be a delivery or Uber drop off. Deliveroo and Uber drivers can choose when they work and rather become self-employed on a zero-hour contract.
There is currently 5 million employees working for the gig economy, many whom have been protesting demanding better workers rights such as better pay as well as holiday and sick pay.
Currently, Deliveroo drivers get paid £6 an hour, a bonus £1 per drop off plus tips if they are lucky.
Dr Briget Coner said: "I think the gig economy is doing much more harm than good in our society. The companies that are 'winning' in the gig economy are making huge profits, really really huge. And I don’t think ‘gig’ workers themselves are experiencing anything remotely like the prosperity or benefits that these companies are. And because these companies are not contributing to our tax base, becuase they currently don’t have to pay National Insurance or any benefits to their workers at all, they have very few obligations to our society, let alone to their own workers. And I think that is really sad."
Birmingham student and Deliveroo driver, Kristaq Gega explained that his job entails going to the central zone and waiting for orders, to go pick up the order from the restaurant and deliver it, back to the central zone and so on.
Kristaq said: "I was disappointed with the pay, as I thought it would be more."
While Midlands Deliveroo driver, Tyla Smith-Boora also said:
"Being a Deliveroo driver means I have to deal with rude pedestrians and road users and also poor conditions like heavy rain and cold wind which is very unpleasant."
The harsh weather conditions that the riders have to deal with is a downside of and perhaps riders should be offered travel compensation.
However, both Deliveroo workers agreed, that the freedom of the job outweighs its limitations. Tyla is able to choose to work when he is available and Kristaq can work around his university course.
Tyla said:
"It's frustrating that we don't get any holiday or sick pay but it's understandable. With the flexibility Deliveroo offers I think it makes up it."
"Deliveroo also send regular emails and promotions to me, exclusive to riders, so overall I would say I do feel like I am treated like an employee with added freedom."
Similarly Kristaq said:
"I like the fact I am a self-employed and there is nobody to tell me what to do"
While Tyla and Kristaq both agree that Deliveroo offers workers a good incentive and allowance of freedom, this appears to work for them part-time workers alongside other commitments like degree courses. However, for those work full-time job as Deliveroo drivers may disagree.
If you feel as though you are being paid and treated unfairly, you probably are and you should speak up about it. The reason why so many internships go unpaid like Morgan's is because interns and employees do not complain, and these acts then continue. Seeking advice from the Citizen Advice Bureau could be the next step to take towards this.
Coner also advises:
"Creative internships are often framed as the compensation ie. 'we can't pay you, but you get to work in this cool creative workplace, amongst other creative people. If we hear this kind of argument, it can be quite hard to protest or to speak up if you do feel unhappy and feel you are being exploited."
"A great source of information and advice for interns or people worried about these issues is this 'counter-internship guide' from an organisation called the Precarious Workers Brigade: They have been campaigning for many years about these issues and many of them have lots of experience of doing this free labour as well."
