Post: #1

Interns are mostly female, underpaid or unpaid, says upcoming study

Preliminary findings from an upcoming study on internships in Canada show that the majority of interns are young women who make less than the provincial minimum wage — if they’re paid at all.

Quote:OTTAWA—Preliminary findings from an upcoming study on internships in Canada show that the majority of interns are young women who make less than the provincial minimum wage — if they’re paid at all.

The study, to be released soon by two researchers at the University of Victoria and the Canadian Intern Association, is aimed at determining the scope of unpaid internships in Canada amid a growing uproar about the practice both here and abroad.

Saskatchewan and Ontario recently cracked down on unpaid internships, while Alberta is facing calls to do the same.

Several American states are taking tougher measures against unpaid internships while parliamentarians in Great Britain recently passed a motion to ban the practice by a whopping 181 votes to 19.

The British motion was put forward by a Conservative MP who argued that unpaid internships disproportionately favour the children of the wealthy and well-connected.

In Canada, there’s no such move among Conservatives to ban unpaid internships despite some estimates suggesting as many as 300,000 young Canadians work without pay — 200,000 more than in the UK, which has a population almost twice the size of Canada’s.

The lack of federal labour market data, however, has made it impossible to determine a precise number, said Claire Seaborn, head of the Canadian Intern Association.

Employers in Canada are not required to report unpaid interns to provincial or federal authorities, she added, making meaningful data elusive. A private member’s bill by an NDP legislator in Ontario would force employers to account for their unpaid interns.

Andrew Cash, a federal NDP MP who tabled a private member’s bill on unpaid internships last fall, said he’s working on another bill that will focus on beefing up federal regulations to protect those who are working for free.

Federally regulated telecommunications companies like Rogers and Bell are among the biggest users of unpaid interns in Canada.

“I hear it all the time from my constituents — anyone who has an adult child between 20 and 30 probably has some experience with unpaid internships, and they’re mad about it,” said Cash.

“It flies against everything we stand for in terms of labour relations in Canada. If you work, you get paid. And so we need to zero in on federal regulations so that everyone knows what the rules are.”

Of the interns that responded to the survey by Isabelle Couture and James Attfield, public administration grad students at the University of Victoria, 83 per cent reported earning less than the provincial minimum wage or nothing at all.

The majority of the internships are in Ontario and are most common in the private sector, where 49 per cent of respondents said they worked, preliminary results of the study found. Public and non-profit sectors made up the difference at 26 and 25 per cent respectively.

Forty-one per cent of respondents reported working for entertainment, media and journalism companies. Some 15 per cent said they were hired at marketing, public relations and advertising firms.

Most of the interns who participated were female, given many of the industries routinely using them are female-dominated, said Seaborn. Women are equally ill-served by a recent funding announcement by the Conservative government for paid internships, she added.

The Tories recently announced $40 million for 3,000 paid internships in the “high-demand” fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and the skilled trades. But there was nothing for industries traditionally dominated by women, like nutrition sciences, social work and teaching, Seaborn said.

“I can’t say that was the intended effect, but it could have such a drastic effect on gender, on women my age,” said Seaborn, 25.

“It just means a 22- or 23-year-old female is a lot less likely to be paid in their first few jobs than a young male. That’s really problematic.”

A spokeswoman for Employment Minister Jason Kenney said it is “entirely false” to suggest the “high-demand” fields are geared toward men only.

“In fact, our recent Apprenticeship Grant commercial highlights a real life woman, Valerie, who got support from the Government of Canada and is in one of these fields,” Alexandra Fortier said in an email.

“These internships will provide post-secondary graduates, both male and female, with the experiences and opportunities to help them succeed in the job market.”

Another Toronto Star article that requires no additional commentary at all.

If the people doing this study had learned in school about my little friend "supply and demand" they'd understand why the world works this way.

Making unpaid or underpaid internships illegal will mean that companies will scrap internships altogether. They aren't going to begin paying people more than they are worth.

Of course, we definitely do need to be sympathetic of the folks who chose a field with very little demand and can only build experience by working for free. They shouldn't be responsible for "following their dreams." The world owes them a high paying job.

Post: #2

Good work for Jason Kenny essentially telling them to 'shove it' on the gender bias claim. Harper may be weird and wishy washy but his cabinet is not afraid to stick it to people. Kenny in this case, Baird every other day and Flaherty on every budget.

Post: #3

They'll just live on credit now, default by 24 and start afresh with their careers, paid. I know countless girls who've done this by now.

Post: #4

Someone needs to sit these people down and explain to them that an unpaid internship will probably be more valuable than the whole of their expensive university education. You will generally learn applicable skills in your chosen profession as an intern, you can rarely say the same about universities.

Post: #5

I think it should be illegal personally. It does favour the wealthy and well connected over those from poorer backgrounds, male or female.

And yes, it might mean less internships, boo fucking hoo for everyone involved.

Post: #6

(05-22-2014 12:27 AM)Tytalus Wrote:  I think it should be illegal personally. It does favour the wealthy and well connected over those from poorer backgrounds, male or female.

And yes, it might mean less internships, boo fucking hoo for everyone involved.

Translation: industries that need entry-level help will actually have to hire and train workers. Like they used to. Internships are a Boomer scam.

Post: #7

The Toronto Star sounds like a good piece of paper to wipe one's ass with.

Post: #8

(05-22-2014 12:34 AM)El Rey Wrote:  The Toronto Star sounds like a good piece of paper to wipe one's ass with.

I prefer three-ply.

Post: #9

(05-22-2014 12:27 AM)Tytalus Wrote:  I think it should be illegal personally. It does favour the wealthy and well connected over those from poorer backgrounds, male or female.

And yes, it might mean less internships, boo fucking hoo for everyone involved.

Did I miss the part of the column where people were being forced against their will to accept internships?

You can't legislate inequality away, and the past attempts to do so have almost always ended up causing net harm to the very people it was intended to help.

Post: #10

The benefit in an internship should mainly flow to the intern, not the other way round. Unfortunately many, many employers have essentially made interns - for want of a better word - slaves (the main difference being interns can actually leave their slavery voluntarily) and abused the system that was actually meant to give interns practical experience and a leg up. It doesn't bother me that light is being shone on this issue although women generally tend to be more gullible than men and end up in internships like this.

Post: #11

Do they have unpaid interns designing bridges? I highly suspect that the answer is no. Now why might that be? Because to some extent, if you want someone to take something seriously, you need to pay them for it. Designing bridges is a thing to take seriously. Therefore, I suggest that careers in entertainment or marketing don't require anyone to take things too seriously. To put it another way, there aren't going to be any real consequences for an intern getting Beyonce's birthday wrong in an article, whereas an engineer writing the wrong numbers down would lead to people dying.

My suggestion to women is that if they absolutely must leave the house, then they should pursue a career where mistakes have consequences, so that their bosses will throw some money at hiring someone who is worth something. Or, I suggest that women understand that university courses and internships in these nebulous areas for what they are: the modern equivalent of finishing schools.

Post: #12

(05-22-2014 01:08 AM)Katatonic Wrote:  

(05-22-2014 12:27 AM)Tytalus Wrote:  I think it should be illegal personally. It does favour the wealthy and well connected over those from poorer backgrounds, male or female.

And yes, it might mean less internships, boo fucking hoo for everyone involved.

Did I miss the part of the column where people were being forced against their will to accept internships?

You can't legislate inequality away, and the past attempts to do so have almost always ended up causing net harm to the very people it was intended to help.

If you go back to the early 20th century, you will see that all jobs including the shitty loom ones women filled were paid albeit low.

Internships are a scam, plain and simple. In the case of this, legislating internships away would eliminate the unpaid internship tracks and make it more difficult to get the foot in the door. You never had a chance at breaking into that company anyway as they never had an intention to hire you.

As opposed to the current situation where you work for free with zero chance of getting a job at the firm anway.

If a firm can't afford to hire and pay workers for a job even the bare minimum, it shouldn't hire them at all. What we have is a glut of desperate job seekers who are complete idiots thinking this way is the way to break into industries when its clear exploitation of a desperate labor force.

Post: #13

In the trades you start off making money immediately and your wage increases once you meet certain milestones (hours). Yet in some internships it's work for free. I had to do internships albeit short ones unpaid, well actually apart of my tuition package. It's BS.

Post: #14

If You're going to have minimum wage legislation, as I believe all Canadian provinces have, all workers, including interns, must be paid at least this rate.

Internships are massively abused by companies in both the US and Canada. In many cases the company knows very well that there is a near zero percent probability of them hiring any specific intern after it's completion.They are being dishonest about the reasons they "hire" interns. They are often not interested in finding out whether the intern would make a good employee, but interested in getting him/her to perform grunt work without pay. In different times this could almost be called slavery (Ja, I know, free will).

Put another way. Consider how the law treats wagers, gambling and games of chance in general. They are highly regulated and to my knowledge, outside of approved operations, the state won't enforce private contracts between two parties if the contract is essentially a wager. The main reason the state does this is so they can get tax revenue, true, but another reason is that games of chance make people behave in ways that are to their own detriment, and to the benefit of the person staging the game. Internships in modern times have become very similar to gambling. For any particular intern there is only a very small chance that they will be hired by the firm offering the internship. The (minimum wage) x (the number of hours they work during their internship) = (the wager they place on the table), with the house spinning the roulette wheel to see which, if any, of the interns numbers come up.

Anyway, IMO companies can pay the damn minimum wage in order to determine whether a particular person is a good fit for their company or not. If they hired a recruitment company to search for a suitable candidate do you think that recruitment company would waive their fees? Not a chance. In the same way companies must be prepared to pay minimum wage to people just starting out (interns) in order to reach a similar conclusions a recruitment company would.

Post: #15

"Underpaid" interns are prime candidates for seeking arrangement. Hopefully a few of these girls will end up getting pump and dumped by RVFers on to that scam.

Post: #16

(05-22-2014 12:10 PM)ElBorrachoInfamoso Wrote:  "Underpaid" interns are prime candidates for seeking arrangement. Hopefully a few of these girls will end up getting pump and dumped by RVFers on to that scam.

Now now, some of them may be the type of chick we hate, but most of them from my experience at my job are just naive about how the new job market works. They're being exploited plain and simple.

My company at least pays all of its interns.