‘Mind the Gap’ column: Unpaid intern blues

As the spring semester vaults toward the finish, students nationwide are facing tough decisions as to how to best fill their summer months. For some, the break provides a respite from the seemingly endless onslaught of schoolwork— a time to relax and catch up with friends and family.

For many others, though — particularly at our professionally-driven university— the intermittent months between semesters often require a different sort undertaking: building your work experience.

Though job market indicators have signaled some promising trends for class of 2015 graduates, for most to truly be competitive in today’s economy, prior professional employment experience is sorely needed. In order to develop this experience, students often must turn toward resume-building internships.

But to our great dismay, these positions are routinely unpaid.

In recent years, public opinion has begun to shift aggressively away from this practice, with a rash of lawsuits challenging unpaid internships’ legal standing and numerous social critics challenging their moral standing.

Increasingly, investigations have elucidated the deeply exploitative nature of the economy of wageless interns. Numerous disturbing practices have emerged. Since those who fill these positions are not usually considered “employees,” they are not afforded worker’s protection under the Civil Rights Act. In many states, this precludes them from anti-discrimination and sexual harassment laws.

Furthermore, government enforcement of intern-specific fair labor standards is scant at best. This leaves the burden of unearthing compliance failures on the part of employers to the exploited interns who must cling dearly to their unpaid postings in order to escape the vicious cycle and one day gain full-employment status.

I’ve experienced this dilemma firsthand several times. Upon graduating, I was given a dream internship in Washington, D.C. at one of the top international news networks in the world. The issue was that the position paid only a $100 dollar weekly stipend. While not unpaid, it covered only a fifth of the calculated living wage in the nation’s capital— a dismal sum in the grand scheme of things.

Upon attempting to rally against this blatant exploitation, I was met with tremendous hesitation from other interns. “I want to work here one day,” said one of them. And so, we relented, and the exploitation continued.

I found out the hard way that it’s difficult to stand up against injustice when doing so may compromise the very future that led you to it.

Luckily, I was privileged enough to be able to afford such a summer, and my career was better for it. But for those of lower socioeconomic standing, it’s often not even an option, further limiting their ability to ascend our moribund meritocracy.

Not all agree that these positions constitute an exploitive relationship, though. They are downplayed by those in power as “mutually beneficial,” while those who’ve already been subjected to them describe it as something you simply have to do. “In journalism, you have to pay your dues,” I was repeatedly told by senior staffers.

But it’s the very absence of choice that makes it unjust.

Due to their non-employee status, unpaid interns are essentially treated as volunteers or apprentices, but their decision to enter into such a role is far from voluntary.

A recent survey found that 60 percent of employers prefer applicants with internship experience, and over half of graduates in recent years had held some sort of experience. Knowing that supply and demand are squarely on their side, and given the dire nature of the job market in recent years, employers exploit these facts to force young adults to submit themselves to unpaid labor to even have a shot at employment.

In essence, we are forced to choose between subjugation and our future. It’s coercion at its finest.

The ability to choose is limited even further when many schools’ programs — including numerous here at Lehigh — require the completion of an internship, yet make no distinction between paid and unpaid positions and provide no financial support for them.

What’s even more astounding is that we are either urged or required to take these positions for school credit. So not only is our labor unpaid, but we are, in fact, paying for the labor ourselves.

This means that for those ambitious enough to seek out unpaid internships outside of the Lehigh Valley, they are not only faced with moving costs and living expenses, but they must also continue to pay tuition, further increasing their likely astronomical student debt.

Several Lehigh departments themselves offer unpaid internships for academic credit — ranging from Athletics to Study Abroad to the Global Union and beyond — contracting us into wageless labor agreements with the institution we’re paying to attend.

Given the calamitous nature of the current student debt crisis, of the topsy-turvy job market, and of the deeply unjust cycle of unpaid internships, we mustn’t wait to respond.

It is not us who should have to “pay our dues,” but rather the companies and institutions that exploit us and exert their power upon us.

And so it is time we exert our power.

We must call on university programs here at Lehigh and beyond that require internships to follow the lead of schools like the CUNY system and Columbia University and provide needed funding options. And while this may treat a symptom, we must also remedy the cause. For that we must turn toward government regulation.

After all, if we must continue to pay our dues, they can at least help us foot the bill.