They’ve been called the harsh reality of the job market. But, they’re also exploiting young workers while businesses prosper, and they’re under fire once again – unpaid internships.
The NDP’s proposed private member’s bill C-636 dubbed the Intern Protection Act will be debated in the next couple weeks. The bill would limit unpaid internships in federally regulated industries to those linked to an educational program and ensure the internship primarily benefits the intern, not the employer.
The bill would only apply to companies regulated by federal law – the Canadian Labour Code – where unpaid internships are legal, such as banks, telecommunications companies, airlines and the federal government. It wouldn’t affect internships in businesses regulated by provincial governments.
Of course, unpaid internships are useful to these large businesses. Why would a company hire a paid employee if they can get someone to work for free? It’s a businessman’s dream.
Unpaid interns toil for free to gain work experience. That experience is certainly beneficial, as interns learn practical work skills, network and boost their résumés. It is not beneficial, however, to be exploited as free labour.
If interns are doing the same work as paid employees then they should be paid.
Large, profitable companies are making money at the expense of young graduates who are often burdened with crippling student debt.
According to the Canadian Federation of Students in 2013, the average student in Canada graduates university with a debt load of $37,000.
Young people often must work several jobs alongside their unpaid internship just to make ends meet.
For a lucky few, their families can financially support them through internships. As a result, it’s often the wealthy that land internships, while people from poorer backgrounds are effectively shut out. Inequality strikes again.
The tight job market doesn’t help either.
Andrew Langille, a labour lawyer from Toronto, says the 2008 recession impacted the use of unpaid internships.
“We have a generation of young people who are either chronically underemployed, unemployed or precariously employed.”
As the Financial Post reports, there are between 100,000 and 300,000 young Canadians working as unpaid interns. Combine these figures with the youth unemployment rate, which Statistics Canada reports rose to 13.3 per cent in December 2014, and what’s left is a group of millennials taking unpaid internships to make their way in the real world, but with no source of income to do so.
NDP MP Laurin Liu, who introduced the bill, says it would also give interns the same protections as other employees by limiting excessive hours, the right to refuse dangerous work and protection from sexual harassment.
The bill was prompted by the death of 22-year-old Andy Ferguson, killed in a head-on collision in 2011 after working 16 hours as an unpaid intern at a radio station in Edmonton. He was reportedly too exhausted to drive.
Why are abuses like this still happening in federally regulated workplaces?
Unpaid interns work hard and deserve the same workplace and legal protections as paid employees.
Unpaid internships may sound good in theory, but they haven’t fulfilled their mandate. The statistics on private member’s bills aren’t very promising either—only 18 have been passed in the last 22 years. Here’s hoping this one is number 19.