{"id":23517,"date":"2012-05-24T15:42:43","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T15:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/hire-me-even-for-free\/"},"modified":"2012-05-24T15:42:43","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T15:42:43","slug":"hire-me-even-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/hire-me-even-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"“hire me! even for free!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

karaj<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

cocothinkshefancy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Fair Pay For All Work: Why Unpaid Internships are a Feminist Concern<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s that time of year\u2014across campus, students are checking email and voicemail messages in anticipation of what seems like the golden ticket to success: a chance to commit three months of summer to a low- or unpaid desk job. As we send out cover letters and set up interviews, there\u2019s a low rumble of anxiety: \u201cHire me! Even for free!\u201d<\/p>\n

As many as three-quarters of college students undertake internships before they graduate. As Ross Perlin documents in Intern Nation (recently released in paperback), many of these internships are unpaid, and many are illegal. Interns have no access to benefits and protections. In many cases, they don\u2019t even gain any skills, not to mention any advancement in their career paths.<\/p>\n

Unpaid internships are a feminist problem as well as a labor one. Women make up the bulk of unpaid interns: According to one study, as many as 77 percent of unpaid interns nationwide may be female (with some survey bias). The industries women often go into, such as media, fashion, or the arts, tend to rely on freelancers, temps, and other forms of \u201cprecarious\u201d and poorly compensated labor,<\/strong> Perlin told me in a phone interview. With unpaid internships, pay disparities between men and women begin before we even graduate from college.<\/strong> Further, according to Phil Gardner of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute, companies sometimes offer two tiers of internships\u2014paid ones to students in male-dominated fields like engineering and unpaid ones to students working in female-heavy fields like human resources. Unpaid interns, in a legal limbo between paid employees and full-time students, are often not even covered by standard workplace protections. In cases of sexual harassment, workplace regulations may simply not apply. As recently as 2008, an intern\u2019s sexual harassment claim was dismissed because Washington D.C.\u2019s anti-discrimination law did not\u00a0include unpaid interns<\/a>\u00a0in its definition of employee.<\/p>\n

The disposable nature of the unpaid intern\u2019s position affects the way we view our own worth. Perlin points out in his book that students do not readily think of themselves as workers, even when they are, in fact, logging in hours of paid or unpaid labor. They are likely to justify any experience as an \u201ceducational\u201d one\u2014although that experience may be as menial as entering data into a spreadsheet without compensation.<\/p>\n

The students I talked with did find that they had acquired skills by working over the summer. One woman told me that her internship had informed the content of her thesis; another said that it helped eliminate arts management as a possible career path. But they acknowledged at the same time seeing no option but to work unpaid, even as they recognized having been overworked considering their lack of compensation.<\/strong> \u201cThe thing about theater is you need an unpaid internship to get into [the profession],\u201d said one student who worked as a marketing intern for a theater company in New York. \u201cThe people that I want to work for really can\u2019t afford to compensate their interns like private companies can,\u201d said one student who had spent three consecutive summers working unpaid (with a school stipend) in a variety of policy or law positions.<\/p>\n

It is obviously not an intern\u2019s responsibility to ensure that the work conditions he or she enters are fair ones. This onus falls on employers, regulators, and schools, which should more clearly inform students of their rights as interns and take a more discerning eye to the postings they offer every year.<\/p>\n

But we owe it to ourselves to learn and recognize our rights in every environment we enter, even \u201ceducational\u201d and \u201cbeneficial\u201d ones. If your internship immediately benefits your employer and does not train you, it may be illegal. Your employer cannot use you as a substitute for regular employees, nor should he or she use it as a \u201ctrial period\u201d for future employment.\u00a0More information can be found on the U.S. Department of Labor website<\/a>\u2014but be aware that at least one court has rejected these criteria.<\/p>\n

This is especially important considering the emphasis on compliance and flexibility in a job market that has become more and more precarious. Unpaid internships don\u2019t just introduce you to an office environment; they teach you to be thankful for whatever work opportunities you may have, even if these opportunities are unfruitful and unfulfilling, as others\u00a0have noted<\/a>. It\u2019s similar to what feminist and lecturer in philosophy Nina Power has termed \u201cthe feminization of labor:\u201d In an uncertain office environment, we\u2019re all expected to be demure, enthusiastic and flexible\u2014the characteristics of a good secretary.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Work is not good will in exchange for good conscience. Our time and our energy have value. We deserve something more than to work unpaid for no gain\u2014as students, as workers, and as people.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0Madeleine M. Schwartz\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n


<\/em>yeah. totally. when i first moved to new york after college a writer at new york magazine<\/em> offered me an internship, unpaid, but with the promise of a good recommendation. i was too dumb to know that i should do anything possible to make this work, even if that meant also taking a paid job at starbucks. which i did. for a day. they had healthcare! but i couldn\u2019t stand the corporate brainwashing and quit.<\/p>\n

anyway, unlike a lot of the kids whose parents were supporting them after college (which may have been less common then), or the kids who just grew up in new york and knew how these things worked (and could live at home and work for free), i just had to suck it up, turn it down, and take a paid job in a related industry.<\/p>\n

it took me a few years to get a magazine position and when i finally got to the times <\/em>i\u00a0wondered if i could have bypassed all of those years of working at fashion and teen publications\u2014like the guys i worked with at styles<\/em> had\u2014 if i had taken that internship. though the idea of working for free for a male critic at his home still sounds creepy to me. and obviously everything worked out in the end\u2014i wrote a book about a teen magazine, now i\u2019m in grad school, and i\u2019ve had this weird life that i don\u2019t regret.<\/p>\n

still, even when i was at fashion magazines i remember people saying \u201ci can\u2019t believe you work here and you didn\u2019t grow up in new york,\u201d meaning, partly, that i was never able to afford the internships that most people with those jobs get before they ever get considered hired for staff jobs. (i would like to remind everyone, for fun, that cat marnell was my intern at <\/a>teen vogue<\/a><\/em>. and her assistant julie was my student i helped her get an internship once.)<\/p>\n

the unpaid internship system totally sucks. though, full disclosure, we had interns help us with our book. we helped them get jobs after. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

karaj: cocothinkshefancy: Fair Pay For All Work: Why Unpaid Internships are a Feminist Concern It\u2019s that time of year\u2014across campus, students are checking email and voicemail messages in anticipation of what seems like the golden ticket to success: a chance to commit three months of summer to a low- or unpaid desk job. As we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-67j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}