Monday, May 2, 2011

Unpaid internships are exploitation. Period.

I had to write a post, seeing a tweet for Walrus magazine for an unpaid internship. 6 months, 30 hours a week and no pay what so ever. This pisses me off. Big time. I've written about working for free before and I'll say it again. Don't. Period.

Why? How about the lovely term exploitation? Ring any bells? Yeah, I feel very strongly about this. Working for free does NOT benefit you. Yes, you'll get on the job learning, but guess what, most business pay YOU to learn how to do your damn job. Your time is valuable, worth money and should be compensated. You aren't going to an internship, I hope, knowing nothing at all about the job. Chances are, you are fresh out of school and have several years of education to back you up. When you take a job for free, it says very clearly that you put no value on all that time you spent learning how to do something. It also says, you are OK with an employer placing no value on your time either.

Unpaid internships should be banned. Since that is impossible to do, make a point of never accepting one, encourage everyone else not to accept one, rat out the shameful behaviour of these companies who demand one, and stand up and say NO!

Don't buy any of that bullshit about how it's an honour to study under a big name professional. Or that what you learn will be worth it, no matter what. They are making money from your labour. They are getting paid. So should you.

Insist on it. Don't know how to say it? Watch this video. Mike Monteiro will tell you how, in clear plain english.



2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from SanFrancisco/CreativeMornings on Vimeo.


Stand up for yourself, have some self respect, value yourself and your time and demand that they pay you, damn it. Even minimum wage is better by far than free. After all, if someone doing a brain dead minimum wage job actually takes home money, why the hell shouldn't you?

No comments:

Post a Comment