General | United Nations
What’s Wrong with an Unpaid Internship?
Good question. I spent the better part of the last year answering that question. My IOMBA program required an internship with the UN. Yet, a novice to this field after 6 years of paid work experience, I was surprised to discover that the UN does not pay interns. Nor, for that matter do most NGOs and research organizations in Geneva, Europe, or even in that haven of capitalism - the USA.
For me the answer was simple. I’m working, contributing to an organization. I should get rewarded for it, and financial incentives work best. If an organization does not want to pay, it does not really want my talents, nor deserves it. So, I quit the UN.
There are wider implications of unpaid internships however, that were made obvious by this piece in the New York Times. The problem with unpaid internships is that they do much more than undervalue an individual. They distort the labor market, depress wages and do not prepare interns for the real world (I can vouch for that). Most worrisome, perhaps is that:
They fly in the face of meritocracy — you must be rich enough to work without pay to get your foot in the door. And they enhance the power of social connections over ability to match people with desirable careers.
Unfortunately, I see no end to this tyranny of the UN. Europe, of course is way ahead of the USA in celebrating unpaid work - where most students intern at least once before graduating. And most programs are requiring internships, so that this system is approaching a tipping point where internships may well be the rule and not the exception. At least in India we don’t have this idiocy - yet.
Discussion
4 comments for “What’s Wrong with an Unpaid Internship?”
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you dont know. you can feel left out in india if are not doin an internship. which will eventually lead to that becoming a compulsion. probably it might not be explicitly stated but, “its understood”
I stand corrected. The idiocy has invaded India as well. I had forgetten my own three months of slave labor in my final year of undergraduate studies for one of India’s premier software consultancies, because I got a dandy job soon after. I guess my children are doomed to working for free, and paying my pension as well.
[...] Interns: to pay or not to pay… Published August 3rd, 2006 in General That is the question. With one exception, whenever we have been able to afford it, we have paid our interns. Mostly because that way I don’t have to feel guilty about asking them to do small things (make coffee). Because I try to give my interns as much instruction as possible, I don’t pay them a lot, but I recently learned exactly how much it costs them to get credit for an internship, so I pay them enough to recoup some of their costs. So my motivations were not as political as the NY Times… referenced in this entry from Dweep’s Blog, referring to unpaid internships: [...]
Which unpaid internships are a crime against future generations? (By Companies: No! By NGOs: Yes!)…
In the following article I want to argue for the following idea: If companies offer unpaid internships, it is ethically correct. If NGOs offer unpaid internships, it is ethically incorrect.
The last couple of years coined a new term for my generation: …