Unpaid Internships Be Illegal
Should
Carrie L Hutchison
Julie O’Connor-Colvin
Composition 1
April 20, 2015
Should Unpaid Internships Be Illegal
The internship has been an everyday experience that everybody has to go through in the course of one’s professional career development process. The experience has been recommended as an eye opener to high school, college or university studentsThis is to help the completion of studies. According to Bacon, (2011), it has been a norm for many companies offering internship that the intern should work to gain experience and knowledge only and that the intern should take care of him/her self’s expenses during the internship period. Notably, there are some few companies that at least pay peanuts to the intern to take care of expenses like transportation and housing. However, the most challenging thing is the fact that, during duty delegation, the intern is also given equivalent tasks to perform like the hired employees. Also, the intern is expected to yield results even though from time to time he/she is on supervision.
Legally speaking, there is no law that states that interns should be paid regardless of their contribution or the tasks they perform for the hosting company, explains Bennett, (2011). The norm is that they should work with other employees and after the internship period is over, they should go back to their respective level of education. Also, the company hosting the intern should provide the intern with a recommendation letter/ certificate as proof of having worked for that particular company.
But come to think of it, what if the interns are considered as part of the hosting company including compensation package and other rights and privileges that are entitled to other company’s employees? Won’t it be a motivational aspect for the interns to even to the extent of improving their desires to work professionally in the future?
Interns like any other employee have needs and personal responsibilities to take care of.The financial support from the company is paramount. The fact that internship is for students, with the primary agenda being to add knowledge and gain some experience, does not mean that they are non-performers. Greenhouse, (2010) explains that they are equal performers who even share new ideas that they study in a school that are of benefit to the hosting company. However, many are times when these ideas that the interns contribute to the hosting goes unnoticed and uncompensated. Since it is hard for companies to compensate interns for their willingness to work, I believe that legalizing payment for interns is the best option. This means that the hosting companies must compensate their interns.In return the interns perform at a level where they can learn thus improving their knowledge and skills.
According to an interview conducted with twenty interns and twenty managers of internship offering companies, it is in no doubt that interns make a solid contribution to hosting companies. As a matter of fact, the majority of managers stated that interns are more disciplined and hardworking compared to other employees. They follow the instruction strictly and always strive hard to keep time to report to work and also to deliver, (Lawton & Potter, 2010). According to all interns, a compensation package would make their internship stress free as a majority suffer from financial constraints, thus reducing their level of concentration. It is recommended that the internship payment should be legalized so that as the companies’ benefits from the interns, the interns can also benefit from the company. With legalization of payment during internship translates to unpaid internship being an illegal dealing punishable by the law.
References
Bacon, N. (2011). Unpaid Internships: The History, Policy, and Future Implications of Fact Sheet# 71.Ohio St. Entrepren. Bus. LJ, 6, 67.
Bennett, A. M. (2011). Unpaid Internships and the Department of Labor: The Impact of Underenforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act on Equal Opportunity.
Greenhouse, S. (2010).The unpaid intern, legal or not.New York Times, 2.
Lawton, K., & Potter, D. (2010).Why interns need a fair wage. IPPR.
