Vol. 75/No. 27      July 25, 2011

As many as 50 percent of the estimated 1 million-2 million interns in the United States work for free or less than minimum wage, according to Intern Nation, a recent book by Ross Perlin. The use of interns is now so widespread that a headline in Fortune magazine earlier this year proclaimed “Unpaid jobs: the new normal?”

“People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary,” Kelly Fallis, CEO of the interior decorating company Remote Stylist, told Fortune. “They’re going to try to please.”

Prior to the 1970s, internships were uncommon due to protections won by labor struggles in the 1930s and ’40s, including the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The act prohibits uncompensated labor except in limited circumstances.

Working for free was anathema to working people. Refusal to do so was a question of proletarian morality.

But in recent decades, these protections have been eroded in practice, as government agencies charged with enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act have looked the other way.

Internships among college students have expanded dramatically. In the early 1980s as few as 3 percent of college students completed an internship before graduating. Today that figure is as high as 75 percent.

University administrations are among the biggest promoters. Many charge tuition for the “privilege” of working for free, claiming interns learn valuable skills worthy of college credit.

Disney World, the largest single-site employer in the United States, is a prime example. In addition to its arrangements with Tulane, Purdue, and the University of North Carolina, Disney brings in recruits from abroad with J-1 visas. In all, some 8,000 interns do everything from dressing up as Disney characters to stocking gift shops, parking cars, and cleaning hotel rooms.

“Unlike most internships you’ll find, this is a paid experience! … [that] will build valuable skills and relationships,” Disney’s website brags. The starting pay? $7.31 an hour.

What the website doesn’t mention is that there are no medical insurance or other benefits and interns live in tightly supervised company compounds. Some Disney “cast members” end up with “negative paychecks” after rent and other expenses are deducted.

Internships are also common on Capitol Hill. Every summer some 20,000 plus interns come to Washington, D.C., “as if by magic … to perform clerical duties, draft legislation, and sexually gratify more established political figures,” Roger Hodge wrote in a recent issue of Bookforum. Under legislation passed in 1995, U.S. Congress employs 6,000 unpaid interns. This massive yearly influx depresses wage levels in the city.

This is not just a U.S. phenomenon. In Germany 51 percent of interns are unpaid; in the United Kingdom, 37 percent.

In China, vocational school students have been required to “intern” in massive numbers to overcome a labor shortage in factories. The Henan provincial government ordered 100,000 students to intern at Foxconn factories as part of enticing the Taiwanese-based manufacturer to establish factories there.  
 
 
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