Unpaid internships are under fire again as Labour commits to curbing their use and limiting them to just one month if they are elected in May. They argue that the move is fair for potential employees and will help prevent the richest parent’s ‘locking up’ the jobs that would otherwise be payable. What’s more, The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, chaired by the Labour former cabinet minister Alan Milburn, has called for unpaid internships to be made illegal by 2020, citing them as a major barrier to social mobility.
Here at apt, we are all for internships and each year, we take on and pay a number of interns who come through our doors; we don’t however pay them all, simply because we can’t. Reading all the coverage and column inches that this Labour statement has gained, we can’t help feeling the view is a little naive and ‘London-centric’, rather than considering the needs of businesses elsewhere in the country and the circumstances or wants of these interns. Indeed Liam Byrne, the shadow minister for Universities, Science and Skills, has questionably said “There are now 100,000 internship opportunities a year, most in London”. For the purposes of this blog post therefore, let’s ignore London for a minute and focus instead a little more close to home…
Our MD Angie is a firm believer in the power of work experience and the on-the-job learning, which provides an insight and skills no University seems able to deliver. In fact, those who have had a placement tend to be significantly more skilled and adaptable to full-time employment than those who haven’t and sadly in many cases, employees without formal training in our field are often better equipped than University students! Yet putting it in perspective, we are a small organisation (and lack the means of many London-based conglomerates) and if forced to pay every single intern, we’d only ever be able to pass on our expertise to a single individual each year. Last year, we took on 42 work experience placements or interns, ranging from one week to one year, and we certainly couldn’t have afforded to take them all on if every one was paid, much as we would have liked to! Now granted, we know the idea for the policy is to encourage payment for placements of more than a month, but even so, it just doesn’t take into account circumstances. Here are some of the things we think they should be thinking about…
Now our opinions are neither right nor wrong; they are simply that – opinions. However reading the coverage we can’t help but feel that the policy is little more than a headline grabber and one which places little value on free market economics. In fact, often with an Intern it requires more time and resource to train them in the specialist skills that we need, than to deliver the job ourselves, so it wouldn’t be a sensible commercial decision. We’ll watch this story with interest, but it’s safe to say if Labour is elected and do fulfil their commitment, it’ll be bye-bye to many of our interns and it won’t be hello to anymore staff!