Private companies get to hire a bunch of unpaid workers for an indeterminate length of time. They need offer no guarantee of future employment or any avenue of complaint.
And we trust that companies won't take advantage of such relationships? What could possibly go wrong? It's laughable.
Unpaid internships are the best scam for companies since the BC Liberals invented the $6 per hour training wage to allow McDonald's and Burger King to save millions in wages on the backs of teenagers trying to earn enough for a new bike.
But sadly, in many jurisdictions, unpaid internships are becoming a pre-requisite for even entry-level jobs. After getting the education and training for the job, one has to scramble to find a company to work for indefinitely for nothing, on the off chance that a job might be forthcoming if one pleases without complaining for sufficient months or years.
Journalism, fashion, politics and technology are industries that extensively "employ" unpaid interns. The cachet of these industries have eager aspirants fighting for the chance to work for nothing, drooling at the prospect of walking the same hallways as their heroes in these industries.
And incredibly, some are actually paying for the opportunity to be unpaid. The latest Charity Buzz bid for an unpaid internship opportunity at the United Nations is $26,000. They're paying thousands for the opportunity to earn nothing - incredible.
It's not enough that we break unions and cut wages at every possible opportunity. Now, we're hiring unpaid workers to either fetch coffee and do menial things no one else wants to do or even worse, to do meaningful things normally done by paid employees. Either way, someone loses.
To support the idea of unpaid internships one must trust businesses to not take advantage of employees to whom they owe nothing.
My colleague does - I can't.
And luckily for B.C.'s young people, the forward-looking B.C. Employment Standards Act of 1996 agrees with me and saves them from egregious unpaid internships when it states "time spent by an employee performing labour or service for an employer is time worked and time for which wages are payable."
Perhaps, the experience of Monica Lewinsky in U.S. President Bill Clinton's office is the most vivid example of the position in which unpaid interns could easily find themselves.
