With some revolutions you simply wonder what took them so long.
According to the Canadian Press, unpaid internships are on the rise in Canada, with as many as 300,000 students and recent grads working for free at some of our country’s biggest, wealthiest corporations. And those numbers simply aren’t adding up for a number of people.
“This is not the sort of social contract today’s kids saw their parents and grandparents grow up under,” said Sean Geobey, a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives researcher, and author of the report, The Young and the Jobless. “We’re starting to see Canadians – young people and their parents, in particular – seriously question what exactly is going on here, and why are we apparently returning to 19th-century labour practices.”
Simply stated, those questions deserve answers from the corporations, government and, yes, universities who have perpetuated this system.
At its idealistic core, there is nothing wrong with an unpaid internship. Oftentimes, it provides a unique opportunity to students, and, in many cases, to smaller organizations otherwise unable to afford the opportunity. But these are the exception.
Thousands are employed by corporations with the means, just not the inclination, to pay their interns. Following the 2008 financial crash, these corporations have preyed upon the desperate. Scared by a tight job market, and constantly preached to about the uselessness of their university degree, students are taking anything, no matter the insanity of the terms.
The Ontario Ministry of Labour professes to “ensuring fairness and protecting young workers.”
In most cases, you are considered an ‘employee’ by law. In fact, a person is not considered an ‘employee’ only if six conditions of the Employment Standards Act 2000 (ESA) are all met. We would explore those conditions now, if only they meant something.
ESA does not apply to students working under a program approved by a college or university. According to the Ministry, this exception “exists to encourage employers to provide students enrolled in a college or university program with practical training to complement their classroom learning.”
Fewer words so ripe for exploitation have ever been written.
That said, paying minimum wage isn’t going to solve everything. Many of the elite positions remain out of the grasp of many students, and reserved only for the sons and daughters of privilege who can afford to subsidize their student’s relocation and living expenses.
We need to do more.
First off, ‘Corporate Canada’ must drop the charade. They have already downloaded employee training onto the backs of universities and colleges. Now, they’re looking for further subsidies for their entry-level employees.
To help facilitate that, the province needs to either tighten or eliminate the current ESA student exemption. If unpaid internships remain acceptable, then implement stricter rules governing what organizations qualify. For instance, if you have more than x-number of employees, or a market value above y, then your corporation does not qualify for free interns.
Most importantly, universities owe students the most diligence on the issue.
We believe in internships, view them as an augmentation of class work. We make them available, as well as mandatory in certain programs. In fact, Western’s new Strategic Plan commits to “promote and support experiential and international learning opportunities.”
That is a wonderful goal, but we need to take well-defined steps into that future.
If experiential learning involves internships, and some of those will be unpaid, then let’s set a university-wide policy on the type of opportunities we endorse giving our students over to for free. For instance, let’s stress a term limit to the employment, ensure the work is academically valuable, demand a concrete takeaway. When relocation is necessary, the university – with perhaps the support of the province and the corporation – should provide short-term living expenses.
If we are serious about this experience, and see no other way to do it beyond free labour, then we need to figure a way to help fund it. Not doing so just adds another few thousand on the price of tuition.
Students and parents are asking the right questions of us. We owe them answers.
And action.