Why Internships Worry Employment Law Solicitors

Internships have been getting a bad press of late, with employment law solicitors and other campaigners claiming they are exploitative and often illegal. Employment law solicitors might take the moral high ground and call it exploitation, but often times, the interns themselves are happy to work on an unpaid basis, calling it experience. So which is it?

The use of internships is more prevalent in some industries than others. One such industry is fashion. In the press recently, former fashion interns have claimed they were made to work twelve hour days, and longer, for months on end, with no offer of a paid job afterwards. Indeed, some interns claim they have worked for free in fashion houses where they have outnumbered the paid staff. All of this suggests that companies in many industries have come to rely far too much upon the unpaid work of interns.

Employment law solicitors point to minimum wage rules, which suggest that companies using interns may well be acting unlawfully by failing to pay interns. They say that stating that someone is an intern does not mean that they don’t have to be paid. Any person who is engaged on a regular basis for an extended period of time to carry out work which is core to the company must be considered an employee and therefore must be paid. In the past, there have been some cases where former interns have taken their case to the employment tribunal and won backdated minimum wage pay. Unfortunately, such cases were not widely reported and did not set the legal precedent that had been hoped and the situation remains largely the same.

Campaigners claim that internships are actually responsible for the problem they claim to resolve: graduate unemployment. As more and more graduates work for free, fewer and fewer paid entry-level roles are left. At the end of the day, would you pay a new graduate to do a job when another would do it for free?

Employment law solicitors are working to raise awareness of the need to comply with minimum wage legislation. They are urging lawmakers to consider a fundamental change to the system, perhaps limiting the amount of time for which a company may use unpaid interns. This, they hope, would lead to higher retention of former interns in paid, permanent roles.

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