Thanks everyone for an interesting discussion. I'd like to add one thing to the conversation that hasn't yet been addressed. Even if there is debate among our community on the ethical dilemma of providing free labor in exchange for job opportunities, the U.S. Department of Labor has created clear criteria on what qualifies as a legal unpaid internship. For example here is one of the criteria:
"The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded." Certainly a highly trained SWC instructor, who typically has at least a bachelor's degree plus some advanced training, leading a workshop to teach employees of a company to use computational tools would not pass this test. http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/13/are-unpaid-internships-illegal/ What are the policies of other countries? Have they passed similar legislation? John _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
