On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 6:40 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Kevin, > > I must be missing something. > > I feel like in the past you have often ranted about both the lack of > ethics in the industry and the lack of good employment opportunities -- > often in very compelling ways. > > Now, some people have gotten the courts to do something to address these > exact issues and you seem to be ranting that they are in the wrong for > doing so. > > That doesn't make sense to me. As an educator, I am excited if internships > that offer academic credit will now be held to an actual standard, and I > applaud the people who fought for this in the courts.
I agree with dg here, but part of the problem may be how things have changed since the days when Kevin was an intern, particularly in the 5 years since the Great Recession (but incrementally in the years leading up to that too). Internships of all kinds in all industries have been under great scrutiny, as employers increasingly shift work to unpaid workers to lower costs and avoid regulations. The generation of students who graduated college during that period (my daughter belongs to that) have been exploited in unprecedented ways by this process, and increasingly the courts and government regulators are (starting) to push back. At stake here is not just the well being of the intern (who must get valuable experience and supervision in exchange for their unpaid labor in order for it to be called an internship) but the well being of lower-echelon workers, whose ability to make a living is eroded when their jobs are replaced by unpaid workers who have no rights. Industries differ in the culture and tolerance for exploitation of interns; in the entertainment and publishing industries there has long been a high tolerance for this kind of thing. But the abuses of the last decade have exceeded even these high tolerances, and one likely result is that we will see rules being forced upon the industry that will in some cases change the culture. I think Kevin is right that there is a danger that pushing back too much will rob young people of valuable opportunities to gain experience, but each industry will have to find its own balance point on this. I think what is clear is that if the contribution an intern makes in any setting is not worth either some small financial compensation or reasonable working conditions and real supervision from professionals (which is valuable, and often worth more than the small wages they might otherwise get) then it should not exist as an internship. When my daughter graduated from college two years ago she, like many of her classmates, took an unpaid, unstructured internship in a promising setting in her field (not entertainment related). This was quite a gamble, one her father tried to discourage her from taking (I could not afford to support her while she worked for free and lived in NYC). She decided to do it anyway, working full time at her internship plus half time at a $10/hour job, living in a small shit-hole in Manhattan with 3 roommates. She was one of the lucky ones - her internship turned into a relatively well-paying job (given her age and experience) with lots of good resources for her future career, plus she got to say "I told you so" to her Dad, which is priceless. But many of her peers were not nearly as lucky, and after a year or two of unpaid labor, with long hours and difficult conditions, they were replaced with a new crop of exploitable new college graduates, often without even the benefit of a cursory recommendation for their next job. Since many of these "kids" are children of fairly well educated and in some cases affluent parents, some of them have been able to retain high powered attorneys, which is one reason for some of the pushback. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
